***Outstanding documentary on the making of the hallowed "Apocalypse Now"***

Released in 1991, "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" chronicles the making of 1979's "Apocalypse Now," combining footage shot by Eleanor Coppola during the shooting of the film with more recent interviews with the cast & crew.

Documentaries or commentaries on how a particular film was made don't interest me because I'm not a filmmaker and only care about the final product. As a writer and former musician I'm familiar with the creative process and understand how some ideas fail to deliver the goods and must be thrown out, etc. As an example, I heard some demos of a couple of my favorite songs and they were lousy compared to the final product and almost ruined my view of those songs. This explains why I'm generally not interested in the harrowing details of how my favorite movies were made and the parts that were thrown out, etc. This documentary is an exception because (1.) "Apocalypse Now" is my all-time favorite movie (the original theatrical version, that is) and (2.) the documentary is just so well-done. In fact, it's fascinating from beginning to end.

"Hearts of Darkness" shows the monumental problems Coppola and crew encountered in making the movie: The sudden firing of their leading man (Harvey Keitel) after three weeks of shooting and replacing him with Martin Sheen; the delays in filming due to the Philippine Army taking back their rented helicopters to quell an uprising; a hurricane that ruins the sets; Sheen having a heart attack at only 36 years of age and the corresponding delay; overweight Brando arriving to the set totally unprepared and making $1 million a week with an unwritten, improvised ending; the amusing tiger incident; Francis venting in genuine uncertainty at various stages of the creative process, particularly the entire ending; etc.

The interviews with cast and crew are also very informative and entertaining, like Frederic Forrest's commentary on the tiger sequence and John Milius' insights on his original screenplay and his encounter with Francis during filming where the latter convinced him that it'd be "the first film to win the Nobel prize."

This documentary came out ten years before the "Redux" version of the film was released and, as such, it was the public's first glimpse of various scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor, like the French Plantation sequence and the typhoon-with-the-bunnies sequence. In my opinion, "Redux" is a failure and those scenes should've never been inserted into the movie as very little of the added footage works, but those sequences ARE interesting as deleted scenes or viewing them (in part) in the context of "Hearts of Darkness."

For some good laughs, be sure to check out the spoof of this documentary: "Hearts of Hot Shots Part Deux: A Filmmaker's Apology," which was released in 1993 and is available on Youtube in a couple parts.

The film runs 96 minutes.

GRADE: A