Special Report: Hearts of Darkness (1991)

Old you is, folks.

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People say, good money to see this movie.

When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters.

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It's scary to watch someone you love confront failures. Jeah, fear of going insane. It's what it was really like. It's crazy.

I was making it on the crest of the acclaim of the Godfather films.

Every day, one hundred problems. But I don't know what I'm doing. I said, who is this?

Willard?

And Francis look me square in the eye and he said, he's you. Brandon agreed to the million dollars a week. Are they seriously saying that Marlon would not show up? It was like you want to dream. I was not in the greatest of the shape. Just do what I am. Marty's had a heart attack. I already had him post called the film is not about Vietnam.

It is Vietnam.

Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, it's the return of Facts Bear. He is the director of the documentary Hearts of Darkness, the film all about the making of Apocalypse Now. Also on this episode, I'm talking with James McCosky. I inter the two of them together as there is a new restoration of Hearts of Darkness that is now touring around. Hearts of Darkness is one of the best films about the making of a film around.

Yeah, I was working with a behind the scenes electronic press kit company and George Zuloum, who was running the company, had just read Ellie Coppola's notes and he said, she talks about this all this documentary footage. Have you ever heard of a film being made about the making of Apocalypse?

I said no, and he goes, I'm gonna call zoa troupe.

So he did, and they were more than happy to talk to us about looking at the footage and making a film out of it.

So that's how it was born.

And then James, give me a little bit of your background from why I understand you've been working with the Copola camp since the seventies.

Oh god, note and I'll go back that far. You just did that to make a joke, didn't you.

Now.

I started with Zoetrup around two thousand and one, two thousand and two, just right after Francis recut Apocalypse now Reducts, so he became very familiar with all the assets of that, what it took to remake or recut Apocalypse. So it was about ten years after Fax's endeavor with Eleanor and George Ingenlooper on Hearts of Darkness.

Your fromography looks crazy on IMDb because you help restore these films. So it looks like you've been working since nineteen twenty six with the Jones.

Kis exactly right. Yes, I go back to the silent era.

It's funny you don't look a day over twenty five. He's a vampire. So tell me a little bit about the restoration process with this, because I mean I saw this originally in the theater when it first came out, and then I think the last time I saw it was on DHS.

Maybe Eleanor passed away about a year ago, and she knew she was sick. We had gone through her collection of titles that she had worked on over the years from the seventies. We were working on her collection as she was ill, and it was very important for her to go through her entire life and go through all our films and make sure that they were all in good shape. I'd say that it was a good time

What were some of the challenges or spurring this film.

It's always about finding the assets.

All the sixteen milimeter was jumbled boxes, mislabeled thirty years ago, and it's just sort of climbing back or trying to be the detective of finding where everything was put thirty or so years ago. And that's the story about every single film that gets packed out. At the end of the show, you know, you'll open up a box and you'll see why did someone keep sixty two grease pencils that were paying our white gloves?

You know.

But it's just like that mad dash of packing up a show at the end, having the discussion with facts about it was originally a stereo mix and maybe we should do a five to one, should be upgraded, it's appropriate. What about when we go to the Apocalypse now clips. You were back in the day when they did this documentary, everybody had a square television.

It was four x three.

So when they did the two three five Apocalypse now aspect ratio, they had a letter box it. So this big film got so tiny in the story, and so we thought it would be great for the presentation. It is like the breakout of that box. Still the interviews and the footage Eleanor shot are still they were shot four x three at that time. But Apocalypse at least we break out of that four x three broocks and go to the original aspect ratio, so at least has that impact.

And I always love that.

I mean, it's history, right, It's a living history, and this is the way the format was and you see it, you know it change and I always feel a fine that really locks the story into the time it was made.

So I'm a fan of that.

I know a lot of people are distracted by it, but I love it.

Beck's how is it going back to this material after all these years? I mean, obviously we talked about this quite a few years ago. To make such a big splash of one of your early projects, do you feel haunted or are you proud of this?

Not haunted at all?

And know what's fabulous about her?

Just really what James was able to do with that footage, because it is I don't think we really I don't think there was a lot of attention paid to coloring the first film when it came out. I think just hurried it out there and it looks fine. You know, it's sort of flat, but really it's a beautiful restoration the whole new experience. I mean, they really nailed really got into dug into the US. The inner negative is that, right, James.

It was the original sixteen elimeter footage that she shot and then the stuff that you shot on either sixteen we went back six two, so it was all original and negative.

So it's gorgeous. I mean, it's really it's a new experience.

The thing with Eleanor and we talked We've talked about this a few times, Fax and I is what it took Ellie to do and achieve back in the seventies, being a woman on our own put this film together, you know, And it wasn't really put together. It was sort of put in the closet after Apocalypse now wrapped, and it was not till facts credit and Less Mayfield and George Zloom who unearthed all this, wanted to uncover

Was there any discussion of possibly recutting this while you had the opportunity.

No, Facts never expressed that, thankfully. I think as perfect as it is, it's what it is interesting because Francis always has a list of the things that he wants to do or go back or didn't feel like he had enough to say on things. Well, one, this wasn't his film, and he's always very respectful of that. But here for his films, you know, he'll go, oh, well, I wish I did this with The Godfather. I wish I did this with Apocalypse. But then he'll say, I won't touch the conversation. It was perfect.

