‘Apocalypse Now’ Set Mayhem: Coppola’s Bankruptcy, Brando’s Chaos, and a Heart Attack

It’s almost impossible to think of the epic 1979 war movie Apocalypse Now without remembering the extreme chaos on the set!

Obsessed bipolar director Francis Ford Coppola nearly drove himself bankrupt to help fund the story of a secret assassination mission up a river from South Vietnam to Cambodia, even mortgaging his house, and conducted an affair right in front of wife Eleanor, who was filming her own scenes for a later documentary.

Megastar Marlon Brando arrived shockingly bloated and unprepared, ignoring the script and preferring to improvise. Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack. And a typhoon shut down production for weeks!