“It's scary to watch someone you love go into the centre of himself and confront his fears, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of going insane. You have to fail a little, die a little, go insane a little, to come out the other side.” - Eleanor Coppola
In Hearts of Darkness, Eleanor Coppola captured a timeless portrait of one artist on the path to self-destruction – that of her own husband, Francis Ford Coppola. Later compiled and expanded by filmmakers Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, her footage taken across the 11-month shooting of Apocalypse Now in the Philippines amasses a fascinating portrait of artistic hubris and perseverance, under the most troubled of circumstances.
Ahead of its release at Bertha DocHouse on Friday 4th July, we’ve picked a selection of documentaries depicting filmmakers in moments of crisis, capturing not only the logistical chaos of a film set gone off the rails, but the spiritual struggle of unfulfilled creativity.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse / Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper / 1991 / 96 mins
The sheer scale and difficulty of Apocalypse Now’s production saw the act of filmmaking elevated to an almost biblical parable of ambition, suffering, and rebirth for its director. Coppola, Bahr, and Hickenlooper’s documentary chronicles some of the most infamous stories to come out of the filming – the on-the-spot improvisation of its screenplay, the heart attack of its lead actor, Martin Sheen, and its borrowing of the Filipino military’s fleet of helicopters for its battle set-piece.
Winning two Emmys and an International Documentary Association award on its release, the film’s legacy has made it the perennial example of a documentary that captures the filmmaking process, and a touchpoint for all later filmmakers.
Watch at Bertha DocHouse from 4 July.
Burden of Dreams / Les Blank / 1982 / 95 mins
In a remarkable echo of Apocalypse Now, the production of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo also saw a nightmare production of an ambitious epic in a jungle location, with an overbearing director, and a lead actor who suffered sickness halfway through filming. Les Blank’s documentary is a miraculous fly-on-the-wall account of Herzog’s own hubris coming to imitate that of his own art, becoming just as obsessed in moving a steamship over a mountain as Fitzcarraldo’s main character.
With a new restoration having debuted this year, and played at DocHouse, Burden of Dreams is ripe to be rediscovered.
Lost in La Mancha / Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe / 2002 / 93 mins
In a fascinating twist, a documentary commissioned simply as a making-of extra ended up documenting the complete collapse of one film’s production. Terry Gilliam had dreamt of making a film based on Don Quixote for ten years before he made his first attempt at production in 2000. Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s film offers a bystanders’ view of how this production quickly spiralled into disaster, with flooding of the set and interruptions of fighter jets flying overhead, before the complete withdrawal of its lead actor, Jean Rochefort, due to a herniated disc.
In contrast to productions with a happy ending, Lost in La Mancha leaves a far more bitter example of an artistic dream that was left unfilled. Tapping his head, Gilliam says “The movie already exists in here, I have visualized it so many times…”
Lost in La Mancha is available to watch on YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV and Amazon Prime
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead / Morgan Neville / 2018 / 98 mins
When highlighting directors who have suffered difficulty in producing their films, perhaps no name sticks out more than Orson Welles. After a career defined by its setbacks and false starts, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead precisely recounts the decade Welles spent trying to produce his last film The Other Side of the Wind (posthumously completed and released in 2018).
With a retrospective distance, Morgan Neville’s film tells not just the story of a failed production but the tragedy of the older Welles’ public persona – a charismatic and beloved figure who nonetheless found himself regularly abandoned in the pursuit of his art.
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is available to stream on Netflix.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is playing at DocHouse from Friday 4th July.