Nicolas Cage (Nicolas Kim Coppola)

Wikipedia has articles about other people with the surnames: Cage and Coppola

Nicolas Cage

(English
Nicolas Cage
), real name
Nicholas Kim Coppola
(English
Nicholas Kim Coppola
[1]; born January 7, 1964 (19640107), Long Beach, California, USA) is an American actor, producer and film director. Winner of the Oscar and Golden Globe awards for 1995.

Biography

Born on January 7, 1964 in California, in the city of Long Beach. His parents August Floyd Coppola and Joy Vogelsang named him Nicholas Coppola

. However, the aspiring actor changed his last name to Cage to distance himself from his famous uncle Francis Ford Coppola. The prototypes for the new name were comic book hero Luke Cage[2] and avant-garde composer John Cage[3].

Despite his high fees, Nicolas Cage experienced financial difficulties for some time, partly due to expenses due to legal battles with his ex-wives, partly due to the unusually luxurious lifestyle adopted by the actor, partly due to mistakes in financial calculations made by himself and his personal accountant. Nicolas Cage owes $14 million to the state treasury in taxes[4].

In 2008, Cage experienced financial difficulties and sold his beachfront estate in Middletown, Rhode Island. Purchased by him in July 2007 for $15.7 million, it was sold 2.5 times cheaper - for $6.2 million[5]. In 2009, he was forced to sell the medieval Neidstein Castle, which he acquired in 2006. Cage also had to put his house in the prestigious Bel-Air area of ​​Los Angeles up for sale for $35 million. The buyer, whose name has not been released, purchased the house in November 2010 for $10.5 million[6].

For his contribution to the development of the film industry, Nicolas Cage was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her number is 7021.

Childhood and youth

The classic was born in the spring of 1939 in the northern USA, in Detroit, into a family of immigrants from the Apennine Peninsula. Coppola's grandparents and parents are Italian immigrants, bright and creative people. Maternal grandfather is the Naples composer Francesco Pennino. Mom - Italia Pennino - played the flute in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Francis Ford's older brother, August Floyd, is a writer and musician, and his younger sister, Talia Rose (by her husband, Shire), is an actress.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The name for the youngest son was invented by his father, who worked as a musician and arranger in the orchestra of the Ford automobile company. The future classic of cinema was born in Henry Ford's medical facility.

Two years after the boy’s birth, the head of the family was offered a position as a flutist in the radio founder’s orchestra. The parents moved to New York with three children. Here, in the borough of Queens, the master spent his childhood and youth. Francis Ford Coppola's early years were marred by illness: polio confined the boy to his bed. To diversify his existence, Francis set up a puppet theater. The future director “staged” performances, developing his imagination and entertaining his brother and sister.

Francis Ford Coppola as a child

The guy preferred exact sciences from school, since he was interested in engineering. His love for technology was explained by the desire to thoroughly study the movie camera that his parents gave to his son. The boy filmed a “home movie” with a camera, editing the footage onto 8mm film.

Coppola's youthful hobbies included reading and music. The 15-year-old boy was deeply impressed by Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. After reading it, the young man became interested in the theater.

Francis Ford Coppola in his youth

Among the musical instruments, Francis Ford Coppola chose a wind instrument of the lowest register - the tuba. The musician brought his playing to such perfection that he received a scholarship from the New York Military Academy.

The decisive “drop” in determining the further biography of Francis Ford Coppola was watching the “silent” film of the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein “October: Ten Days that Shook the World.” The American was struck not so much by the plot of the drama as by the art of editing.

Francis Ford Coppola at the beginning of his career

Contrary to the wishes of his father, who wanted his son to become an engineer, 16-year-old Francis delved into the study of theatrical art and drama. Coppola attended Hofstra College. He studied enthusiastically, won a competition for aspiring screenwriters and earned a scholarship.

But cinema won over his passion for theater: Francis Ford Coppola completed his education at the University of California, choosing film directing.

Personal life

In 1988, Cage had a relationship with actress Christina Fulton .

), who subsequently gave birth to his son, Weston Coppola Cage (born December 26, 1990).
Weston sings in the band Eyes of Noctum
. On July 1, 2014, Cage became a grandfather - his son Weston and his wife Danielle had a son, Lucian Augustus Coppola Cage.[7]

In 1995, Nicolas Cage not only received the first award in his life, this year he again met Patricia Arquette, to whom he again proposed and this time married. They lived together for six years, after which they divorced.

Nicolas Cage's second marriage was to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, who was previously married to Michael Jackson. And this time the union did not last long. Presley and Cage separated 109 days after their marriage[8].

Cage's third wife was a waitress, Korean Alice Kim. On October 3, 2005, their son Kal-El was born[9] Since January 2020, the spouses have not lived together. The reason for the divorce, according to the media, was Kim's adultery.

Nicholas trains in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Together with his cousin Sofia Coppola, he represents the third generation of the Coppola family to win an Oscar. The first generation was Carmine Coppola, his grandfather, the second was Francis Ford Coppola, his uncle. This is the second family with such regalia in the history of Hollywood (the first was the family of John Huston).

Movies

After graduating from film school at the university, Francis Ford Coppola got a job assisting director Roger William Corman, who shot action and horror films. The first task of the venerable director – to translate the dialogue of the Soviet film “The Sky is Calling” – was “exceeded” by the student: he translated the script into English and turned the film into a horror film.

The breakthrough in Francis Ford Coppola's film career came in 1963. Two of his directorial works were released on the wide screen - the films “Mad 13” and “Fear”. The first full-length film is inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's horror film Psychosis.

Still from Francis Ford Coppola's film "Mad 13"

But the following two films brought fame to the young director: “You’re a Big Boy Now” and “Finian’s Rainbow.” For the first film shot in the genre of comedy melodrama, Coppola was nominated for the Palme d'Or, the Golden Globe and the Writers Guild Award, because Francis Ford Coppola acted as both director and screenwriter of the project.

The musical “Finian's Rainbow” added a second Golden Globe nomination to its collection. Coppola's name is becoming famous, the attention of film critics to the young master of feature films is growing, and Francis Ford's author's style is being noted.

Francis Ford Coppola - multiple Oscar winner

The drama "Rain People", released in 1969, brought the future film classic a prize at the international film festival in San Sebastian, Spain. But the first Oscar statuette came to Francis Ford Coppola as the screenwriter of the war drama Patton. Now the talented 30-year-old director has become a full-fledged inhabitant of the Hollywood Hills.

