Hearts of Darkness chronicles how production problems—among them bad weather, actors' poor health, and other issues—delayed the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of its director, Francis Ford Coppola.
The documentary was begun by Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola, who narrated behind-the-scenes footage. In 1990, Coppola turned her material over to two young filmmakers, George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr (co-creator of MADtv), who subsequently shot new interviews with the original cast and crew, and intercut them with Eleanor Coppola's material. After a year of editing, Hickenlooper, Bahr, and Coppola debuted their film at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.[2]
Hearts of Darkness was released by Paramount Home Video on VHS and LaserDisc in 1992, with further re-releases occurring in 1994 and 1998. Paramount later released the film on DVD on November 20, 2007.[3] That version includes a commentary track from both Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, recorded separately, and a bonus documentary entitled Coda, about Coppola's film Youth Without Youth.
The film is also available on Blu-ray in the Full Disclosure (2010) and Final Cut (2019) editions of Apocalypse Now.[4]
Cultural references
A quote from the Coppola interview shown at the beginning of the film ("We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane") is sampled in UNKLE's song "UNKLE (Main Title Theme)", and also in the Cabaret Voltaire song "Project80" (as part of a larger sample from that interview).
An episode of the cartoon Animaniacs, "Hearts of Twilight", was a parody of the documentary.
The TV comedy Community the documentary is the basis of the episode "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux" - in which the character of Abed makes a Behind the Scenes documentary on the creation of a commercial for the Community College with Dean Pelton being the commercial's director who becomes erratic as the commercial's production goes out of control. Several characters, including guest star Luis Guzmán say "Yea but haven't you seen Hearts of Darkness? Way better than the-"[5]
