Apocalypse Now
(1979)
Rusty: Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing
National Film RegistryAward nominations: Academy Award for Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola)
Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Lisa Fruchtman)
Academy Award for Best Picture (Francis Ford Coppola)
Academy Award for Best Production Design (Dean Tavoularis)
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Duvall)
Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola)Award details: (details at IMDb)
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Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film set during the Vietnam War, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall. The film follows the central character, U.S. Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard, of MACV-SOG, on a mission to kill the renegade and presumed insane U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. The screenplay by John Milius and Coppola came from Milius's idea of changing Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness into the Vietnam War era. It also draws from Michael Herr's Dispatches, the film version of Conrad's Lord Jim which shares the same character of Marlow with Heart of Darkness, and Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The film has been noted for the problems encountered while making it. These problems were chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which recounted the stories of Brando arriving on the set overweight and completely unprepared; costly sets being destroyed by severe weather; and its lead actor suffering a heart attack while on location.