Francis Ford Coppola on set

Francis Ford Coppola felt the taste of deafening fame in the 1970s. A film masterpiece was released, filmed at the Paramount film studio and becoming a cult classic - the epic gangster drama The Godfather, in which the main characters were played by Al Pacino and Marlon Brando. The film premiered in 1972, breaking box office records of all time. The bestseller brought the creator two Oscars and three Golden Globes. The epic story about a mafia clan has replenished the “golden fund” of the Hollywood film industry.

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of The Godfather

Coppola was able to consolidate his success and enter the tablets of the art of cinema with the psychological detective story “The Conversation,” released in 1974, for which the director, screenwriter and producer received the Palme d’Or at Cannes and nominations for all major film awards. "The Conversation" stars Gene Hackman, John Cazale and Harrison Ford. The leitmotif of the detective story was the Watergate scandal and the accompanying paranoia in the American establishment.

Still from Francis Ford Coppola's film "The Godfather"

After 9 months, Francis Ford Coppola “gave birth” to a new bestseller - the second part of “The Godfather”, acting as director, screenwriter and producer. In the three named guises, the master received an Oscar.

In 1979, the military drama Apocalypse Now premiered. In the project, Francis Ford Coppola discovered another facet of talent - as a composer. In Cannes, the master was again presented with the main award; in the United States, the brilliant master was awarded a Golden Globe, BAFTA and three Oscar nominations.

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola's 1980s film masterpieces include the best-selling From the Heart, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club. The end of the 80s was marked by the release of the third part of the mafia-gangster saga “The Godfather”. This time, the director and screenwriter did not win the world's main film awards, but was nominated for an Oscar twice and a Golden Globe three times.

In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola filmed the novel "Dracula", but put the emphasis on the love line of the story, and not on the "horror" one. The master received two Saturn awards for his work.

Still from Francis Ford Coppola's film "Dracula"

In 1997, the classic filmed the legal drama The Benefactor, entrusting the main roles to Matt Damon and Danny DeVito. With this, Coppola put an end to epics and grandiose studio projects.

In the new century, the master released low-budget films “Tetro” and “Between”. Francis Ford Coppola focused his main efforts on producing, participating in this capacity in the projects “Lionheart”, “Sleepy Hollow” and his daughter’s films “The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost in Translation”.

An American Film Institute survey conducted in the late 1990s showed that the bestseller The Godfather entered the TOP 100 most popular film projects of the century, ranking third. A survey in the British film anthology Site and Sound in the early 2000s gave primacy to the war drama Apocalypse Now, recognizing the film as the best among world films from 1977 to 2002.

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola also appeared on screens as an actor. This happened in the films “Young Riders”, “Apocalypse Now” and “The Corsican”. A-list Hollywood stars Dennis Hopper, Diane Keaton and Frederick Forrest considered it an honor to receive the role from the master.

As of 2020, the latest work of the eminent Hollywood director, who turned 78 years old in the spring, is the horror film “Between” with Val Kilmer in the title role. The master again showed off his talent as a director, screenwriter and producer.

Filmography

Director's works

• 2002 - Gigolo / Sonny

Producer

Nicolas Cage on Cosmo.ru

• Self-isolation in the ocean: Depp, Lohan and other stars with personal islands
• Baby food and ice instead of food: the most ridiculous eating habits of stars
• Bankrupt: stars who lost their fortune overnight
• What a wedding without a fight: weddings of stars that turned into a scandal
• Pink leggings and leopard: the most tastelessly dressed male stars
• Lopyreva and Vlad Topalov, Tom Cruise and Cher, and other unexpected pairs of stars. Video
• Popcorn from Johansson, tequila from Clooney: what else do stars make money from?
• From different worlds: Keanu Reeves and other famous men who fell in love with simpletons
• Don't be shy: stars who wear wigs and hide it

All articles …

• Cosmo TV: Did you know that they were dating?! 15 celebrity couples we forgot about
• 13 strange (and very interesting) facts about stars that you probably didn’t know
• The makeup artist said that Nicolas Cage humiliated her with a four-day marriage
• The young wife of Nicolas Cage demanded generous compensation for four days of their marriage
• Alena Vodonaeva ridiculed marriages of “men over 50” with young women
• Iconic roles that almost drove actors crazy (some did)
• Dinosaur bones and a small town: strange things that stars were spent on
• 10 worst celebrity outfits of the week
• Avril Lavigne, Tom Cruise and other stars who got married to people they barely knew
• Did you know they were dating?! 19 celebrity couples from the past that we forgot about
• Moans, whispers and rustles: stars who met ghosts
• New meme? Nicolas Cage wore a strange fur coat to an independent film festival
• Photobooth: what would happen if all the roles in Game of Thrones were played by Nicolas Cage
• Fur fur: Nicolas Cage wore a Kazakh national costume in Astana
• Nicolas Cage's 26-year-old son arrested again
• We all love Cage: 7 films with the brutal handsome man
• Irina Bezrukova shared a selfie from dinner in the company of Nicolas Cage
• Love has passed: Nicolas Cage divorced his wife after 11 years of marriage
• Lindsay Lohan, Pamela Anderson, 50 Cent - 10 poorest stars and debtors
• From waitresses to wives of stars: the “simple” spouses of Matt Damon, Chris Noth and others
• Jessica Alba, Timati, Matt Damon and other stars who fell in love with fans
• Waterfall, ghost detector, stuffed pony - pointless and expensive purchases of stars
• Planet “Zilart”: wild and funny advertising for which the stars should be ashamed
• Everyone can handle it: how a smile affects success
• Nicolas Cage to star in drama about Edward Snowden
• Nicolas Cage and Anton Yelchin in the thriller "Dying Light"
• 11 coolest Cadillac stars
• The most exciting premieres of the Venice Film Festival
• "Frozen Ground" - trailer
• 19 Christmas birthdays
• "Medallion" - film trailer
• Loser actors
• "Ghost Rider 2" - male premiere
• Nicolas Cage is a Superman fan
• "The Hungry Rabbit Attacks" - psychological thriller
• Drew Barrymore is the most overrated actress
• “What lies hide” - watch the trailer
• A Hollywood actor starred in Bilan's video
• A naked man breaks into Nicolas Cage's house
• Nicolas Cage with his wife and child
• Nicolas Cage's son leaves his pregnant wife
• Nicolas Cage's son arrested
• Nicolas Cage's son received a court order
• Nicolas Cage provided his son with a private jet
• Nicolas Cage accused of beating his son
• Nicolas Cage and Keira Knightley walked at weddings
• Nicolas Cage arrested for domestic violence
• Nicolas Cage will be missing 10 years ago
• Nicolas Cage owes two million
• Cage was not injured

