I thought that was cool, too. For the non-watchers of the doc, Orson Welles wanted to adapt Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the late 30s, but it was maybe deemed too difficult to adapt to screen? Anyway, Welles moved on to Citizen Kane as his film debut. Obviously it would have had to have been set before Vietnam and WWII, so his version—and vision—would have been interesting to have seen. But then we wouldn’t have gotten Citizen or Apocalypse Now (probably), so I’ll happily make that trade.

Welles did at least narrate Heart of Darkness on his radio program, so his voice narrates some of the AN documentary, which I thought was really cool. Pretty sure he was simply reciting passages verbatim.

quote:
We read Heart of Darkness my sophomore year of high school accompanied by a watch of Apocalypse Now,

Your English teacher was way cooler than mine.

I literally knew that Joseph Conrad had written an important work called “Heart of Darkness” and that was about it. Don’t even remember her thing it to AN.

quote:
Is there anything else you would recommend reading or watching about the making of the movie?

Oh Lord, don’t get me to lying or trying to pass myself off as some sort of expert on Apocalypse Now. It was the mid aughts, so not THAT long ago. But I do remember doing most of my research the old-fashioned way—at the library.

But one of,the great things about the film—and the novella—is that it’s so dense that 10 people could take away 10 different things from it and all be just as valid. So, the film could move you in any which way, or a theme could speak to you so seemingly specifically, that your topic could be just about anything and there was plenty of research out there to back it up/support it. I don’t remember reading or watching anything specific except the actual film itself.