3. Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola's indefatigable insanity can be demonstrated entirely by his directorial methods on one film, his classic war picture Apocalypse Now. Coppola remarked of the project, "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane". In stark contrast to Coppola's other, more typical films of the era (The Godfather I and II, The Conversation), Coppola opted not to shoot Apocalypse Now on a sound-stage, but instead ventured off into the jungle for real and shot on location. The result was a film that took years to make, more years to edit, nearly drove Coppola to suicide, and caused his lead actor, Martin Sheen, to suffer a heart attack despite being only 36 during filming. To add to the insanity, despite having all these masterpieces behind him, in 1996 he ill-advisedly opted to make a sentimental comedy starring Robin Williams called Jack, which opened to a wide critical drubbing. Coppola is mental.