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 1996 - Oscar Award - Best Actor for the film Leaving Las Vegas
• 1996 - Golden Globe Award - Best Actor in a Drama for Leaving Las Vegas
• 1996 - Screen Actors Guild Award - Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas

Nominations

• 1988 - Golden Globe Award - Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for the film Moonstruck
• 1993 - Golden Globe Award - Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for the film "Honeymoon in Las Vegas"
• 1996 - BAFTA Award - Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas
• 2003 - Oscar Award - Best Actor for the film "Adaptation"
• 2003 - Golden Globe Award - Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for the film "Adaptation"
• 2003 - BAFTA Award - Best Actor for the film "Adaptation"
• 2003 - Screen Actors Guild Award - Best Actor for the film "Adaptation"

Notes

1. [www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1405599/Nicolas-Cage Nicolas Cage] - Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 12/18/2010; [books.google.com/books?id=NP9kAAAAMAAJ&q=%22nicolas+kim+coppola%22&dq=%22nicolas+kim+coppola%22&hl=ru&ei=-9MMTdT2M8WBOt_gxLEJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ Contemporary theater, film, and television] - Gale Research Company, 2000; [books.google.com/books?id=_1uU6y1qSjQC&q=%22nicolas+kim+coppola%22&dq=%22nicolas+kim+coppola%22&hl=ru&ei=-9MMTdT2M8WBOt_gxLEJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA Nicolas Cage] — Corinne J. Naden, Rose Blue. Lucent Books, 2003; [www.familytreelegends.com/records/calbirths?c=search&first=Nicolas&last=Coppola California Births, 1905-1995] - Family Tree Legends Records Collection (Online Database). Pearl Street Software, 2004-2005.
2. [www.biography.com/people/nicolas-cage-9234498 Nicolas Cage Biography]. biography.com. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
3. Meg Grant.
   [www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/face-to-face-with-nicolas-cage/article28200.html Nicolas Cage Interview](inaccessible link -
   story
   ). Reader's Digest (August 2006). Retrieved December 9, 2010.
4. [www.sueddeutsche.de/,ra2m1/panorama/92/500359/text/ 14 Million Dollar Steuerschulden] (German)
5. [www.pbn.com/Nicolas-Cage-sells-Middletown-mansion-for-62M,56986 Nicolas Cage sells Middletown mansion for $6.2 million to Massachusetts couple]
6. Beale, Lauren
   .
   [articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/11/business/la-fi-nicolas-cage-home-20101111 Nicolas Cage's Bel-Air home goes to new owner for just $10.5 million], Los Angeles Times
   (November 11, 2010 ). Retrieved August 24, 2011. (English)
7. [www.dni.ru/showbiz/2014/7/4/274371.html 50-year-old Nicolas Cage became a grandfather].
8. Stephen M. Silverman.
   [www.people.com/people/article/0,,642162,00.html Cage-Presley Union Now a Memory].
   People
   (May 26, 2004). Retrieved February 14, 2010. [www.webcitation.org/6I80Tx1y8 Archived from the original on July 15, 2013].
9. [www.newsru.ru/cinema/04oct2005/cage_print.html Nicolas Cage’s third wife gave birth to his son]. newsru.ru (04.10.2005). Retrieved December 25, 2012. [www.webcitation.org/6DDdtsjbM Archived from the original on December 27, 2012].

