Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a 1991 American documentary film about the production of "Apocalypse Now," the 1979 Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The title is derived from the Joseph Conrad novella "Heart of Darkness", the source material for "Apocalypse Now". Using behind-the-scenes footage, and narrated by Eleanor Coppola, the documentary chronicles how production problems—among them bad weather, actors' poor health, and other issues—delayed the film, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of its director, her husband, Francis Ford Coppola. In 1990, Coppola turned her material
Joseph Conrad on the Congo River, an episode that would inspire his novella, "Heart of Darkness". During this period, in 1890 in the Congo, Conrad encountered and befriended the Irish Republican and advocate for human rights, Sir Roger Casement. When Conrad left London on 25 October 1892 aboard the clipper ship "Torrens", one of the passengers was William Henry Jacques, a consumptive Cambridge graduate who died less than a year later (19 September 1893) and was, according to Conrad's "A Personal Record", the first reader of the still-unfinished manuscript of his "Almayer's Folly". Jacques encouraged Conrad to continue writing the novel. Conrad