Coppola recalls that moviemakers of the ‘70s approached filmmaking in a completely different way to today.

“With Apocalypse Now,” he says, “it was, ‘Wow, we have this incredible script and we'll make a great big picture like A Bridge Too Far or The Guns Of Navarone, and it will make a lot of money, and then we'll have money to make little personal art films.’

“Look, the whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.”

It was a theory that he had hoped to apply to Apocalypse Now. As George Lucas took to the stars for an altogether different kind of war movie, Coppola scouted Australia during the Godfather Part II press junket there for possible locations to shoot Apocalypse Now.

Opting for the Philippines as a Vietnam-like location perfect for the movie, Coppola spent the end of 1975 honing Milius’ script and attempting to secure funding from United Artists.

Having bumped up $8m of his own company’s money on the movie, UA agreed to contribute $7.5m to Coppola’s $12-14m budget on a proviso that Apocalypse Now would star Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman. But McQueen wasn’t interested...