{"id":11577,"date":"2016-02-06T21:30:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T03:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=11577"},"modified":"2016-02-06T21:30:24","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T03:30:24","slug":"war-movies-10-things-you-never-knew-about-apocalypse-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/06\/war-movies-10-things-you-never-knew-about-apocalypse-now\/","title":{"rendered":"War Movies: 10 things You Never Knew about Apocalypse Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kurtz\"<\/h2>\n

10 obscure facts about \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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I\u2019ll never forget the first time I saw \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d Captivated, I stared at the screen for the 196-minute runtime as Willard journeyed upriver in the midst of the Vietnam War to assassinate the general-turned-rogue-demigod Colonel Kurtz. Afterward, I felt disgusted, exhausted, relieved, and forever altered in my way of thinking about war.<\/p>\n

Way more important than my first screening, however, is the story behind the making of \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d The film was legendarily produced over budget (from an initial $14 million to costing over $31.5 million) over time (principal photography was planned for six months, but ended up lasting over a year), and over the top. Most people know it took over three years to shoot and edit. And the screenplay was based on Joseph Conrad\u2019s novella \u201cHeart of Darkness.\u201d And that Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during filming, but got well enough to finish his work on set. And that Marlon Brando was paid $3.5 million for 15 total minutes of screen time. So I dug deep into \u201cthe horror, the horror\u201d to present these 10 obscure facts about \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

1. Colonel Kurtz was based on a real person.<\/b><\/p>\n

Marlon Brando\u2019s Colonel Kurtz is thought to be modeled after Anthony Poshepny<\/a>. Poe, a CIA operative, was dispatched to train a secret CIA-funded army of hill tribes in Laos during the Vietnam War. Much like Kurtz, Poe dropped severed heads in enemy locations as a form of psychological operations.<\/p>\n

2. Props got a little too real on set.<\/b><\/p>\n

One props manager attempted to take the film\u2019s sense of authenticity to the extreme, going so far as to source actual human cadavers for scenes requiring dead bodies. A production manager put the kibosh on the cadavers after local police began investigating. It turns out the cadaver supplier was robbing area cemeteries for their \u201cinventory.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. George Lucas almost shot first.<\/b><\/p>\n

Lucas was the film\u2019s original director. He intended to shoot \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d as a faux documentary in Vietnam during the war, on 16 mm film with real soldiers. But Lucas was too busy with \u201cStar Wars\u201d and \u201cAmerican Graffiti\u201d and had to drop the project. Lucas then gave Francis Ford Coppola his blessing to direct.<\/p>\n

4. You can only watch the 2001 re-release.<\/b>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cApocalypse Now: Redux\u201d is the only commercially available version of the film. The 2001 re-issue added 49 additional minutes to the runtime, and used a special Technicolor film process. It required layering multiple negatives to produce rich color saturation and consistent black tones. It also required cutting the original negative. Coppola gave the editor the okay, believing the redux was an improvement over the film\u2019s first version.<\/p>\n

5. The film\u2019s title makes fun of hippies.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cApocalypse Now\u201d is not the film\u2019s original title. Early drafts of the 1,000-plus page screenplay were named \u201cThe Psychedelic Soldier.\u201d It was changed to \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d after screenwriter John Milius was inspired to make fun of a hippie pin bearing the words \u201cNirvana Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 obscure facts about \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d I\u2019ll never forget the first time I saw \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d Captivated, I stared at the screen for the 196-minute runtime as Willard journeyed upriver in the midst of the Vietnam War to assassinate the general-turned-rogue-demigod Colonel Kurtz. Afterward, I felt disgusted, exhausted, relieved, and forever altered in my way…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1286,2039,4029],"tags":[4400,4401,4402,4403,4404,4405,4406,4407,1582],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}