Excerpt characterizing Cage, Nicholas

I informed him about this. Please instruct Leppich to pay careful attention to the place where he descends for the first time, so as not to make a mistake and not fall into the hands of the enemy. It is necessary that he coordinate his movements with the movements of the commander-in-chief.] Returning home from Vorontsov and driving along Bolotnaya Square, Pierre saw a crowd at Lobnoye Mesto, stopped and got off the droshky. It was the execution of a French chef accused of espionage. The execution had just ended, and the executioner was untying a pitifully moaning fat man with red sideburns, blue stockings and a green camisole from the mare. Another criminal, thin and pale, stood right there. Both, judging by their faces, were French. With a frightened, painful look, similar to that of the thin Frenchman, Pierre pushed through the crowd. - What is this? Who? For what? - he asked. But the attention of the crowd - officials, townspeople, merchants, men, women in cloaks and fur coats - was so greedily focused on what was happening at Lobnoye Mesto that no one answered him. The fat man stood up, frowning, shrugged his shoulders and, obviously wanting to express firmness, began to put on his doublet without looking around him; but suddenly his lips trembled, and he began to cry, angry with himself, as adult sanguine people cry. The crowd spoke loudly, as it seemed to Pierre, in order to drown out the feeling of pity within itself. “Someone’s princely cook...” “Well, monsieur, apparently the Russian jelly sauce set the Frenchman on edge... set his teeth on edge,” said the wizened clerk standing next to Pierre, while the Frenchman began to cry. The clerk looked around him, apparently expecting an assessment of his joke. Some laughed, some continued to look in fear at the executioner, who was undressing another. Pierre sniffed, wrinkled his nose, and quickly turned around and walked back to the droshky, never ceasing to mutter something to himself as he walked and sat down. As he continued on the road, he shuddered several times and screamed so loudly that the coachman asked him: “What do you order?” -Where are you going? - Pierre shouted at the coachman who was leaving for Lubyanka. “They ordered me to the commander-in-chief,” answered the coachman. - Fool! beast! - Pierre shouted, which rarely happened to him, cursing his coachman. - I ordered home; and hurry up, you idiot. “We still have to leave today,” Pierre said to himself. Pierre, seeing the punished Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the Execution Ground, so finally decided that he could not stay any longer in Moscow and was going to the army that day, that it seemed to him that he either told the coachman about this, or that the coachman himself should have known it . Arriving home, Pierre gave an order to his coachman Evstafievich, who knew everything, could do everything, and was known throughout Moscow, that he was going to Mozhaisk that night to the army and that his riding horses should be sent there. All this could not be done on the same day, and therefore, according to Evstafievich, Pierre had to postpone his departure until another day in order to give time for the bases to get on the road. On the 24th it cleared up after the bad weather, and that afternoon Pierre left Moscow. At night, after changing horses in Perkhushkovo, Pierre learned that there had been a big battle that evening. They said that here, in Perkhushkovo, the ground shook from the shots. No one could answer Pierre's questions about who won. (This was the battle of Shevardin on the 24th.) At dawn, Pierre approached Mozhaisk. All the houses of Mozhaisk were occupied by troops, and at the inn, where Pierre was met by his master and coachman, there was no room in the upper rooms: everything was full of officers. In Mozhaisk and beyond Mozhaisk, troops stood and marched everywhere. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, boxes, guns were visible from all sides. Pierre was in a hurry to move forward as quickly as possible, and the further he drove away from Moscow and the deeper he plunged into this sea of ​​​​troops, the more he was overcome by anxiety and a new joyful feeling that he had not yet experienced. It was a feeling similar to the one he experienced in the Slobodsky Palace during the Tsar’s arrival - a feeling of the need to do something and sacrifice something. He now experienced a pleasant feeling of awareness that everything that constitutes people’s happiness, the comforts of life, wealth, even life itself, is nonsense, which is pleasant to discard in comparison with something... With what, Pierre could not give himself an account, and indeed she tried to understand for himself, for whom and for what he finds it especially charming to sacrifice everything. He was not interested in what he wanted to sacrifice for, but the sacrifice itself constituted a new joyful feeling for him. On the 24th there was a battle at the Shevardinsky redoubt, on the 25th not a single shot was fired from either side, on the 26th the Battle of Borodino took place. Why and how were the battles of Shevardin and Borodino given and accepted? Why was the Battle of Borodino fought? It didn’t make the slightest sense for either the French or the Russians. The immediate result was and should have been - for the Russians, that we were closer to the destruction of Moscow (which we feared most of all in the world), and for the French, that they were closer to the destruction of the entire army (which they also feared most of all in the world) . This result was immediately obvious, but meanwhile Napoleon gave and Kutuzov accepted this battle. If the commanders had been guided by reasonable reasons, it seemed, how clear it should have been for Napoleon that, having gone two thousand miles and accepting a battle with the probable chance of losing a quarter of the army, he was heading for certain death; and it should have seemed just as clear to Kutuzov that by accepting the battle and also risking losing a quarter of the army, he was probably losing Moscow. For Kutuzov, this was mathematically clear, just as it is clear that if I have less than one checker in checkers and I change, I will probably lose and therefore should not change. When the enemy has sixteen checkers, and I have fourteen, then I am only one-eighth weaker than him; and when I exchange thirteen checkers, he will be three times stronger than me. Before the Battle of Borodino, our forces were approximately compared to the French as five to six, and after the battle as one to two, that is, before the battle one hundred thousand; one hundred and twenty, and after the battle fifty to one hundred. And at the same time, the smart and experienced Kutuzov accepted the battle. Napoleon, the brilliant commander, as he is called, gave battle, losing a quarter of the army and stretching his line even more. If they say that, having occupied Moscow, he thought how to end the campaign by occupying Vienna, then there is a lot of evidence against this. The historians of Napoleon themselves say that even from Smolensk he wanted to stop, he knew the danger of his extended position, he knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, because from Smolensk he saw the situation in which Russian cities were left to him, and did not receive a single answer to their repeated statements about their desire to negotiate. In giving and accepting the Battle of Borodino, Kutuzov and Napoleon acted involuntarily and senselessly. And historians, under the accomplished facts, only later brought up intricate evidence of the foresight and genius of the commanders, who, of all the involuntary instruments of world events, were the most slavish and involuntary figures. The ancients left us examples of heroic poems in which the heroes constitute the entire interest of history, and we still cannot get used to the fact that for our human time a story of this kind has no meaning. To another question: how were the Borodino and Shevardino battles that preceded it fought? There is also a very definite and well-known, completely false idea. All historians describe the matter as follows: The Russian army, as if in its retreat from Smolensk, was looking for the best position for a general battle, and such a position was allegedly found at Borodin. The Russians allegedly strengthened this position forward, to the left of the road (from Moscow to Smolensk), at almost a right angle to it, from Borodin to Utitsa, at the very place where the battle took place. Ahead of this position, a fortified forward post on the Shevardinsky Kurgan was supposedly set up to monitor the enemy. On the 24th Napoleon allegedly attacked the forward post and took it; On the 26th he attacked the entire Russian army standing in position on the Borodino field. This is what the stories say, and all this is completely unfair, as anyone who wants to delve into the essence of the matter can easily see. The Russians could not find a better position; but, on the contrary, in their retreat they passed through many positions that were better than Borodino. They did not settle on any of these positions: both because Kutuzov did not want to accept a position that was not chosen by him, and because the demand for a people’s battle had not yet been expressed strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet approached with the militia, and also because other reasons that are innumerable. The fact is that the previous positions were stronger and that the Borodino position (the one on which the battle was fought) is not only not strong, but for some reason is not at all a position any more than any other place in the Russian Empire, which, if you were guessing, you could point to with a pin on the map. The Russians not only did not strengthen the position of the Borodino field to the left at right angles to the road (that is, the place where the battle took place), but never before August 25, 1812, did they think that the battle could take place at this place. This is evidenced, firstly, by the fact that not only on the 25th there were no fortifications at this place, but that, begun on the 25th, they were not finished even on the 26th; secondly, the proof is the position of the Shevardinsky redoubt: the Shevardinsky redoubt, ahead of the position at which the battle was decided, does not make any sense. Why was this redoubt fortified stronger than all other points? And why, defending it on the 24th until late at night, all efforts were exhausted and six thousand people were lost? To observe the enemy, a Cossack patrol was enough. Thirdly, proof that the position in which the battle took place was not foreseen and that the Shevardinsky redoubt was not the forward point of this position is the fact that Barclay de Tolly and Bagration until the 25th were convinced that the Shevardinsky redoubt was the left flank of the position and that Kutuzov himself, in his report, written in the heat of the moment after the battle, calls the Shevardinsky redoubt the left flank of the position. Much later, when reports about the Battle of Borodino were being written in the open, it was (probably to justify the mistakes of the commander-in-chief, who had to be infallible) that unfair and strange testimony was invented that the Shevardinsky redoubt served as a forward post (while it was only a fortified point of the left flank) and as if the Battle of Borodino was accepted by us in a fortified and pre-chosen position, whereas it took place in a completely unexpected and almost unfortified place. The thing, obviously, was like this: the position was chosen along the Kolocha River, which crosses the main road not at a right angle, but at an acute angle, so that the left flank was in Shevardin, the right near the village of Novy and the center in Borodino, at the confluence of the Kolocha and Vo rivers yn. This position, under the cover of the Kolocha River, for an army whose goal is to stop the enemy moving along the Smolensk road to Moscow, is obvious to anyone who looks at the Borodino field, forgetting how the battle took place. Napoleon, having gone to Valuev on the 24th, did not see (as they say in the stories) the position of the Russians from Utitsa to Borodin (he could not see this position, because it did not exist) and did not see the forward post of the Russian army, but stumbled upon the Russian rearguard in pursuit to the left flank of the Russian position, to the Shevardinsky redoubt, and, unexpectedly for the Russians, transferred troops through Kolocha. And the Russians, not having had time to engage in a general battle, retreated with their left wing from the position they had intended to occupy, and took up a new position, which was not foreseen and not fortified. Having moved to the left side of Kolocha, to the left of the road, Napoleon moved the entire future battle from right to left (from the Russian side) and transferred it to the field between Utitsa, Semenovsky and Borodin (to this field, which has nothing more advantageous for the position than any another field in Russia), and on this field the entire battle took place on the 26th. In rough form, the plan for the proposed battle and the battle that took place will be as follows:

The story of one apocalypse in 10 chapters

An extended version of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the Vietnam War epic released in 1979 and included on every imaginable list of great films, is being released. Over the past 40 years, not only the film itself has become legendary, but also the story of its filming, during which almost everyone suffered. Nikita Soldatov

tells how Apocalypse Now was born and why you should watch the director's cut

How Apocalypse Now turned from comedy into tragedy and what does Star Wars have to do with it?

