Apocalypse Now (1979) has always been one of my favorite movies that are so bad they are good. Robert Duvall is still with us at age 91.
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning – Robert Duvall probably pic.twitter.com/O0rXMQgwg5
— Dr. Ray, Agent of Chaos রশ্মি (@TheRealStanRay) September 16, 2018
Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest movies of all time. It’s not bad in the slightest.
Fat Brando, he looked a bit like Uncle Fester in the film dressed in black and with a shaved head, and crazed Martin Sheen, who suffered a nervous breakdown during the film, are enough for an F rating all by themselves! Duvall was a bright spot in a dog’s breakfast of a film. However, as stated, I regard it as so bad it is good and I have watched it many times.
I’ll give you that the movie is surreal. but that works for it. It’s a movie about madness.
Donald, Donald, Donald. Don’t quit your day job. LOL.
Never will. Arguing about matters of taster however is always a chase after wind, although anyone who did not see the resemblance between Brando and Uncle Fester in Apocalypse Now hasn’t been paying attention.
I read somewhere that they gave the job to Brando sight unseen, and when he showed up looking like Fester they had to rewrite the entire end of the movie, making it the dark, surreal, girth-distracting conclusion we see today.
Coppola took a chance on Brando in the Godfather. Brando’s career was on the skids after a series of turkeys, he had a well earned reputation for being extremely difficult to work with and he was having money problems. Brando was on his best behavior during the filming of the Godfather and gave the greatest performance of his career. By the time Apocalypse Now was filming in 77, Brando was back on top of the acting world. He had also bloomed to 300 pounds, which shocked Coppola when Brando showed up on set weeks late, displaying his worst behavior throughout the filming. Coppola had to resort to all sorts of film tricks, especially lighting, to make certain that audiences wouldn’t think they were viewing a remake of The Blob. Brando was a magnificent acting talent but he personified the phrase Impossible to Work With.
Francis Ford Coppola: Hi. Look… we can’t get away with the lighting on Marlon forever. I mean, he looks weird. He looks Uncle Fester. You know.
SNL Transcripts: Martin Sheen: 12/15/79: Apocalypse Now
https://snltranscripts.jt.org/79/79gnow.phtml
Uncle Fester or not, Brando’s performance in Apocalypse is brilliant. But I’ll never dispute the fact that he was an awful human being. He once got Rita Moreno pregnant and paid for her to have an abortion. Terrible man.