There is also an added scene with the Playboy bunnies on a USO tour of the battlefront, who give a show for the troops in the original cut of the film. Richard Blake, among other film historians, erroneously assumed that the second scene with the bunnies was scripted but never shot—but it was indeed filmed and then deleted from the film at the editing table, and it is restored in Redux.
Actually, the exteriors for the second bunny scene were shot during the torrential rains that caused the production to be shut down in 1976. Willard and his crew encounter the bunnies, sometime after the USO show, at a Medevac Camp (a medical evacuation station) in a downpour. They are stranded in their grounded chopper because it has run out of gas. Willard offers to supply them with two drums of diesel fuel in exchange for their “servicing” his men, much to the disapproval of Chief (Albert Hall), the straight-arrow pilot of Willard’s PBR. “You’re giving away our fuel for this playmate of the month,” he chides Willard. “No, the playmate of the year!” Willard retorts with sardonic humor. On a more serious note, Coppola observes that the playmates, like Willard and his men, are in Vietnam on a mission that will degrade them, “except the girls are being exploited in sexual ways.”64
There is one additional scene with Kurtz: Willard is listening to Kurtz scoffing at a report from Time magazine about how well the war is supposedly going. It is the only time we see Kurtz in daylight—for once he is not hidden in darkness, and the sunlight exposes him as the raging demon that he is.
The most substantial addition to the film is the French plantation sequence. Milius had devoted eleven pages to this episode in his script, and Coppola had extended it to twice that length in his revised screenplay. It runs close to half an hour in Redux. As Sheen describes it in the documentary Hearts of Darkness, “Willard and his team come ashore at a French rubber plantation” that is guarded by French soldiers who emerge like ghosts from the fog.
At this fog-enshrouded outpost in the jungle Willard and his men find a fractious colonial French family. Hubert DeMarais (Christian Marquand) and Roxanne Sarrault (Aurore Clément), his widowed daughter-in-law, invite them for a formal dinner in their house, a relic of the French colonial past. “They had been fighting the Vietcong long before we did, and they weren’t letting go,” says Sheen in the documentary.
The dinner scene, as included in the documentary, is accompanied by a voice-over that inexplicably is not in the scene as it appears in Redux. In his narration, Willard says, “It was like having dinner with a family of ghosts. They were trying to convince themselves that it was still 1950. They weren’t French anymore; they would never be Vietnamese. They were floating loose in history without a country. They were hanging on by their fingernails, but so were we.”
The ethereal Roxanne seduces Willard with opium as she murmurs to him, “There are two of you, don’t you see? One who kills and one who loves.” The bedroom scene is filmed in autumnal tones verging on sepia, and it dissolves to a misty dawn, when Willard and his crew must continue on their way.
That Apocalypse Now Redux is a unique film is borne out by the fact that only one major Hollywood film has since treated the French conflict with the Vietnamese: Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American (2002). Set in 1952, the movie depicts the final French defeat and withdrawal from Indochina. In the course of The Quiet American, Thomas Fowler, a British war correspondent, asks Alden Pyle, an American associated with the U.S. legation in Vietnam, why the United States continues to meddle in Southeast Asian affairs. Significantly, Fowler seems to be echoing Humbert DeMarais’s words to Willard in Coppola’s film: “Why don’t you Americans learn from our mistakes?” Willard has no ready answer to offer DeMarais, just as Pyle cannot reply to Fowler in the later film.
Coppola was dissatisfied with this whole sequence when he shot it. In Hearts of Darkness he addresses the cast and crew on the set when the sequence is finished: “I was very unhappy with the scene on every count. Everybody forget that we ever shot it. It no longer exists.” He further comments in the documentary that he was incensed because the sequence was time-consuming and costly to shoot, as Ziesmer mentions above. “I was angry at the French sequence, so I cut it out,” says Coppola. During postproduction he stuck to his decision because he was convinced that he could not afford to insert a sequence that added twenty-five minutes to the film’s running time.
But when he and Murch were putting together Redux, he wanted to include it because the journey upriver is “a journey going backward in time; and Willard and his men pass through the 1950s” at the French plantation before reaching “primordial, prehistoric times” at Kurtz’s camp.65
Milius was gratified that both the “Medevac scene” with the bunnies and the French plantation sequence were rescued from the cutting room floor, since they both originated in his script. Unquestionably, the restored scenes in Redux add extra richness and complexity to the characterizations. Reviewers of Redux almost unanimously concur that, with the restored version of Apocalypse Now, Coppola had overhauled a movie that, by turns, was first thought of as Coppola’s folly, then was dubbed an outstanding war movie. It now stands confirmed as a mind-blowing masterwork. Several critics included Apocalypse Now Redux on their year-end list of the best films of 2001, although Apocalypse Now was actually a 1979 release. They agreed that, by using Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” as the focus on the film, Coppola proved with Apocalypse Now/Apocalypse Now Redux that an auteur can, with his own personal vision, transform a literary source into a monumental motion picture.
