Notes - On the Making of Apocalypse Now

by Eleanor Coppola

In the spring of 1976, Francis Ford Coppola and his family left California for the Philippines, where Apocalypse Now was to be shot. In this book, Coppola's wife records the events of a period which stretched from months into years.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Media Tie In, Biography Memoir, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than "Notes on a Life," also by E. Coppola. In that one, which I read in one day while sitting on a Cape Cod beach, I was disappointed with E.'s whining & lack of self-realization, though I understand it's hard to be in the shadow of a very overpowering, passionate husband. I did (do?) respect E.'s reflective spirit, her devotion to her wonderful, funny children, and her knack for making even the most ordinary observations sound simple and interesting, unadorned but true. I love "Apocalypse Now," the no-deux & redeux equally, so of course I liked getting the insider scoop on what was going on during filming & post-production. Still, the documentary is so much better. Also, I had no idea about the Coppola family strife, particularly F.F.C.'s infidelity. It was inspiring for me to read about her struggle, to realize this shit truly does happen to everyone & that it takes nothing away from you, it just makes you more resilient, a bolder, braver human.

[Joaquin · Rating 3 out of 5]

El libro está escrito por la mujer de Coppola y es un diario bastante personal durante el tiempo de rodaje y producción de "Apocalypse Now". Está escrito a modo de diario o como hoy diríamos a modo de blog con posts.

En él se pueden diferenciar dos temas principales, por un lado la anécdotas de la película que son bastante entretenidas y por otro lado la relación familiar de Eleanor con Francis y sus hijos. Esta parte se me hizo más tediosa y aburrida salvo por las anécdotas de la pequeña Sofía Coppola que por aquel entonces tenías 4 años.

Aunque es un libro corto que a veces se hace aburrido por lo repetitivo de la estructura, merece la pena leerlo por las curiosidades del rodaje de la película.

[Leo Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

These notes gave such an interesting insight into the making of an amazing film. It compliments the documentary about the film and gives the angle of the wife and family’s experience while accompanying the crew, but with more detail given her role in making documentary footage.

[Tom McInnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

My hope is that Eleanor found actualisation. That she found a way out from under the crushing weight of Francis, his genius, his celebrity, his insanity, his suffocating vision for himself and his family’s role therein. I know she didn’t pursue her own interests in directing for many years, beyond shooting further BtS films for her husband and daughter. I hope she found satisfaction elsewhere - though the release of two written-and-directed romantic comedies in the last 8 years of her life suggests that desire to create never left her, and the fact that it took almost 40 years to come to fruition leaves a lot of blank space for us to fill in. Her diary never betrays much more than a casual interest in such pursuits, however. Mostly, it’s just a record of a woman being ground slowly to dust by a man who thinks the whole world is a giant set for his own hero’s journey. She stayed with him until her death last month. He’s about to release another giant epic about a visionary creator trying to create a better world for everyone. I just hope that Eleanor managed to move beyond mystic crystals and yoga and tarot cards and wilful ignorance of her husband’s behaviour, and created a better life for herself.

[Noah MacKinnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps its thanks to the editing for compiling what was originally diaries and letters to a cohesive narrative with dazzling images and significance but it read like some of the best of Joan Didion. There’s a lot I felt I could read in-between what was not said in the ellipses. So many great scenes like the tiger being loaded into the plane causing consternation to the passengers and pilot, Eleanor herself walking by the tiger after hearing two separate stories involving it, the scene with Francis describing how he is incapable of staging a scene as so naturally captured in the blackout among his friends at dinner, to me it seemed to describe this poetic inability to experience actuality, his wife, his kids, his friends, the blackouts in the Philippines– the very real world, and he can appreciate it only through the lens of how it would appear on the silver screen, the representation of life over life itself like the Truffaut quote. While Eleanor was relating this with almost a sense of wonder, admiration for her husband, there was another layer to it for me that spoke about ineffectuality, and authenticity of an experience, versus manifesting experience artificially which is the nature of film. As she seems to start to come that conclusion herself. Also, in documenting the manufacturing of scenes in Eleanor’s efforts as documentation of her husband’s fiction as depicted in Hearts of Darkness. It’s telling that almost anytime Francis is talked about in the book it’s almost always mentioned that he is angry or unsure of himself. There’s a beauty in the writing of this book that lifts itself out of the reality to which it is attempting to depict of the making of one of our greatest American fictions.