John Milius

Photo: Chop Shop Entertainment; Haven Entertainment

George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, 1987

Photo: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
The script for the main anti-war film in history, at least in the history of American cinema, was written by an avid militarist John Milius. An amateur surfer and former beach lifeguard who loved to shoot shotguns in his spare time, Milius studied with George Lucas at the University of Southern California film school and wanted more than anything to go to Vietnam. When his classmates either got married or left for Canada, just to avoid military conscription, Milius, who did not intend to live more than 26 years, himself enlisted in the Marine Corps. Grandiose plans were disrupted by asthma - I had to look for an alternative way to show my love for war. Milius chose cinema.

He had a lot of wild stories about life in the military: those returning from Vietnam told how they suffered from hallucinations due to the tropical heat, took all kinds of drugs and killed while high, shelled coastal villages in order to surf normally on the waves - in general, they had as much fun as they could . Having already collected a lot of material for the script of his “Psychedelic Soldier,” as the film was originally called, Milius suddenly found a literary basis. He bet his teacher that he could adapt the most inadaptable novel for film, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Written at the end of the 19th century, the adventure story about an ivory trader who goes crazy and creates his own mini-state in the jungles of the Congo has long excited the minds of filmmakers, but no one has been able to transfer it to the screen, not even Orson Welles. Milius tried to combine “Heart of Darkness” and “Psychedelic Soldier” - this is how in 1969 he came up with “Apocalypse Now,” a story about an airborne captain who receives a secret special mission to eliminate the half-crazed Colonel Kurtz, who organized his own cult among the wild natives in the wilds of Vietnam. With the new name, Milius, by the way, ridiculed the pacifist hippies who opposed both war and the legalization of drugs with the slogan “Nirvana Today.”

Milius suggested filming Apocalypse Now to his classmate, aspiring independent film star George Lucas. Lucas not only did not share Milius’s militaristic passion, but he himself was a hippie quiet pacifist and, moreover, had never heard of any Conrad. However, he liked Milius’s script: Lucas proposed filming it as a pseudo-documentary satire on the American army right in Vietnam during the fighting with real soldiers in the lead roles - something between “The Battle of Algiers” and “Catch-22”. Milius, oddly enough, agreed. Hollywood studios did not agree, they were afraid to send film crews to explode on Vietnamese mines and generally finance this politically incorrect and unpatriotic madness. Lucas did not fight for the script: against the backdrop of a senseless war, he increasingly wanted to make an optimistic movie for the whole family - preferably not about the life around us, but, for example, about a galaxy far, far away. Lucas returned to his old project called “Star Wars,” and after some time Francis Ford Coppola became interested in “Apocalypse,” who saw in Milius’ script a story in the spirit of an ancient Greek tragedy about the horrors of American imperialism.

How all the Hollywood stars refused to play for Coppola and he threw away his Oscars out of anger

Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino on the set of The Godfather, 1971

Photo: Alamy/TASS

Francis Ford Coppola and Harvey Keitel on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976

Francis Ford Coppola at the Oscars, 1975

Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage/GettyImages.ru
In 1975, when Coppola began developing Apocalypse Now, there was no more famous young director in America than he. George Lucas with American Graffiti, Martin Scorsese with Mean Streets, Steven Spielberg with The Sugarland Express, against the backdrop of the mighty millionaire Coppola with his armful of Oscars for The Godfathers and the Palme d'Or for The Conversation, looked flimsy newbies. What can I say, they even took tourists on buses to Coppola’s house in San Francisco - an honor that was awarded only to the monsters of old Hollywood. Coppola himself, however, could not stand old Hollywood with its dictates of studio producers and dreamed of his own independent film studio that would release films in the spirit of the French New Wave, without fear that the movie boss, who understood nothing, would force them to re-edit everything and throw out half of it. He even founded the American Zoetrope studio - opened in 1969, by that time it had not yet released a single box office hit and was in dire need of a blockbuster in order to earn its full potential. “Apocalypse Now” was supposed to be such a blockbuster - explosions, helicopters, exoticism, according to Coppola, could not help but attract viewers to the cinema. Having earned millions for himself and Hollywood studios from “The Godfathers,” Coppola finally decided to make the film without the intrusive participation of third-party producers and raise the entire budget—$13 million—on his own, selling the distribution rights to the future film to the United Artists studio and investing his personal money. Greater freedom also meant greater responsibility: in the event of a box office failure, Coppola pledged to compensate investors from his own pocket.

The blockbuster needed a star - and Coppola began searching for an actor to play Captain Willard, making his way through the jungles of Vietnam to kill Colonel Kurtz. Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, James Caan were rejected - some because of their pregnant wife, some because of the low fee, and some were not satisfied with the passivity of the character, who does nothing throughout the film and only kills the villain at the end. When Coppola’s old friend Al Pacino, who owed his star status to “The Godfather,” refused the role for fear of catching some tropical disease on the set, the enraged director threw all his five Oscars out the window. Only one survived.

The idea with a star in the leading role did not work, but Coppola did not despair. He called the little-known but terribly talented Harvey Keitel to play Willard. That the role was completely unsuitable for him would become clear only on set, but before that Coppola had to make several more wrong decisions.

How the Department of Defense refused to support the film, but the Philippine dictator agreed

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos with his family at the inauguration, 1969

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios
The decision to film Apocalypse Now in the Philippines was also fatal and also forced. Initially, Coppola hoped to shoot the film with the support of the Pentagon near some American base - in order to be able to use military equipment. The participation of the US Department of Defense in film production was an open secret: although the Pentagon demanded secrecy from producers, all of Hollywood knew who could provide free tanks, weapons, helicopters for the filming of a war film in exchange for a positive image of an American soldier on the screen. It was in this way that the main Hollywood apologist for American weapons, John Wayne, received the equipment for his jingoistic action film about Vietnam, “The Green Berets.” Coppola decided that he was no worse than Wayne, and wrote to the head of the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, asking for military helicopters and soldiers as extras for the filming of Apocalypse and vowing that his future film “is not anti-militarist and not anti-American, but simply tells the truth about the war " The Pentagon was not satisfied with Coppola's truth - the ministry demanded permission to change the script. Unagreeing to the producers' interference, Coppola was even less willing to allow the military into the script. We had to refuse cooperation with the Pentagon.