After the excesses that marked the making of Apocalypse Now, Coppola, after finishing the film in 1979, said, “Sometimes I think, why don’t I just make my wine” (he owns a vineyard near his Napa estate) “and do some dumbbell movie every two years?”66 But Coppola continued making movies that mattered to him. In between Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux he made another film about the Vietnam War, Gardens of Stone. It has no stunning battle sequence, since it takes place stateside. In contrast to a king-sized war epic like Apocalypse Now, Gardens of Stone tells what Coppola calls a more intimate, personal story. While Apocalypse Now depicts the Vietnam War itself, Gardens of Stone, its companion piece, is concerned with the home front during the same period.
Gardens of Stone (1987)
In the spring of 1985 Victor Kaufman, chief executive of Tri-Star Pictures, invited Coppola to a luncheon meeting at which he offered him the chance to direct Gardens of Stone, which Ronald Bass had adapted from the novel by Nicholas Proffitt. The novelist had served three years in the Old Guard, the venerable army unit that oversees military burials at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Subsequently, he was a war correspondent for Newsweek in Vietnam. Proffitt’s novel centers on the Old Guard, and Coppola was initially attracted to the project because he had been fascinated by the splendor of army ritual since his days at a military academy as a teenager. Furthermore, Coppola, whose recent movies had not been financially successful, frankly needed money.
The plot of the novel shows how a world-weary member of the Old Guard, Sergeant Clell Hazard, is rejuvenated by his relationship with a young, idealistic cadet, Jackie Willow. Although Proffitt’s book is clearly an antiwar novel, it portrays both enlisted men and officers in a much more sympathetic light than did Apocalypse Now. Proffitt’s stance toward the military, which Bass brought over into the script, appealed to Coppola. He liked the idea of depicting the army in a more positive light than he had in his previous Vietnam film. “The whole of the army as an old institution with lots of powerful traditions that are handed down, particularly in its code of honor—I liked that part of it, and I tried to depict it.”67
Gardens of Stone presents the benign image of the army as a large family and shows how the elders in the family endeavor to give the younger members the benefit of their experience—only to lose some of them in battle. The message Coppola extracted from the story was that “we are sworn to protect our children” and yet we keep putting them in circumstances that make that
impossible, so that “you end up burying them, all dressed up in military ritual.”68
Coppola, we remember, had had a falling out with the Pentagon over the script for Apocalypse Now, and he had therefore been denied the army’s cooperation in making the movie. He ruefully remembers that, as a result, he was forced to rent helicopters and other military equipment from President Marcos’s regime in the Philippines for exorbitant fees.69
In the present instance, Coppola literally could not afford to alienate the Pentagon a second time, since Gardens of Stone simply could not be made without access to Arlington National Cemetery and the military training base at Fort Myer that figures prominently in the story, not to mention the equipment and personnel that the army could make available.
Aware that the army had not liked Apocalypse Now, producer Michael Levy tactfully told a high-ranking general, “You know, Francis also wrote Patton.” The general responded, “That’s one of my favorite pictures” and added that he was favorably impressed with the present film’s scenario.70
After serving his apprenticeship under independent producer Roger Corman, Coppola wrote and directed his first feature, Dementia 13, which Corman produced. The film featured Mary Mitchel and William Campbell (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
In the psychological thriller Dementia 13, the lives of newlyweds Kane (Mary Mitchel) and Richard (William Campbell), a sculptor, are threatened by a serial killer (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Coppola wrote the screenplay for Jack Clayton’s film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, starring Mia Farrow and Robert Redford. This is the only script Coppola wrote for another director after becoming a director himself (Author’s Collection).
Elizabeth Hartman and Peter Kastner in You’re a Big Boy Now, which Coppola submitted as his master’s thesis at UCLA (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Fred Astaire in Finian’s Rainbow, one of the last big Hollywood musicals (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Shirley Knight as a distraught housewife in The Rain People. This film is considered one of the first feminist films to come out of Hollywood (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
James Caan as the mentally retarded hero of The Rain People, which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation, which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman, far left) in The Conversation (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Marlon Brando in the title role of The Godfather, which earned Academy Awards for both Francis Coppola and Brando (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen and Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone at a summit meeting of Mafia chiefs in The Godfather (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando, right) names his son Michael (Al Pacino) as his successor in The Godfather (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Lawyer Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton), and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) at a Senate investigation of the Mafia in Godfather II (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Robert De Niro won an Academy Award for playing the young Vito Corleone in the flashback sequences of Godfather II. Coppola received Oscars for directing the film, coauthoring the screenplay, and producing the best picture of the year.
