7. Hearts Of Darkness
And here's the exact
opposite of The Snowball Effect, a documentary almost guaranteed to put the fear of God into any aspiring filmmaker. Often cited as one of the greatest - if not
the greatest - documentaries about the making of a film, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper's Hearts of Darkness is a unflinching, often terrifying account of the making of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam war classic, Apocalypse Now. (There are some who argue that the documentary is
better than the movie.) Hickenlooper and Bahr were given virtually unprecedented access to all sorts of forgotten and hidden materials, perhaps most revealingly documentary footage -
and secret audio tapes of private conversations - recorded by Coppola's wife, Eleanor. The story they tell is, to say the least, not for the faint of heart; even audiences who have never
thought about going into filmmaking may feel themselves beginning to sweat with Coppola as he struggles to wring performances out of un-cooperative Marlon Brando (Brando, wandering off set: "I can't think of any more dialogue today...") and drugged up Dennis Hopper ("Dennis, will you just let me finish a f**king sentence?!"); as he is physically threatened by a drunken, naked, raging Martin Sheen; as he mortgages his home and vineyard on a production that is wildly over budget, outrageously overschedule, and looks for all the world like it will come out an utter mess. The fact that Apocalypse Now ended up a masterpiece almost seems inadequate consolation; listening to Coppola rage and rant about how his film and life are falling apart around him, we honestly fear the man might be going insane.