“I was thinking about Disneyland and about moviemaking. Disneyland doesn’t discriminate between the real and the illusion… It is all there, our dream world, and our waking world together. Most of the time we are in a duality.” ( 97)

“Knowing that what is in front of me has to be tended to, not resisted or escaped from.” (169)

“I feel as though a certain discrimination is missing, that fine discrimination that draws the line between what is visionary and what is madness.” (176)

“I looked back. It looked like a beautiful movie” (281)


“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.”- Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In some places the carpet looked like it was floating because there was a layer of water between it and the pad. The kids thought it looked like a water bed and we're jumping around on it...Sofia put on her raincoat and was running around on the backyard. One section was underwater, and the frogs that usually hop around the lawn there were all swimming. The dirt from the flower beds was streaming into the swimming pool. Francis turned on 'La Bohème' full volume."

"When I stopped feeling like a victim, I started having a lot of fun with Francis. We have odd moments of really interesting time together, rather than more usual moments of time half tuned out."

"There is part of me that has been waiting for Francis to leave me, or die, so that I can get my life the way I want it. I wonder if I have the guts to get it the way I want it with him in it."

"I thought of the photos I took of the flowers on top of the television set in our room in Belgrade and in Brasília. I guess, the world around, they figure that you're going to be looking at the television for sure and will see the flowers."

"The birthday cake was six feet by eight feet. They placed plastic helicopters, boats, soldiers, flags, flowers, and candles, and letters that spelled, 'Happy Birthday, Francis, Apocalypse Now.'"

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yo sabía que ella había filmado un documental, pero no que había escrito un diario. Pues es apasionante. Arranca con un prólogo donde pauta las negociaciones sostenidas cuando se iba conformando el reparto. Y luego viene el diario propiamente dicho, el diario de la esposa americana de un director superconsagrado que de buenas a primera se ve instalada en las Filipinas con sus 3 hijos. Allí le piden que se haga cargo de un documental. Eleanor nunca había hecho tomado una cámara y empieza a escribir y a exteriorizar todas sus dudas, toda la tensión del creador ante su obra, la angustia de no saber que se espera de ella, etc. Y en paralelo te enteras las que vive FFC en relacion con Apocalipsis. El diario de filmación se convierte pronto en la desesperada crónica de una mujer consciente de que su matrimonio se derrumba en el escenario menos apropiado. Por supuesto, estas Notas funcionan bien como "todo lo que Ud. quiso saber y no se atrevió a preguntar" sobre la industria, Coppola, Brando, Storaro, Harvey Keitel. Martin Sheen, los tifones, la guerrilla, etc, etc. Recomendado para amantes del cine y la autoayuda.

[Hogfather · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a book about film, this is a book about the world of an rich woman who lived through second wave feminism. I was expecting a much more technical account of the shooting of Apocalypse Now, but I got (and should have expected) this touching personal memory of the film's creation. It's much less a book about Apocalypse Now and more a book about Eleanor Coppola's inner life. She writes beautifully about the three years of her life during which the film was shot and edited with the specter of the film and her marriage always looming in the background.

[Jack Herbert Christal Gattanella · Rating 4 out of 5]

RIP Eleanor Coppola, first of all

(April 1976): "I was thinking about time, how on a movie set the shot is maintained in the same time no matter how many takes and hours pass. Reflectors and lights are added, footprints are smoothed away, so there are no telltale clues as the day wears on. When the shot is finished and the plugs are pulled, tome seems to leap forward in a matter of seconds. Perhaps making movies is a step toward being able to move backwards and forward and in and out of linear time."

