20 Things You Somehow Missed In Apocalypse Now

Dennis Hopper had already made dozens of films, including the multiple-award nominated Easy Rider when Francis Ford Coppola hired him to appear in Apocalypse Now. Even so, it seemed that the late actor was something of an unknown quantity to the director. The original plan for Hopper was to have him play Captain Richard Colby, a Special Forces officer who preceded Willard on an identical mission to terminate Colonel Kurtz. Hopper got this role due to his performance in Tracks, a film in which Hopper played a soldier returning from service in Vietnam. Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Hopper began preparing to play Colby, and started training for the role, acting out military operations, climbing trees, doing karate, and studying a Special Forces manual.

However, despite this preparation, Coppola determined that Hopper was completely inappropriate for how he envisioned the role. Colby was supposed to be a tightly-wound, fierce, taciturn soldier, but Hopper, in full psychedelic bloom, was a frenetic chatterbox.

Coppola decided to give the role of Colby to Scott Glen. A new character was created for Hopper: an amalgamation of the Russian harlequin figure from Heart of Darkness, who contributes some of Hopper's dialogue, and Sean Flynn, an actor (and son of famed actor Errol Flynn), who became a photojournalist. Flynn was embedded with the U.S. Special Forces during the war. He later disappeared in Cambodia, apparently captured by Viet Cong guerrillas, and was never seen again.