As you know, spiffy new restored versions of the Godfather movies are playing in selected theaters and just out on DVD. Meanwhile in England, the latest special edition of Apocalypse Now (released domestically as “The Complete Dossier” and containing both the original and Redux cuts of the movie) is making its way to home video. It must be kind of a drag for Francis Ford Coppola that the only movies anyone wants to talk to him about were made in the ‘70s, but to his credit, he’s still a good sport about it.
“The thing with cinema is that you always feel as if you’re just beginning to understand it, and that makes each day very fresh and exciting,” Coppola said recently in an interview with The Times of London. “When I was younger, I decided I would make each film as an experiment, trying to do something that was appropriate to its theme, so Apocalypse Now was quite different from The Godfather or The Conversation. So I made it in a style I felt appropriate to the war itself: high amperage, big production, almost out of control.”
The logistical challenges of making Apocalypse are well-documented (notably in the terrific Hearts of Darkness), but one that often gets overlooked is that of Marlon Brando’s girth. “He admitted we had a problem in that this ‘Green Beret colonel’ would not be as overweight as he was, which presented issues of what sort of costume should he wear, as there wouldn’t be uniforms in his size. He didn’t want to be depicted as a man who had let his appetites and passions go wild, which was the other solution. Marlon, like all fat people, was shy and embarrased by his weight, which of course I understood, having something of the same problem, as did Orson Welles. I decided to dress him in black and portray his fatness as great size, meaning that you usually see just his shoulders and arms. So his large scale could be interpreted as that of a giant man. I used a very tall, husky double for the scenes where you see all of him.”
When asked whether he’d prefer to remembered for the Godfather movies or for Apocalypse, Coppola responds, “I’d actually like to be remembered for my present film Tetro, which is the most personal film I’ve made…I don’t want to be remembered for a film, but for the fact that I loved so much and was enchanted by little children.” Er...okay. Good luck with that.
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Francis Ford Coppola's Sex Change Operation