(July 1976): "As we returned downriver our bonca lagged behind the others. I was thinking about Disneyland and about moviemaking. Disneyland doesn't discriminate between the real and the illusion. Real tropical plants surround the plastic motorized hippos in the jungle ride. It is all there, our dream world and our waking world together. Most of the time we are in a duality."

One more:

(March 1977, Eleanor Coppola writing about her husband Francis when he was almost if not over 200 days of shooting and his star, Martin Sheen, just had a heart attack): "This place is a paradise seemingly, but Francis has been going through such heavy numbers that the beauty is only occasionally in focus for me. I guess he has had a sort of nervous breakdown. Perhaps it has been going on, in a way, most of the past year. The film he is making is a metaphor for a journey into self. He has made that journey and is still making it. It is scary to watch someone you love go into the center of himself and confront his fears, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of going insane. You have to fail a little, die a little, go insane a little to come out the other side. The process is not over for Francis."

[Neil Pasricha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always preaching to people the way books help open up the mirror neurons in your brain responsible for empathy, compassion, and understanding. To paraphrase George Saunders – that guy keeps coming up! -- books are “empathy training wheels.” Here's Exhibit A. The book is non-fiction but reads like vivid fiction in its daily diary format. You are Eleanor, the artistic, wealthy, humble yet high society wife of Francis Ford Coppola, as well as mother of three young children, and you are living for a few years in the jungles of the Philippines while your husband shoots a gigantic movie that is stressfully running over time and over budget and which is draining and growing your family in a thousand ways. What’s the movie? Apocalypse Now. A truly formative life experience and we have Eleanor’s diaries to read throughout. I loved this book. It may be out of print but I found a used copy online and I think you can do the same. This is one of Dave Eggers’ three most formative books. (I chatted with Dave on my podcast "3 Books" where we discuss life without smartphones, how to get boys to read, making art in an algorithmic society, and ... this book!)

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember where or when I bought this but I have it years. Looking for something light to read, I finally plucked it from the shelf and read it in a couple of sittings. Thoroughly enjoyed this insight into the making of the epic film and also into the life of a working director and his wife. Would have liked more photographs though!

[Luis Ogando · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este diario de Eleanor Coppola no logra, como si hace su documental, retratar el absoluto viaje a la locura que fue el rodaje de Apocalypse Now, aunque sí cuenta detalles interesantes. Por otro lado, introduce la crisis matrimonial de los Coppola, pero sin profundizar en los conflictos entre ambos. Una guerra de los Rose abortada.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fly on the wall look behind the scenes of the making of a film which was littered with production difficulties.
IMO, unlikely to be of interest unless you’ve seen the film though if you have seen it, you may want to revisit it to look at how it all eventually got put together.

[Anaïs Favre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbe témoignage sur la créativité, le psychisme de l artiste, sur la réalisation titanesque d un film comme apocalypse now, mais aussi sur la place de la femme, le mariage. Et en plus c est souvent drôle, écrit avec une distance délicieuse. Très chouette document

[Daniel Keyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

En mi segunda relectura después de varios años encuentro el diario interesante (moderadamente añadiría) ya que un rodaje así creo que daría para mas suculentas observaciones e historias pero aun y todo sigue siendo agradable e interesante de leer.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest and often brutally so. You marvel at what she went through and how that masterpiece of a film ever got completed. Everything is torn apart.

[Sandi Mann]

2nd read ...mindboggling (and fascinating) statistics about he making of Apocalypse Now (one of my fave movies

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

best diary ever.. divine

[Harry Forbes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gem.

[Peter Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by Francis's wife with great insight into the crazy ups and downs of epic filmaking.

[sbs transit · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. I should read heart of darkness
2. The scriptwriting is genius
3. The coppolas' multigenerational nepobabying is insane

[Waleed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sometimes intriguing portrait of a marriage, particularly when Eleanor Coppola compares Francis to Kurtz, and herself implicitly to Willard. As a record of the making of Apocalypse Now it is not as good as Eleanor Coppola's 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.

