Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

January 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 84

Total Comments: 32

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Hearts of Darkness / A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse / USA / 1991

Francis Ford Coppola declares that his film is Vietnam at the 1979 Cannes press conference for Apocalypse Now. The declaration sounds pretentious and bold, but it’s not even complimentary, associating the privilege of finance and resources his film shares with the war that is its subject, and also the perpetual, hubristic lapses in logic and inability to implement closure. Released in 1991, Eleanor Coppola’s documentary of her husband’s hardships must have constructed necessary facets in admiring the many trials that both enhanced and halted the production of the film, especially since it contains footage of the French plantation sequence—some thirty minutes of film, omitted from the final cut. It also verifies several facts that are now part of the film’s folklore: Sam Bottom’s use of speed, LSD, and marijuana during shooting, Martin Sheen’s self-inflicted injury during the opening sequence, Martin Sheen’s replacement of Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen’s heart attack, and Marlon Brando’s arrival on set without having read a word of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Coppola’s adaptive script. Brando finally arrives on set, tremendously overweight due presumably to the expenditure of his one-million-dollar advance salary, and he strays unforeseeably from intimate commitment to blatant, hilarious indifference. “I can’t think of any more dialogue to say,” he says, walking straight out of one shot.

Eleanor recorded audio of her husband at regular intervals during production, some of which is used in this film. His neurosis is fanatical—underneath the recordings of his arguments with his crew, he is seen standing anxiously behind the camera or seated at a typewriter with hand-written notes shrouding his peripheral vision. It’s difficult to accuse him of any oversights he is not first aware of. His portrayal paints a stark portrait of a near-ruined man, slaving himself to his every frantic inspiration, who has since produce no film of comparable renown.

Adam’s thoughts

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Paramount VHS
23 Jan 2007 4:59 PM | Submit Comment

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