At the same time, there was a search for a location for filming that would pass for Vietnam. The Philippines seemed like an ideal option: similar nature, similar climate, civil war and, most importantly, cheap labor. If in Hollywood, with its ubiquitous unions, hiring an employee for long hours was a problem, then the Filipinos were ready to carry multi-kilogram stone blocks almost without rest to build sets right in the jungle for only $2-3 a day. But the main argument in favor of the Philippines was the opportunity to use American military helicopters - local dictator Ferdinand Marcos agreed to lease them along with the pilots. The idea to enlist Marcos' support came from the film's producer, Fred Roos, who had already directed several low-budget films in the Philippines. Together with Coppola, they flew to an audience with Marcos, who was only happy with the American injections into the Philippine budget and agreed to provide the film crew with 20 helicopters.

In early March 1976, Coppola flew to the Philippines with his wife, three children and nephew. It seemed that now that the organizational difficulties were behind us, everyone would finally be able to enjoy what they loved, surrounded by tropical beauty. The opportunity to shoot outdoors seemed especially attractive: after The Godfather Part II, Coppola dreamed of getting out of dark interiors. As his wife recalled, he looked forward to running in shorts through the jungle, swimming in the ocean and making a picture unlike any of his previous ones. Then no one suspected that the three-month filming would stretch over a year and a half, the budget would double and Coppola would have to mortgage his own house, and the tropical nature would turn out to be a serious test.

How the leading man bled on camera while the nurse prayed

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios
Two weeks into filming, Coppola realized his lead actor was no good. Former sailor Keitel played the military man in such a way that you couldn’t take your eyes off him, but Coppola wanted the viewer to look not at Captain Willard, but through his eyes at the surrounding madness of war. Replacing an actor even at such an early stage cost a tidy sum - $70 thousand for each day of downtime, but this did not stop Coppola. The director fired Keitel, who was only glad to get out of the jungle, and he flew to Hollywood to look for a replacement, after shaving off his mustache and beard so that journalists wouldn’t recognize him and start writing about problems on the set.

A replacement for Keitel was quickly found - 36-year-old heavy smoker, alcoholic and handsome Martin Sheen, who was familiar to Coppola from auditioning for The Godfather, agreed to the role of Captain Willard. Shin was ready to play both a passive observer and a military man distraught with boredom. This is exactly how his hero should have appeared in the opening scene. According to the plot, Captain Benjamin Willard, officially listed in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, but in fact carrying out special tasks of the General Staff to eliminate unwanted elements, sits in a Saigon hotel waiting for a new case. The only entertainment he has is alcohol, so he drinks and gets rowdy alone.

To help Sheen get into character, Coppola even offered him a drink before filming. The actor approached the task with full responsibility and came to the set completely drunk. Everyone was afraid that he would fall on camera, or even attack the director, but Shin turned out to be a professional and even when drunk did not stray from the script. More precisely, he almost didn’t leave: at the key moment, when, according to the plot, the staggering, half-naked Willard was supposed to show off in front of the mirror, the staggering, half-naked Shin hit the mirror, so much so that it broke and deeply cut his hand. Coppola appreciated the cinematography of the drunken antics and, after a short break, resumed filming, allowing Sheen to remain on the set, smeared in blood. When the take was filmed, Sheen remained - bloodied - lying on the bed and asked the crew to pray for him. Only the Filipino nurse listened.

It was necessary to really pray for the actor a few months later, when Shin almost died, overtaken by a heart attack while jogging in the forest - the unbearable heat, smoking and alcohol took their toll. He had to practically crawl to get to the nearest help - it is not surprising that when he saw the nurse, he immediately asked to call a priest. Along with the leading actor, the film almost lost its director - when Coppola learned about Sheen’s heart attack, he suffered an epileptic attack. Having come to his senses (rather quickly), Coppola realized that one report of Sheen's heart attack would be enough for investors - and the press - to bury the film, and he forbade crew members to talk about what happened. The official version was that Sheen was simply overheated in the sun: "If Marty dies, pretend nothing happened until I say so."

Coppola was lucky: Sheen pulled out and returned to the set after a month and a half, during which his brother Joe played Captain Willard in the wide shots. Although the doctors allowed Shin to have light exercise, the actor was sure that this was his last film - even without exercise, cigarettes and alcohol, the Philippine heat would definitely kill him - and subsequently recalled the filming of Apocalypse as a terrible ordeal.

How a film crew burned down a tropical forest and nature took revenge on them

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976

Photo: Scope Features/Vostock Photo
Everyone suffered from the Philippine climate - barely passable, cobra-infested forests, giant mosquitoes, voracious flies, leg-clinging ants, huge cockroaches walking around the house and such heat that by midday you almost faint. For Coppola, however, all the hardships of the Philippine nature paid off with the opportunity to shoot as realistically as possible the central episode of the film, in which Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, who loves the smell of napalm in the morning, launches bombs from helicopters at the Viet Cong to the accompaniment of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” To stage a napalm fire, Coppola needed to burn several kilometers of tropical forest, and the Philippines at that moment was probably the only place on the planet where this could be done with impunity. President Marcos at least didn't mind. Nevertheless, he was the main problem.

Due to the civil war and the need to suppress rebel resistance, Marcos continually recalled the helicopters provided to the film crew. Sometimes they were required to return them right during filming, and filmmakers had to urgently erase American military symbols from the sides and paint native Filipino ones. When there was no time for this, Marcos’ helicopters flew to bomb the revolutionaries under the American flag. In addition, the Filipino pilots changed from day to day, and Coppola did not have time to explain to the newcomers what to do. As a result, out of 20 helicopters, the camera, at best, managed to catch five of them - the rest always flew out of the frame. But, despite all the troubles, the famous scene - the largest in Coppola's career, and simply one of the largest in the history of cinema - was filmed using 4.5 thousand liters of gasoline, burning down a small forest in just 90 seconds.

