Francis Ford Coppola’s dream comes to IMAX with remastered, re-edited version of Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut
Four decades after the first release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Academy Award-winning epic Vietnam War movie: Apocalypse Now, Gravel Road Distribution Group will release a re-edited, remastered version in all seven Imax theatres on 23 August 2019. This comes shortly after the film premiere’d at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.
With the new version, Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut, some of the world’s best visual and sound technologies have been used to present Coppola’s true vision of the film: one that delivers a deep, visceral visual with auditory impact. “The audience will be able to see, hear and feel this film how I always hoped it could be; from the first ‘bang’ to the final whimper” said Coppola. “With Final Cut, I have found a version I can stand behind,” Coppola told in an interview: “By studying old cuts of the film preserved on Betamax, I feel I have discovered where I went wrong in editing the film, and removed 20 minutes of the new material from “Redux”, in this new Final Cut.” Coppola believes he has finally created the “just-right Final Cut that splits the difference between the creative concessions of the original, and the unwieldy sprawl of the Redux, a massive feat of film craft reined in to the general neighbourhood of perfection.”
“When this film first was released in 1979, the distributors saw it first and they were shocked.” commented Coppola recently, adding: “They said it’s too long, and too weird. So we were desperate and we didn’t know what to do, because when a film first comes out, its destiny is decided at that moment. I then met with my team, and I said we had to make it shorter, and less weird.”
Fans of the brand spoke to Coppola, asking why he didn’t put the scenes they cut, back in on a new version, and Apocalypse Now: Redux was born. Coppola explained: “When the Festival in New York said they would like to show the film to commemorate 40 years, they asked me which version they should show. I then thought that instead of showing the one that is too short, or the one that is too long, I would make one that is just right, that would be the perfect length to serve the theme of the movie” and the result, was The Final Cut.
It was after his success in 1979 with, feature films like The Godfather, Part 1 and 2, as well as The Conversation, that multi-award winning movie maker directed and released Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. Now, 40 years after that first release, with the third re-edited version of this classic set during the Vietnam War, new technology, as well as some of the content previously left out, contribute to the matured edit, in Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut.
Francis Ford Coppola, born in April 1939, graduated with a theatre arts degree from Hofstra in 1960 and went on to obtain an M.F.A degree in Film Production in 1967 from the University of California in Los Angeles. This marked the start of a career that would prove to be a lifelong journey of award-winning movie-making, with deeper life-lessons than meet the screen. Now at the age of 80, history will look back on a man who contracted Polio as a child, an ill boy in quarantine, who started to practice the art of puppetry, and just like Martin Scorsese, started to indulge in home movies and puppet theatre.
Coppola’s first feature film was Dementia 13, which was released in 1963, after which The American Zoetrope, the independent film production company of Coppola and partner George Lucas, was established in San Francisco. Under the umbrella of this production house, came the release of American Graffiti in 1973, nominated for five Academy Awards, including the nomination for Best Picture.
The early 1970’s saw a string of accolades for Coppola, with probably the best-known work, The Godfather and its sequel, The Godfather II, in 1972 and 1974 respectively. The Godfather became the highest-grossing film at the time, with Coppola being awarded with the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay in 1972; awards which he shared with Mario Puzo. The Godfather II built on this success, with Coppola and Puzo again claiming the Academy Award in 1974 for Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted from Other Material, adding the Oscar and Golden Globe in Coppola’s Trophy cabinet, for Best Director. Together with Gray Frederickson, Coppola also received the Academy Award for Best picture, in 1974.
More features were released in the 70’s, including the likes of The Great Gatsby and The Conversation in 1974, before the inaugural release of the critically acclaimed Apocalypse Now, in 1979, an epic genre about the Vietnam War, which most critics labelled as Coppola’s most ambitious film to date. Coppola however said that this film is not about Vietnam: “The film is Vietnam.”
A 2010 article in The Guardian, by Anne Billson, refers to Apocalypse Now, as ‘The best action and war film of all time.’ With this accolade only coming many decades later, the success of Apocalypse Now was not to be anticipated back then. In an interview with Coppola earlier this year by Mike Fleming Jnr from Deadline.com, Coppola said that he was at the time in the movie business where you are up, or where you are down: “I was in my ‘up’ period but I was astonished that nobody wanted me to make Apocalypse Now. The likelihood of me surviving that, was very against me, and I was, of course, during Apocalypse Now, famously scared and depressed”.
In his article however, Chris O’Falt wrote about how Coppola had taken on so much personal debt in 1979 with the making of the original release, that Coppola was concerned that the complete film would have been “too weird” for the “non-arthouse crowd”. This original version was released with a theatrical runtime of 2 hours, and 33 minutes.
After the release of his film, Coppola’s direction thereof secured him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and even though he missed out on the Oscar, he went home with the Golden Globe that year, in the same Category. Other awards scooped by Coppola and Apocalypse Now were a BAFTA Award for Best Direction, the FIPRESCI Prize and the Palme d’Or award at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. The film was also nominated for a Grammy Award in the category Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special, in 1980.
Building on the evident success of Apocalypse Now, Coppola released an extended version of this classic in 2001, called Apocalypse Now: Redux. In this new release, almost 50 minutes of scenes previously cut from the original 1979 release, were included, which contains a scene featuring Coppola’s two sons, Roman and Gian-Carlo. Gian-Carlo unfortunately passed away during a boating accident at the age of 22 years, only 7 years after the first movie release. In the 2001 Redux edit, Coppola included more combat footage, as well as some humorous cuts, and acts initially intended as follow-ups on some of the Playboy Playmates scenes, in the original film.
After the premiere’s release in April 2019 of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, Rolling Stones magazine, wrote that even in his ninth decade, Coppola still wants to keep breaking the rules, and keeps topping expectations the way he did when he was a film student. Coppola said “The things you get fired for when you’re young, are the same things you get Lifetime Achievements for when you’re old.”
At the official Tribeca Film Festival interview discussion, Coppola said: “In film-making and in life, extraordinary things happen to you, and it’s up to you to make them be positive. Because the good news is that there is no hell, and the quasi-good news is that this is heaven. Don’t waste heaven.”
Quoting a successful Francis Ford Coppola: “If you want to make art, you also have to be comfortable with risk, and take a chance you know best.”
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut will release in all seven South African IMAX theatres: Bay West, Cape Gate, Cradlestone Mall, Eastgate, Gateway, The Grove and Mall of Africa on 23 August 2019. Bookings open nationwide on 6 August 2019.
