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
Heart of Darkness Congo River from one station to another, the captain became ill and Conrad assumed command. He guided the ship up the tributary Lualaba River to the trading company's innermost station, Kindu, in Eastern Kongo. The story's main narrator, Charles Marlow, has similar experiences to the author himself. When Conrad began to write the novella, eight years after returning from Africa, he drew inspiration from his travel journals. He described "Heart of Darkness" as "a wild story" of a journalist who becomes manager of a station in the (African) interior and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. Thus described,