[Chuck Kollars · Rating 4 out of 5]

About three years of irregular diary-like entries, encompassing most of the filming and creation of the film Apocalypse Now. Very well done (most diaries do not make interesting reading). Relatively easy read - only less than 300 pages of not-particularly-dense text. Sheds less light on the making of the film than I'd hoped; it's more of a personal view.

Since what it describes is "real life" rather than some creation, there are not clear themes nor clear narrative arc. There are though a couple big threads at the end. Neither however is ever resolved in this book. Decades have passed, and we of course now know in broad terms how those things turned out. But the period between the end of this book and the final resolution of those threads remains considerably less detailed and less analyzed than the earlier part which is covered by this book.

[Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

If, like me, you experienced "Apocalypse Now" in a theater on its first release, you'll probably enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie. Eleanor Coppola tells another parallel story, that of her marriage to Francis, and the trials the filming placed on their relationship. That story was also interesting, but I found myself wanting less of that story and more about the film.

[Antifan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apocalypse Now rischio di rovinare la vità, non solo del regista Francis Coppola, ma anche dei suoi cari cioè : sua moglie e figli, che si ritrovarono in mezzo a un progetto grande, fin troppo per loro.
La produzione travagliata di questo capolavoro del cinema vista dall'angolo della moglie che suo malgrado vede trasformare la sua vita in un film: in una finzione, e che vede come l'arte possa far conoscere di più se stessi , vedere come sono mediocri le loro ambizioni, le loro idee, le clamorose ingenuità sulla famiglia e perche no ? sul cinema stesso. Divertenti i retroscena della produzione, i rifiuti degli attori chiamati(Pacino, De Niro, Nicholson…), sorprendete la smania di grandezza di Francis che pretenziosamente cerca di dare risposte a problemi più grandi.
Testimonio che però essendo diario talvolta è troppo personale (e anche banale a essere onesti almeno con me...) ma tutto sommato una lettura interessante e amena.

[MacDara Conroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was it worth reading this book without having seen the movie (I've tried, but, y'know)? Actually, I think it's better that way, because neither had anyone at the time Eleanor Coppola was writing these notes on the goings-on around its production, and indeed the notes end before the film is even completed and released. Now I feel like I'd have a better grasp on the film itself for when I sit down to watch it properly at some point. Because it's more than just the film; people's lives are lived over a number of years behind and around the scenes, as Coppola captures here like snapshots comprising a photo album of her experience, one telling much more than a thousand words.

[Nacho]

Este es un libro extraño, pero eso es normal considerando que se trata de un diario. A ratos es interesantísimo, pues cuenta de primera mano una de las historias de cine más fascinantes y extrañas que podrían haber; pero también sabe ser una lectura lenta en la que durante mucho rato no pasa nada particularmente llamativo. A pesar de ello, todo lo negativo que podría tener es comprensible: es un diario, no se supone que alguien como yo lo debería de estar leyendo. Es un caso muy raro y presenta una perspectiva muy interesante de una película increíble y de todo el caos, tanto material como personal que llevo detrás.
Sin calificación.

[Sarajennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eleanor Coppola is now one of my personal heros. This book is a MUST read! Especially if you are a mother and/or are married and in the arts world. It is touching and very deep as well as a brilliant account of what the Coppolas went through to bring A.N. to life. This woman is amazing in her clarity.

[Denice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loving Eleanor's inside look at the making of such an iconic movie. Very profound insight on Francis Ford Coppola's process, " ...The themes are about themes [Francis] is in the process of working out within himself [at that moment in time], rather than from things he has resolved and can be detached and objective about."

[Filippo Ulivieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diario privato, diario di produzione, confessionale, seduta psicanalitica, terapia di coppia. A tratti illuminante, sia sul lavoro e la personalità di Francis Ford Coppola, sia sui tormenti di un artista in lotta contro il suo materiale. Scrittura semplice, ma mai banale. La Coppola deve essere intelligente quanto il Coppola.