Philippine nature soon took revenge on the American intervention. Having finally figured out the main scene in the film, Coppola was about to move filming to a new location and did not pay attention to the meteorologist's warnings about the approaching storm. On May 19, 1976, a real apocalypse occurred when Typhoon Olga, the strongest in 40 years, hit the Philippines: thousands were left homeless, more than 300 people died, and only by miracle were there no members of the film crew among them. The set was completely destroyed, all the props flew away, part of the crew, cut off from the rest, barely escaped, hiding for several days in a dilapidated house without light, water or food. Losses amounted to millions of dollars, and Coppola decided to stop filming and return to Los Angeles for a couple of months. The next time the group will come to the Philippines, it will be considerably thinned out - fewer and fewer people believed that the film would even be completed to the end.

How Coppola got Marlon Brando into the film, but he refused to learn the role and got fat

Marlon Brando on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976

Photo: Scope Features/Vostock Photo

Marlon Brando on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976

Photo: Zoetrope Studios
Problems on the set and unexpected script changes especially frightened the first and only star of Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando. By the end of the 70s, Brando was considered perhaps the main actor on the planet. Having starred in hits like “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris,” he did not leave the newspaper pages, striking either with his bad character and strong words, or with his friendship with the “Black Panthers” and the Indians, which especially irritated the inhabitants of Hollywood. Being a recognized genius, Brando did not like to work hard, but he loved to receive large fees. Apocalypse Now was the perfect project for him. Coppola agreed to pay him a fabulous $3 million for three weeks of filming, plus a percentage of box office receipts - Brando did not plan to stay longer than the agreed period, so he was especially worried about problems on the set. The next problem, however, was himself.

For the role of the emaciated psycho Kurtz with his protruding ribs and sunken cheeks, Brando promised to lose weight, but not only did he not lose it, but he also gained it, arriving in the Philippines in a completely inappropriate manner. He gained so much weight that the prepared wardrobe simply did not fit him. But that wasn’t so bad: it turned out that Brando didn’t even know approximately the plot of “Heart of Darkness,” and the script seemed so terrible to him that he didn’t even try to learn his own lines.

The first of three weeks was spent discussing how to fit the character of Kurtz to the actor. Filming was idle, falling further and further behind schedule and budget. Coppola suggested making Kurtz a fat glutton, Brando refused to look fat on screen and wanted to be somehow made up to look skinny. Coppola saw the Colonel as a drug addict out of touch with reality, Brando as an exaggerated patriot, killing people for the sake of an imaginary greater good. Nothing about Colonel Kurtz attracted Brando, even the name seemed stupid: “Better something like Colonel Lely—sounds like wheat blowing in the wind.”

A compromise was found by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who had already worked with Brando on Last Tango in Paris. He suggested presenting Colonel Kurtz not as a wizened maniac, as originally planned, and not as a flabby glutton, but as a kind of mighty mythical giant, towering over corpses and natives in his surreal temple: highlight his face, darken everything else, blow red smoke, film Brando in close-ups chest, and for general plans take a two-meter double.

All scenes with Brando were filmed in the remaining two weeks. In the end, ignorance of the script was not a problem: Brando really turned out to be a genius and completely improvised the entire role. Coppola said that he could not have written better in his life; he was delighted with Brando’s work. Brando remained true to himself: after filming, he called Coppola a greedy fatty and complained that he allegedly owed him several million.

How the film crew got hooked on acid and the director almost committed suicide

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios
Despite the fact that filming with Brando went surprisingly well, Coppola gradually began to become paranoid: he increasingly felt that everyone on the crew considered him “an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and the film is complete crap.” . Coppola drank, starved, cheated on his wife and gradually lost his human appearance. The rest were no better. While waiting for the depressed director to come to his senses, members of the film crew, just to somehow entertain themselves, jumped from the roof of the hotel into the pool, adopted Filipino children, argued with the locals and tried all the drugs they could get: acid , amphetamine and marijuana became commonplace on set, like 20-centimeter butterflies flying around. The main specialist on this case was Dennis Hopper.

A recent youth idol and herald of the psychedelic revolution in cinema, who ushered in the era of New Hollywood with his Easy Rider, after the failure of several directorial works, Hopper was in a creative crisis - simply no one called him to work. Various dependencies also did not contribute to career growth. As with Brando, Hopper's notoriety did not faze Coppola, but, as with Brando, his role also had to be tailored to fit. On set, Dennis Hopper was so high that he couldn't remember his lines. They say that Coppola once almost killed the actor, but in the end he decided to come up with a more suitable character for him. Instead of an American military man who sided with Colonel Kurtz, Hopper now played a role that didn’t require much getting used to—a stoned hippie photographer.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood they began to write with might and main about problems on the set, which did not contribute to the fight against depression. The film, which had been in production for what seemed like an eternity, was called “Apocalypse Never”; Coppola was portrayed as a crazy director who had lost track of his money and was ready to spend everything on his crazy project.

To be fair, it is worth noting that Coppola really did not behave very practical: he spent a lot of time and money on building gigantic sets and did not really have time to shoot them, he sent a trained tiger from Los Angeles, who almost escaped into the jungle right during filming, demanded to get him elephants and exotic birds, and then said that he did not need them. And this is not counting the incredible expenses of ordering pasta, tomatoes and olive oil from Italy and wine, frozen steaks and air conditioners from the USA. Investors from United Artists even decided to insure the director’s life for $15 million in order to somehow recoup their investment if something happened. Investors' concerns were more than justified: Coppola once announced to his wife and actors that they would never finish the film and return home and that he was thinking of either eating some kind of poison, or shooting himself, or jumping off a cliff. There were several months left before the end of filming.

How Coppola refused real corpses, but allowed the slaughter of a bull

Filming of Apocalypse Now, 1976

Photo: Dirck Halstead/Liaison/Getty Images

"Apocalypse Now", 1979

Photo: Zoetrope Studios
Gradually, anarchy reigned on the set. Coppola said: “I realized that I was going crazy, that I wasn’t making the film, but the film was making itself. Or is it the animated jungle filming it for me.” Jungle or not, the filming at least continued: the cameramen, knee-deep in mud and chicken droppings, continued to set up cameras, pyrotechnicians prepared special effects, and the actors, although not always sober, rehearsed. Without a vigilant director, however, eerie incidents happened.

One of the prop men in charge of Colonel Kurtz's lair took the phrase "strewn with corpses" too literally and obtained several real dead people for filming. Not only Coppola’s assistants were shocked, but also the local police, who descended on the site and took away everyone’s passports during the investigation. Fortunately, none of the filmmakers were brought to justice: the police quickly found a Filipino who robbed graves and supplied corpses not only to filming, but also to medical schools. It’s not that the local authorities strongly protested against the use of corpses as props: the soldiers who came to take the bodies did not know what to do with them - no one was going to pay for reburial - and simply dumped them into the first ravine. Nevertheless, Coppola decided to sacrifice naturalism and use extras and dummies in the role of the dead.

