Been stumbling upon Apocalypse Now a few times on AMC and IFC these past weeks so I figured I’d take a look around the internet and see how many cool alternative movie posters I could find for Francis Ford Coppola’s epic psychological war drama and guess what? I found a bunch. The epic film, which was filmed on-location in the Philippines and premiered in 1979, was matched by its epic production costs and casting “failures”. Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen and Al Pacino all turned down the role of Willard (eventually played by Martin Sheen). Production actually began with Harvey Keitel as Willard but he was ultimately fired by Coppola and replaced with Sheen. Marlon Brando, who showed up for his four weeks of on-location shooting grossly overweight and unprepared (he’d never read the script as instructed by Coppola) was paid the astronomical fee of $3.5 million dollars.
The film’s original $12 million budget also tripled due to a real war (the helicopter gunships that flew so majestically into battle with Wagner’s “Ride Of The Valkyries” blaring from their speakers were suddenly called away after the first take by then Philippine President Marcos who needed them to take out some real rebels on another island!), weather (a typhoon destroyed the original set), health issues with Martin Sheen (who was actually drunk in the film’s opening scene and told the cameras to keep rolling as he punched a mirror and cut his hand for real) who suffered a heart attack while shooting while Coppola himself suffered a nervous breakdown, and overspending on partying by the cast and crew.
That “Apocalypse Now” was such a remarkable film is actually quite remarkable. But it stands today as one of the greatest films of all-time. Enjoy the posters…