He's that wrong.

There's things that he can let go and there's other things that he feels like, No, I.

Wish I could push it a little bit. Now.

I was curious Facts if there was footage that you had wanted to use maybe and couldn't figure out how to put it in there.

My first cut was four and a half hours, maybe even longer. I mean there was a ton, honest well, Ellie covered everything from pre production through post production. There were some wonderful scenes Michael Hare and Marty Sheen recording the incredible voiceover down in the basement of the zoetrop recording studio. Yeah, there were a lot of darlings we had to kill, but to get it down to the ninety minutes that it is.

It leads at a very good spot where the premiere in Westwood, but it goes in another journey after can It does go into another post production sort of quagmire that never really gets explained.

But post production is not sexy for the nerds.

It's for us, but it's really on set stuff and I think facts really they shaped it in.

A very perfect way so and then set a perfect note.

Yeah, no, I could totally nerd out on that. I mean, I'm one of the guys who tracked down the old VHS tapes of the work print of Apocalypse and just yeah, I got as much of this movie as I possibly can see so when your documentary came out, it was

Of course, I think Wells and Francis have a lot in common in a certain way in terms of their relationship with the powers that be in Hollywood, and they both manage to make great art in the faces system that's not really that interested in it.

So yeah, to tie the two.

Together was I think it was just meant to be. They stand on the same stage.

In my opinion, it is interesting that Francis stumbles into these situations where Hollywood doesn't want it. They didn't want Apocalypse Now, but they've grown and appreciate it and becomes its classic. But over the years, it's no different than what he's trying to do with the Megalopolis Polly doesn't want this, but I'm doing it for me. These are the stories that he's passionate about, and same with one from the heart.

Or what.

It's These are stories that are personal to him, passionate about.

And you know, if it's a great success, great and if not, maybe in time.

It took twenty thirty years for Apocalypse Now to really get out of the hole bankruptcy that it was in to be appreciated. So he says, you know, art may not be appreciated in this exact moment, but maybe an audience will come around twenty thirty years and find it in a new light.

He's making his own on his own terms.

So is this just kind of the timeless right to finally do this thirty four years later after Hearts came out?

Well, yeah, I was probably looking at my library and we've done all the titles and like, well we're at the bottom here, let's get Bart said target dig if it. Yes, that just felt right. You know, there's no real anniversary to it or any it just it was just time to do it.

So what is the plan to roll this out? Are we seeing this theatrically? Is there going to be a blue ray release next year.

It was released the last Friday, July fourth, at rial to the Film Forum, and now it's starting to get bookings around the country, so people can go to rialto dot com and start booking it, call your local theater and demand you got a lot of people have been booking it along with Apocalypse Now. We always caution bookers or the theaters because they want to book Apocalypse Now and Hearts of Darkness together on the same day, and Francis doesn't really ever like that, and it sort of

Did you get to go to any of those opening these screenings?

No, I did not go to New York at a premiered at the Film Form of New York last week, but I will be at the Lost Fuleast three in Los Angeles July twentieth doing a Q and A and it's screening of the twentieth twenty third and twenty fourth.

And doing a Q and A the twentieth and the twenty fourth.

I'm really excited to hear how that goes. To be able to see this film with an audience again after all these years has to be pretty incredible.

It's the way it's meant to be seen.

I'm really hoping that it comes to Detroit because I would love to see this on the big screen again and then have that experience of breaking out of that frame, because it's got to be spectacular.

It's different from the original presentation, but we're originally you know, whatever people have been seeing or hearing of Hearts of Darkness. Two songs were cut out in our last interview. People astute enough to know that, oh will it have anything goes or the Susie Hughes back in because they were cut out because of licensing issues. Well they were expensive time,

If memory serves. You worked on the restoration of that as well.

For all three versions.

Yes, I don't go back to the red I just got onto the reducts, but subsequently restored all three Since.

Then, Bex, what are you working on these days other than this restoration?

I just picture lot to documentary feature documentary. It's a portrait of an environmental activist done on the Texas Gulf coast. She's a shrimp boat captain and she fought and won the largest clean water ect lawsuit against microplastics manufacturer who's egregiously polluting the bays their family had fished for four generations. So it's a David versus Goliath story, not unlike actually

So yeah, so I'm.

Excited about that. I think it's I think it's a good film, and it's she's an amazing character.

That's fantastic. Yeah, I can never know what you're working on because you moved between genres so fluidly, you know, it's like, oh, the guy who worked with poly Schor all these times, said Jamie Kennedy also makes these incredible documentaries too.

It's adhd okay, there you go.

And then James, are you working on the the Mega doc. I'm super excited for this.

Yeah, Mega doc.

We'll see them light a day and we probably should hear news in the next couple months.

Gentlemen, I am so excited to have talked with you today about this, and I'm really hoping that more people get to see Hearts of Darkness again on the big screen. I caught myself as very lucky way back in nineteen ninety one to be able to have seen this, so now more eyes on it all these years later in this restored version. Super excited for it.

Thank thanks, Mike, appreciate it.

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