Milius says the classic line "Charlie don't surf" was inspired by a comment Ariel Sharon made during the Six-Day War, when he went skin diving after capturing enemy territory and announced, "We're eating their fish". Despite the great, if somewhat clichéd characters, I think that my main issue with the book is that the book starts so normally.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Apocalypse Now holds an approval rating of 97% based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 8. Francis Ford Coppola has stated that Willard’s journey upriver is a journey through time: “My idea was that as they progressed up the river, they were going back more and more in time in a funny kind of way” ( Karl French on Apocalypse Now, Bloomsbury, 1998, p.

The opening shots of the film reveal Willard in a Saigon hotel; on his nightstand is a gun (he has already considered suicide) and he explains, in a voice-over, that he was unable to adjust to life in the United States after his first tour of duty. Rumors began to circulate that Apocalypse Now had several endings, but Richard Beggs, who worked on the sound elements, said, "There were never five endings, but just the one, even if there were differently edited versions".

S. Army outpost, Willard and Lance seek information on what is upriver and receive a dispatch bag containing official and personal mail. The director downplayed Brando's weight by dressing him in black, photographing only his face, and having another, taller actor double for him to portray him as an almost mythical character. The sound material brought back from the Philippines was inadequate because the small location crew lacked the time and resources to record jungle sounds and ambient noises.By June 1977, Coppola had offered his car, house, and The Godfather profits as security to finish the film. We learn firsthand about the difficulties involved in making such a monumental film, including the lead actor Martin Sheen suffering a heart attack, hurricanes and other weather delays, an unexpectedly overweight Marlon Brando showing up on the set, Coppola's struggles to find deep meaning and recurring themes for the movie, casting problems including replacing Harvey Keitel as Willard. Coppola then presents the viewer with a montage of Willard screaming, crying, and smashing a mirror to show how desperately Willard needs a mission to give his life some purpose.

As the film progresses Lance scene by scene becomes more and more strung out on drugs to the point that his grip on reality fades to almost nothing, and he becomes completely silent in the last act of the film.After arriving at Kurtz's outpost, Marlow concludes that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. Remember the weird beauty of the massed helicopters lifting above the trees in the long shot, and the insane power of Wagner's music, played loudly during the attack, and you feel what Coppola was getting at: Those moments as common in life as art, when the whole huge grand mystery of the world, so terrible, so beautiful, seems to hang in the balance.