A Gem of a Film Comes to DVD
One of the movies I had the great pleasure to profile in Get the Picture was “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” (1991). This superb documentary provided an in-depth look at the gut-wrenching ordeal that went into the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War film, “Apocalypse Now.” It showed, in unflinching detail, how the director toiled to produce a picture that effectively captured the madness of this insane conflict, an undertaking that pushed him to the limit and nearly cost him everything. It’s also an excellent cinematic exploration into an artist’s struggle to overcome creation by default by using the magical approach to conscious creation.
At the time I wrote Get the Picture, “Hearts of Darkness” was available only in VHS format. Many fans of this documentary, as well as of the movie that inspired it, lamented that it had not been made available on DVD. It was even perplexingly excluded from the special edition DVD release “Apocalypse Now—The Complete Dossier” (2006), a two-disc boxed set that included the film’s original theatrical version (1979) and its later-released director’s cut (2001) (so much for being complete!). Fans of the “Apocalypse Now” saga believed (and rightly so) that the absence of this back story documentary from the special edition, as well as its unavailability as a DVD unto itself, left a gaping hole in the lore of this monumental motion picture.
Fortunately, that oversight has been corrected. A DVD version of “Hearts of Darkness” was released late last year, shortly after Get the Picture hit bookstores. Finally, the wait is over; viewers can now enjoy this Emmy Award–winning documentary in a contemporary video format.
For future reference, I’ll include further information updates on the films profiled in Get the Picture on this Web page as they become available. In the meantime, dear readers, if you hear any interesting developments about these movies that you would like to share with me, please write me at brentmarchant@momentpoint.com. Thank you!