"Apocalypse" Finally

Whether Francis coppola is on a power trip or just circling to land after a protracted nervous breakdown seems a matter of conjecture. He has spent three and a half years and well over $30,000,000 on A pocalypse Now, his ultimate antiwar epic based on Joseph Conrad's classic novella Heart of Darkness. During shooting, his leading actor, Martin Sheen, suffered a heart attack; the entire production was almost wiped out by a typhoon; and still another slowdown occurred when Marlon Brando showed up in the Philippines--overweight, overpaid (at least $1,000,000 plus, perhaps more) and as overwhelming as usual.

That's not the whole story of Apocalypse. Far from it. The saga behind the saga is partly revealed in Notes, a book by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, who writes in diary form about her husband's ups, downs and burgeoning budget, his chronic insecurities and extramarital meanders. One thing is made clear: When he's not creating legends, the razzle-dazzle director of The Godfather appears determined to become one. "He's a different person since Apocalypse," vows one insider. "Unpredictable. His own mother says there's no way to tell what he's going to say or do next." We asked anyway, and another spokesman told us he sees "a nice happy family movie" on Coppola's agenda after the controversy around Apocalypse (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) clears.

During the very hour that I was sitting down to lunch with Colleen Camp at a French restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, Apocalypse Now was being unveiled in a gala premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. To enter in competition at the major international festival a so-called work in progress looked to some observers like a suicidal gesture on the part of Francis Coppola. Either that or a grandstand play and an enormous gamble that would guarantee handsome returns if the film happened to win (which it did, sharing Cannes's Golden Palm award with a German film). Colleen thought Coppola's ploy "fantastic" and declared his movie considerably better than that, having seen it for herself a couple of evenings earlier at a special sneak preview in Westwood. "It was a luxury to work with the world's greatest director," said Colleen, an ebullient blue-eyed charmer with as good a reason as anyone to feel peevish toward Apocalypse, since great chunks of the work she did ended up on the cutting-room floor. She was under contract for over a year, spent several months sweltering in the tropical rain forest, and there's scarcely more than five minutes of screen time to show for it--in a vivid episode she shares with Cyndi Wood and Linda Beatty Carpenter, both of whom have actually appeared on playboy gatefolds, as members of a Playboy U.S.O. troupe in Vietnam. "What came out," Colleen explained, "was a whole episode following the bit with the Playmates entertaining at Hau Phat. Marty Sheen and the guys in the boat continue traveling up the river. And as they go, they encounter our stranded helicopter, which has run out of fuel. We're with Bill Graham--the rock-music promoter in real life, who plays our agent--and Marty makes a deal with Graham: His little girls are going to have to screw the men on the boat in exchange for gas. So each of us girls had an individual thing with one of the guys. Mine was a nice scene opposite Frederic Forrest, in which he climbs into the helicopter, expecting quite a lot, and says, 'I thought you were a Playboy Bunny.' And I say, 'No, actually, I'm the girl from Busch Bird Sanctuary.' Because I'd told Francis that I was a trainer at Busch while I was in college. I trained birds to stand on their heads, fly upside down and count, things like that. That's what's so remarkable about working with Coppola. He incorporates part of you into the character...." Colleen sighs but adds gamely, "Of course, none of it's in the movie now. That entire scene was just too big a detour in terms of where the picture as a whole was going."

What else might be missing from the film's final cut only Coppola and his editors can say for sure. At one point in the post-Cannes period of readjustment and re-editing, based on what Coppola called his "out-of-town previews," the movie had at least three endings from which to choose.

(text concluded on page 195) "Apocalypse" Finally (continued from page 121)

More than one performer wound up in Apocalypse through a twist of fate or blind luck that suggested dark, mysterious forces at work behind the scenes--like some rendezvous with destiny out of a Conrad novel. At least five major male stars said no to the leading role before Coppola hired Harvey Keitel, decided he was wrong when he saw the first film rushes, flew back to the States to recast and gave the part to Sheen after bumping into him by chance at the airport. Colleen got her role through another fluke. "Long before Apocalypse, when I didn't even know Francis, I went to a screening of The Godfather, Part II in New York and was overwhelmed. I told my date right then and there that I was going to be in Coppola's next picture. He said, 'Yeah, with your luck, it'll turn out to be a war movie.'

"Actually, I think I'm psychic. At first, Linda Carter was cast in the Playmate role. Playboy did a centerfold shot with her, the whole bit. But seven months later, a typhoon had destroyed all the sets and Linda couldn't continue because of Wonder Woman, I guess, and I was in the film, after all. And I knew it would happen."

Wherever Colleen goes, things happen. "The day I arrived to start shooting Apocalypse was the day Marty Sheen got ill. Then, later, we were in this dingy hotel-motel, a three-hour jeep ride from Manila, when a fire broke out--one of the guys from the crew was in his room with three Filipino girls and a candle and forgot to watch the candle. Cyndi and I thought we'd all be burned alive."

A girl whose day-to-day existence seems rife with anecdote, Colleen has a sizable collection of true but stranger-than-fiction stories. Among her choicest is the one about being sued for $100,000 by George Peppard's chauffeur. "I was driving down a hill, minding my own business, when Peppard's chauffeur ran into me. And he sued me, for brain damage. I got hysterical in court when it was brought out that two weeks before the accident, he'd been attending a Republican convention at a Holiday Inn, where an elephant--an elephant, mind you--picked him up and threw him through a plate-glass window."

From Busch Bird Sanctuary and the elephant to her jungle adventures with Coppola, there's been plenty of good news from Camp. She had done lots of episodic TV, won a co-starring role in Rich Man, Poor Man Book II and has adorned such films as Funny Lady, Gumball Rally and Michael Ritchie's Smile (Colleen was hilarious as the teenaged beauty contestant whose principal talent, God help us, was packing a suitcase). And her association with Coppola has led to even better opportunities. For instance: "I've signed for Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed. It's a kind of romantic comedy-realistic love story. I play a girl who's involved with an older man and gets pregnant. But I also get to sing in it.

"When I got Apocalypse, people automatically put me into a different category. Doing a Coppola picture marked a major change. Though some of the changes struck me as rather weird at the time. Like the day my agent phoned and said they had a fabulous part for me ... a producer had seen my Apocalypse footage and wanted me to star in his movie Game of Death, a Columbia picture with Bruce Lee.

" 'Bruce Lee?' I said. 'I thought he was dead.' And he was dead, of course. Still, I did the movie." Colleen also sang the Game of Death theme song on the film's sound track--very nicely, too--and now has a big hit single in Japan.

Next she was hired to do Cloud Dancer, not yet released, with Joseph Bottoms, David Carradine and Jennifer O'Neill. "Before they signed me for the part, I had to agree to fly upside down in an old open-cockpit biplane, 30 feet above the ground--held in only by a seat belt and traveling about 130 miles an hour. Screaming all the way, I promise you.

" 'Thanks a lot,' I told my agent. 'I just do not believe this career. After four months in the jungle with Apocalypse, you put me in a movie with a dead star, playing his girlfriend opposite a double and a bunch of unused film clips. Now you've got me risking my neck, flying bottom side up in an airplane. A person could get killed.' "

On the other hand, bottom side up may be the safest position for Colleen to maintain. As if to prove her instinctive flair for human comedy--the laughter-and-tears kind--Colleen, while being photographed for Playboy, sat on a bee. Hmmm. Does that mean she's up for a sequel to The Sting? --B. W.

" 'Bruce Lee?' I said. 'I thought he was dead.' And he was dead, of course. Still, I did the movie."