In Godfather II, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) ostensibly forgives his brother Fredo (John Cazale) for betraying him, all the while planning to have him murdered (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Francis Ford Coppola (center) directs Joe Mantegna (left) and Al Pacino (right) on the set of Godfather III (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is a renegade American officer who has sunk into madness during the Vietnam War (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is captured by natives in Apocalypse Now (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) harangues Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) in Apocalypse Now (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
A Catholic chaplain offers Mass (center) in the extended battle scene in Apocalypse Now Redux, the expanded version of Coppola’s film (Cinemabilia).
Jackie Willow (D. B. Sweeney), a young recruit, with officers Clell Hazard (James Caan) and Goody Nelson (James Earl Jones) in Gardens of Stone, Coppola’s follow-up to his earlier Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Frederic Forrest as Hank and Nastassia Kinski as Leila in One from the Heart (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Teri Garr as Frannie in One from the Heart, Coppola’s least successful film (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Dallas (Matt Dillon), Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell), and Johnny (Ralph Macchio) are buddies in The Outsiders (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) is comforted by his brothers Sodapop (Rob Lowe) and Darrel (Patrick Swayze) after he is injured in a street fight in The Outsiders (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Mickey Rourke as Motorcycle Boy in Rumble Fish, Coppola’s follow-up to The Outsiders (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Patterson (William Smith), Rusty-James (Matt Dillon), and Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) in front of the clock without hands in Rumble Fish (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Richard Gere as Dixie Dwyer and James Remar as notorious gangster Dutch Schultz in The Cotton Club (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
From The Cotton Club, Maurice Hines as Clay Williams and Gregory Hines as Sandman Williams at the legendary Harlem nightclub of the film’s title (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Kathleen Turner in the title role of Peggy Sue Got Married (Author’s Collection).
Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) as a teenager, with her boyfriend and future husband Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage), in Peggy Sue Got Married (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Francis Coppola directing Tucker: The Man and His Dream on location (Larry Edmond’s Cinema Bookshop). Jeff Bridges in the title role of Tucker: The Man and His Dream, with one of his Tucker autos (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Mina (Winona Ryder) is seduced by Dracula (Gary Oldman) in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) and Mina (Winona Ryder) in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant), and Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) prepare to confront Dracula (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Francis Coppola directing Jack (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
On the set of Jack, Francis Coppola (immediately right of center) directs Jennifer Lopez and Robin Williams (both left) (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Robin Williams discusses a scene with Coppola (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
Coppola discusses a scene with Claire Danes (center) and Matt Damon (right) on the set of The Rainmaker (Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive).
Matt Damon as Rudy Baylor, an idealistic young lawyer in The Rainmaker (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).
Deck (Danny DeVito) and Rudy (Matt Damon) discuss an insurance fraud case in The Rainmaker (Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store).
The U.S. Army promised full cooperation with the production so long as certain adjustments were made in the script, such as limiting the amount of foul language spoken by the officers and men. Also, two brief scenes were to be excised from the screenplay. One had to do with an incident that Proffitt had himself witnessed while he was in the Old Guard: a young widow drunkenly spit on her deceased husband’s grave, bellowing, “At least now I know where you are spending your nights.” Another scene depicted an irritated sergeant smacking a serviceman around for failing a
routine barracks inspection.
When Coppola revised the script in tandem with Bass, he complied with the army’s demands. For example, Coppola altered the barracks scene so that when the sergeant raises his hand to strike the recruit Jackie intervenes and stops him. In return, Lieutenant Colonel John Meyers, who was appointed principal military adviser on the movie, provided access to Arlington National Cemetery, as well as Fort Myer in Virginia. He also supplied the U.S. Army Marching Band, six hundred enlisted men to serve as extras, plus several helicopters and other military equipment—all for reasonable fees. One journalist joked that the Army had provided Coppola with sufficient troops and material to invade a small country. Coppola freely admits that he had to compromise in order to get army cooperation on the film. Filmmaking is the art of compromise, he explains: obviously Gardens of Stone is more conservative in tone than Apocalypse Now because it was made in collaboration with the army, whereas Apocalypse Now was not.
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