Kurtz (Heart of Darkness) circumstances and remote settings to assert power over others. It is widely believed that Conrad drew influence from these characters, as well as Stevenson's plot lines, when writing "Heart of Darkness". In the 1958 loose adaptation for the CBS television anthology series "Playhouse 90" Kurtz was played by Boris Karloff. This version uses the encounter between Marlow and Kurtz as its final act, and adds a backstory in which Marlow had been Kurtz's adopted son. Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed Vietnam War film "Apocalypse Now" (1979) centers on the protagonist's mission to find and kill the renegade Colonel Kurtz (played by
Heart of Darkness three stories, and makes light commentary on the character Marlow—the narrator of the tales within the first two stories. He also mentions how "Youth" marks the first appearance of Marlow. On 31 May 1902, in a letter to William Blackwood, Conrad remarked: I call your own kind self to witness ... the last pages of Heart of Darkness where the interview of the man and the girl locks in—as it were—the whole 30000 words of narrative description into one suggestive view of a whole phase of life and makes of that story something quite on another plane than an anecdote