Notes

In the spring of 1976, Eleanor Coppola; her husband, Francis Coppola; and their children left California for the Philippines where Francis Coppola would film Apocalypse Now. Mrs. Coppola was asked to supervise a documentary film about the making of Apocalypse, and for this she scribbled notes to record the time, place, and action. As the months stretched into years, Mrs. Coppola's notes became an extraordinary record not only of the making of a movie but of the emotional and physical price exacted from all who participated.

The production of Apocalypse Now has become a legend on its own - three years and millions of dollars spent filming in the Philippines; the destruction of the sets by a typhoon; leading man Martin Sheen's heart attack mid-film; Marlon Brando's awesome arrival, enormously overweight, to play the part of a Green Beret. The filming itself became a drama of tension, passion, and catharsis.

With frame-by-frame precision, Eleanor Coppola brings us into the filmmaking drama to witness bizarre and spectacular sights: villages created and destroyed in an orgy of explosives; cadavers burning in piles; a giant stone temple built by 700 laborers and then demolished; cameras on dolly tracks floating away in a morass of mud; helicopters called off the set to fight in a civil war 150 miles away; a primitive native tribe whose members are brought onto the set and whose ritual ceremonies become part of the film itself.

Behind the scenes, other dramas unfold: Francis Coppola taking great artistic and personal risks and suffering grave self-doubt; Vittorio Storaro working for a perfection in his cinematography that is extraordinary - and fantastically expensive; Martin Sheen reaching a point in his portrayal at which he and his character merge in a moment of intense emotion and concentration; Brando, the master of dramatic realism, attempting for the first time in his career a different style of acting; and Eleanor Coppola herself: observing; commenting; filming a documentary; acting as wife, mother, and artist all at once; and struggling to maintain her control in the oppressive heat of the jungle and despite the inevitable demands placed upon her and everyone else involved - demands that will ultimately change lives.

As the focus of this remarkable journal turns to the author, Eleanor Coppola emerges as a woman of strength and complexity with human values that are rare in the film world of illusion. Her Notes takes us behind the scenes of a motion picture as no other book has done, and at the same time brings us into a private world of exhilaration, pain, and dramatic conflict.