For Francis Ford Coppola, Oscar-winning auteur at the height of his powers, Apocalypse Now was a multi-million-dollar 'personal project' for which he took an original screenplay by John Milius about the Vietnam War and forged it with themes from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to create an unforgettable epic on the insanity of modern war.More than three years in the making, Apocalypse Now finally screened (as a 'work-in-progress') at Cannes in 1979, where it won the Palme d'Or. It proceeded to garner further acclaim and Academy Awards, becoming one of the cinema's most enduring cult movies.The compelling book reconstructs the whole extraordinary saga of how Coppola and his team battled with hurricanes, crises both psychological and financial and the calamity of a heart attack suffered by lead actor Martin Sheen while on location in the Philippines.