Francis Ford Coppola Likens Himself to Michelangelo as He Releases the Final Cut of ‘Apocalypse Now’

Filmmaking is like
sculpture, according to the great director and auteur Francis Ford
Coppola. “It’s like Michelangelo of all things. You just cut away
everything that’s not part of the fabric. You look for the movie as
it’s already there trying to talk to you,” he said at the premiere
of Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut, which opens in
select IMAX theaters this week. 

This year marks the 40th
anniversary of the release of the seminal film, an unsettling
Vietnam War drama based on the Joseph Conrad novella Heart
of Darkness. Despite the massive success of the first two
Godfather movies, Coppola was forced to finance much of the film
himself. 

That meant compromising his original vision—a frustrating
experience for a young filmmaker who believed in his artistic
vision. But Coppola says artists must be prepared to put everything
on the line for their work.

“If you want to make art, you also have to be comfortable with
risk, and take a chance that you know best,” he told fellow
director Steven Soderbergh in a conversation following a screening
of the film at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring. “You can’t
make art without risk, any more than you can make babies without
sex.”

The production was famously
troubled—entire sets were destroyed by storms, star Martin Sheen
suffered a near-fatal heart attack, and Marlon Brando arrived on
location incredibly overweight, ill-equipped to play a Green
Beret. 

Desperate to ensure the
film would be a success, Coppola cut large segments from the film
from the theatrical run, which clocked in at two hours, 33 minutes.
That lost footage was restored in Apocalypse Now:
Redux, a three-hour, 23-minute behemoth released in
2001. The Final Cut splits the difference between
the two versions, clocking in at three hours, two
minutes. 

It remains to be seen which version will be considered the
definitive one, but fans can catch this latest
rendition, Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut, in theaters
today and Sunday.

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