Francis Ford Coppola on New Apocalypse Now, Influencing Tropic Thunder and the Downside of CGI

Since it owes so much to the famously difficult making of Apocalypse Now, I'm curious what you thought about Tropic Thunder.

Well, it was funny, you know. I like Ben Stiller and I love Robert Downey, Jr., and I saw that the entire film was based on our experience. My feeling is that, in my career, I always looked to the films that came before me and know that they want you to rip them off, because that's the purpose of art - you see something and you try to do something like that, and of course you can't, so little by little you get your own voice. So equally, you know, I've been inspired and liked to copy a lot of wonderful films. And I know those filmmakers want me to because that makes them immortal, and certainly Ben Stiller and those guys were obviously affected or impressed or in some way inspired by Apocalypse Now and the process of making the film that they went and did their comedy. I thought it was funny.

You went back to the original, longer cut of the film for Apocalypse Now Redux, and you retooled The Outsiders for DVD. Are there other films in your catalog you'd like to take back to the editing room?

I don't have a lot of films that I'd love to get my hands on, but I look at my early films that aren't even of enough importance that anyone would want me to do it - I didn't cut Finian's Rainbow in the final form; I was 22 years old with a big movie, and I went off to make The Rain People because I wasn't completely comfortable with the studio system. I'd love to get my hands on that for a couple of days to make the cut shorter. But no one cares about Finian's Rainbow or some of those pictures, so... The little film I made for New York Stories got cut way down to accommodate the other two films, I thought I was sort of unfairly pressured to do that. There were some darker parts of that fairy tale that balanced it, and they were taken out and it was made into a little comedy. I'd love to put those eight minutes back, but they're not of any importance, so I don't know that it's a big thing for me. Obviously, Cotton Club got mutilated when it came out, and the whole story of the African-American brothers got cut out, but I don't think these films... It's not on my mind, let me put it that way.

The extras on this new Apocalypse Now set are so extensive, about the only things I could think of that aren't there are the Apocalypse-themed episode of Saturday Night Live you co-hosted in the '80s, and the sketch Martin Sheen did about the movie when he hosted back in the '70s.

When the first Apocalypse Now Blu-ray came out, a lot of aficionados got bent out of shape because Hearts of Darkness wasn't included. But that's not part of the film, technically, and the rights situation often in these things is very complicated. I did eventually put it in because ultimately I was able to control the rights. Every time you do one of these things, there's a whole bunch of permissions to get and complications with music, which is really the toughest. There might be a wish-to-see list, but it might not be possible to do.

So I assume you have a complete screening facility at home - when you watch a movie, do you put on a Blu-ray or screen a 35mm print?

Oh no, at this point, the Blu-rays with the modern projectors that exist are superior to what you can see with an old 35 print. It's horrible to say, but it's become true.

John Milius talks on the DVD about writing the script for the film while the Vietnam war was raging. The war was over but still very much in the public consciousness when you actually made the film, and now you have a generation of fans who were born so long after the war that they mainly know it through this movie.

I think that has to do with the way we made it, in a funny way, that we simulated the conditions of the war. In a way, whatever we did was appropriate and apt. I've talked to veterans who were there, and of course I was not there, and they're struck by how authentic it is. Of course, I always pay a lot of attention to research and learning as much as I can, but I think it primarily comes from the dire situation I put myself and the entire production in, that sort of in a way paralleled what the experience of the war might have been. Sort of in the same way that with The Godfather, I know nothing about mobsters, but I did know my Italian musician and machinist uncles and family, and I made it very authentic to an Italian-American family. And then gangsters are also family, obviously, and so it appeared authentic.

[Top photo: MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images]

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