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(More customer reviews)I was disappointed to see that this book doesn't contain the original version of the Apocalypse Now script, by John Milius. It could have at least contained one of the later Milius/Coppola rewrites, such as the final revised 1975 version, which is easily found online. The simple fact is, those scripts provide a better reading experience; you're better off just watching the movie than reading this one. And, if you're a fledgling screenwriter, you're certainly not going to learn anything about the craft of scriptwriting from this book.
The reason being, as any viewer of the excellent documentary "Hearts of Darkness" knows, is that Coppola basically gave his actors free reign in expanding and ad-libbing their dialog on the set. Having read the earlier Milius/Coppola rewrites, I know that a lot of the lines in Apocalypse Now were in fact from the script. But many more of them (particularly Brando and Hopper's dialog) were in fact made up by the actors themselves. So to publish this book and say that it's a pure creation of Milius and Coppola is a bit misleading (something which Coppola himself vaguely asserts in his introduction).
A straight-up publication of an earlier version would have been preferable, if for the simple fact that it would give amazing insight into the twisted path this film took, from script to celluloid. For example, the '75 version mentioned above (the script Coppola started with on the set, but eventually rewrote day by day) not only opened with a psychedelic action scene, it also ended with one: a surreal, apocalyptic (of course) set-piece that involved untold VC, rampant destruction, and drugged-out GI's, with "Light My Fire" blaring over humongous stereos. It's interesting to imagine what the movie would've been like, had Coppola stuck with this ending, though from the beginning he claimed he had a problem with it; he found it too much like a comic book. Still, many have complained that the ending of Coppola's actual film is a bit underwhelming; there are many who would have in fact preferred the climactic sequence Milius envisioned. As for myself, I like both.
There are other interesting differences in the early Milius/Coppola drafts. For example, Willard is more of a devil-may-care super-soldier; he shares his joints with the PBR crew, and takes easily to murder: in one well-written sequence, Willard, realizing the French Plantation owners are attempting to trick him out of crucial fuel and ammo supplies, fools them by murdering some Vietnamese guards and planting their bodies in empty supply crates - crates which the French believe contain fuel and ammo. Kurtz as well is different, a blond-haired he-man who kills hundreds of VC single-handedly. Hardly the character Marlon Brando played in the film!
Actually, it's unfair of me to review these earlier incarnations of the script. The fact is, the version published here is far removed from them. But even though I'm unimpressed with this book, I still can't give it a poor review; even though it's mostly just a transcription, still, it's a transcription of my favorite movie, so that means it can't be ALL bad.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Apocalypse Now Redux : A Screenplay
The companion screenplay to the recently updated versionof Coppola's groundbreaking masterpiece.The book features anintroduction by Francis Ford Coppola, the entire screenplay, and 8pages of color photos.Apocalypse Now is a retelling of Joseph Conrad's classicnovella, Heart of Darkness--set in the Vietnam War.This is thedefinitive vision of madness and folly of war in our times.
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