18 Scripts Wannabe Screenwriters Should Read Right Now

16. Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Script: "During the Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe." - IMDb What You'll Learn: One of the greatest movies of the '70s clings to one of the all-time great screenplays, a sprawling epic that manages to be as tense and dream-like as the movie it led to. One of the best things to take from John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola's blueprint is the fascinating description. Take the opening line, which plays to the movie's primal themes: "It is very early in the dawn - blue light filters through the jungle and across a foul swamp. A mist clings to the trees. This could be the jungle of a million years ago." Clean, gripping prose which invites you to keep reading whilst - at the same time - has an unmistakable voice of its own. You can read John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola's script for Apocalypse Now here.