On The True Authorship of Hearts of Darkness:
“I think the more appropriate way to look at it is that Hearts of Darkness is Eleanor Coppola’s story. It’s not her film. Hardly. It’s her story. But that’s because I decided to make it her story.
“When I got involved with this project 20 years ago, Showtime was going to make it a one-hour TV special called Apocalypse Now Revisited. It was going to be basically an hour-long special about how they did the war pyrotechnics. It was going to be dull and stupid.
“At the time I told Steve Hewitt and my partner Fax Bahr that “nobody cares about a making of movie, especially one that is 14 years old.” I argued that the film had to have an emotional component. At the time, no one was familiar with Eleanor’s diary ‘Notes.’ My father had purchased it for me on my 16th birthday. I ate it up.
“When I got involved with HoD, I advocated using her diary as the narrative thread. I got incredible resistance from Showtime, and I got initial resistance from Eleanor. Not much, but some.
“Once I was able to convince everyone that the film would best be told through her narrative voice, it was then and only then it became her story.
“Eleanor did shoot the footage in the Philippines back in 1976, but she only stepped twice into our cutting room on the back lot of Universal. Twice. For a total of eight hours. I was there for a year, 15 to 18 hours a day. So it’s not a film by Eleanor, but I guess it’s sexier from a marketing angle to make it look that way.”
George Hickenlooper (1963 - 2010), http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/10/hickenlooper_in.php
I was really bummed to read about the death of George Hickenlooper this weekend. I will always credit HIS and Fax Behr’s documentary, “Hearts of Darkness,” with opening my eyes to the idea that what went on behind the camera, could not only be relevant to what was captured on film, but could also be an equally thrilling adventure. I always felt bad that he and Fax did not get more credit for such a masterpiece of documentary film-making. I send my condolences to his family and loved ones.
As an aside - George would frequently comment on Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Blog (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) and it was always interesting to see an insider’s point-of-view as it would cut through most of the PR-bullshit-speak that Entertainment Industry lackeys usually speak in.
Random thoughts from a Jonathan Reeve.