Coppola didn't want real corpses, but he wanted real natives in order to represent Colonel Kurtz's army as realistically as possible. Not far from the filming, there lived aborigines from the Ifugao tribe, who agreed to star in the movie in exchange for chickens, pigs and buffaloes. Right on the site, they staged hours-long ceremonies in honor of Coppola with wine, prayers, dancing to the gong and sacrifices. The head of the tribe once even told the director his fortune using chicken entrails and reassured him: the film would earn a lot of money and millions of people would see it - a chicken’s gallbladder never lies.

The natives not only prophesied a grandiose future for the film, but also inspired the director’s final scene with the sacrifice. By this point, Coppola had realized that Milius' ending, in which Colonel Kurtz and Captain Willard fight side by side in the final battle against the Viet Cong, would not do. There has long been nothing left of the anti-war action film, designed to raise the independent studio to its feet, in the film, and for a surreal parable about power, violence and war, a simple and spectacular finale with a bunch of explosions, helicopters and extras was not enough. In the new ending, Willard had to kill the crazy Colonel Kurtz, and then, without reporting the completion of the task and preventing his superiors from bombing his lair, sail away, leaving the natives without their leader and deity. In the last scene, the natives had to commit a ritual killing of a bull - rhyming with the murder of Kurtz, it turned the colonel from the object of a military special operation into a sacred sacrifice for the continuation of life. The natives, without any resistance, agreed to repeat the sacrifice on camera. The meat of the killed animal was prepared for dinner for the entire film crew, who celebrated the imminent end of the long-suffering filming.

How Apocalypse Now Almost Died on the Editing Desk and Split Cannes

Apocalypse Now editing, 1977–1979

Photo: Shutterstock Premier / Fotodom.ru

When filming of Apocalypse finally came to an end in 1977—Coppola recalled that he had never seen so many people in his life rejoicing that they were out of work—it turned out that the hardest part was not yet over. The next test was installation. Coppola simply did not understand what to do with 500 thousand meters of film (for comparison, Ilya Khrzhanovsky spent about seven years editing 700 thousand meters of Dau film). The premiere of "Apocalypse" was postponed four times, Coppola's close friends thought that he would never finish it, and he himself admitted to his wife that the probability of seeing the film in theaters was no more than 20%. “If I die, then my first editor will finish the film, if he dies, then the second editor will finish the film, if he dies, then my ghost will finish the film,” bequeathed Coppola, dissatisfied with each version of the film and gradually falling into depression again. To cheer him up, his colleagues once invited a Vietnam veteran they knew into the editing room. After looking at some rough footage, he handed Martin Sheen a gun and said, “You can shoot anyone in this room. The decision to live or die is now in your hands."

The truly invigorating effect came from investors from United Artists, who threatened to take away Coppola's house and all his other belongings if he pushed the premiere date again. Then - after two years of editing - Coppola decided to take a risk and find out the opinion of the audience by arranging pre-premiere screenings of different versions of Apocalypse. The first two screenings took place in the USA and could not have turned out worse - both versions did not impress ordinary viewers and completely disappointed the critics, whom Coppola foolishly invited and who, having violated the agreement not to publish reviews before the official premiere, immediately tore the picture to smithereens ( “surreal nonsense”, “wasted money”). To the horror of investors, Coppola decided to stage the third screening of the unfinished film at the Cannes Film Festival, where Apocalypse Now turned out to be a bone of contention.

The festival's management, far from Hollywood gossip and not following the scandalous filming, considered Coppola the main American director of his generation, and the film submitted to the competition as a masterpiece, the victory of which would increase the prestige of Cannes. On the contrary, the chairman of the jury, Françoise Sagan, categorically did not like “Apocalypse”: “but what about the point of view of the Vietnamese people?” She was going to give the main prize to “The Tin Drum,” Volker Schlöndorff’s equally large-scale opus about the rise of National Socialism. The management began to put pressure on the jury members, Sagan announced this to the press, the management refused to pay Sagan’s bills from the bar (10 thousand francs!), Sagan threatened to leave the festival. How they managed to reconcile the management and the jury is not known for certain, but friendship won - on May 24, 1979, “Apocalypse Now” and “Tin Drum” shared the “Palme d’Or”, and changes were soon made to the festival charter - from now on all jury members signed an agreement on non-disclosure and were obliged to pay for their own drinks.

How Apocalypse Now Didn't Receive the Nobel Peace Prize and Was Liked by the Military

Photo: Zoetrope Studios

Presenting his “Apocalypse” at Cannes, Coppola summed up his difficult Filipino experience: “My film is not about Vietnam, my film is Vietnam. We filmed it the same way as the Americans fought - there were too many of us, we didn’t get out of the jungle, we were overwhelmed with equipment and money, and we also gradually went crazy.” Coppola hoped that his film would provide the viewer with a "painful, unbearable experience, so that after leaving the cinema he would behave as if he had returned from war." In his pacifist pathos and belief in the greatness of “Apocalypse,” Coppola was as sincere as possible, and on the eve of the truly long-awaited American premiere, he seriously told the film crew that their film would be the first in history to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

To the great surprise of Hollywood and Coppola himself, who had long said goodbye to the dream of a blockbuster, Apocalypse Now, once again re-edited after the Cannes Film Festival and released in August 1979, received, if not enthusiastic, then rather warm criticism at home (it was praised in mainly for entertainment) and turned out to be a box office hit. On the contrary, few people considered Coppola's anti-war message: some, including Jean Baudrillard, criticized Apocalypse for mythologizing war and glorifying American weapons, while others, on the contrary, praised the director's patriotic fervor. By the way, real Vietnam veterans also agreed with the latter, who besieged Coppola’s production office with a request to make another great film, this time about their military everyday life in Vietnam and threatened to blow his brains out if he refused.

“Apocalypse” screenwriter John Milius, who saw the film with a group of veterans, was also delighted: “The audience was paralyzed, no one made a sound, not a single fucking word during the entire film. I looked around: Vietnam veterans were sitting and crying. I was shocked myself. And it doesn’t matter whether the film is good or bad, the main thing is that we didn’t let the veterans down.”

Not only veterans, but also active military personnel were impressed. Thanks to Apocalypse Now, they finally heard the murderous potential of Wagner and henceforth began to include “Ride of the Valkyries” during helicopter bombings.

Coppola grieved that he was misunderstood, but he could not do anything about it. Only in the early 2000s did he release an extended version of almost an hour, in which the emphasis was placed so that no one would have any doubt about his opposition to the war. On April 11, this version will be released in Russia.