Francis, Fax and James.
I’m Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, and a friend of the late George Hickenlooper. I saw the 4K Hearts of Darkness earlier today at the Film Forum, and it looked absolutely wonderful. I know this restoration required a lot of hard work. Congrats to each of you, and especially to Eleanor Coppola in absentia.
But the “directed by” credit should be shared between Fax and poor George, rest his soul.
Here’s what people are reading on the HOD credit block on the HOD one-sheet and during HOD’s closing credits:
George said more than once to me, in fact, that he did the lion’s share of the editing work on HOD. And yet the credit block has always read “written & directed by Fax Bahr with George Hickenlooper.”
“With”? Was George Fax’s helper or assistant? Did he go out for coffee, make copies, run errands?
This is a very strange credit block assertion.
I’m only going by what George told me repeatedly, of course, but I don’t believe he lied or that he was delusional or anything in that realm.
Given the current credit block assertion that Fax was the senior creative force in the directing and writing (and also, one presumes, the editing and shaping) of HOD, is this what I should believe? Should I discount George’s personal testimony? Was George some kind of eccentric with an over-sized ego? I’m asking.
How should I report this?? I’m honestly perplexed. This really doesn’t seem right. — cheers, Jeffrey Wells, HE
“Fair Play For George Hickenlooper”, posted on 7.3.25:
With a dynamically enhanced, 4K-scanned and generally restored Hearts of Darkness opening at the Film Forum tomorrow, it’s an opportune time to remind the HE readership that while this 1991 doc about the making of Apocalypse Now uses the late Eleanor Coppola‘s footage and narration, the heavy lifting in the post-principal photography sense of the term was done by the late George Hickenlooper, whom I regarded as a friend, and Fax Bahr.
Here’s what Hickenlooper told me on 8.26.10:
“I think the more appropriate way to look at it is that Hearts of Darkness is Eleanor Coppola‘s story, but it’s not her film. Hardly. It’s her story. But that’s because I decided to make it her story.
“When I got involved with this project 20 years ago, Showtime was going to make it a one-hour TV special called Apocalypse Now Revisited. It was going to be basically an hour-long special about how they did the war pyrotechnics. It was going to be dull and stupid.
“At the time I told Steve Hewitt and my partner Fax Bahr. ‘Nobody cares about a making-of movie, especially one that is 14 years old.’ (Most of AN was shot in ‘76.) I argued that the film had to have an emotional component. At the time, no one was familiar with Eleanor’s diary ‘Notes.’ My father had purchased it for me on my 16th birthday [in 1979]. I devoured it up.
“When I got involved with Hearts of Darkness, I advocated using her diary as the narrative thread. I got incredible resistance from Showtime, and I fielded initial resistance from Eleanor. Not much, but some.
“Once I was able to convince everyone that the film would best be told through her narrative voice, it was then and only then it became HER STORY.
“Eleanor did shoot the footage in the Philippines back in 1976, of course, but she only stepped twice into our cutting room on the back lot of Universal. Twice. For a total of eight hours.
“I was there for a year, 15-18 hours a day. So it’s not a film by Eleanor, but I guess it’s sexier from a marketing angle to make it look that way.”
Hickenlooper elaborated upon the Hearts of Darkness history in a 2007 interview with laist correspondent Josh Tate.
In an 8.27.10 HE followup Hickenlooper stated that “the reality is that Fax Bahr hardly had anything to do with HOD. He was writing for the show In Living Color at the time. He spent a total of about three weeks out of the entire year in the editing room. Eleanor spent two days. It was me and the two editors (Michael Greer, Jay Miracle) for an entire year.”
James Mockowski, Film Archivist and Restoration Supervisor at American Zoetrope: “For the past 30 years, Eleanor’s 16mm behind-the-scenes footage has been three to four generations removed from the original elements. For this new release and restoration of the documentary, Francis decided to scan the original sources in 4K. The extensive excerpts from the feature are now presented in their original 2.39:1 aspect ratio, rather than being letterboxed into a 4×3 frame.”
Hickenlooper (Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas, Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (short), Dogtown, The Man from Elysian Fields, The Mayor of Sunset Strip, Factory Girl, Casino Jack) died in his sleep on October 29, 2010, at age 47.
Again, the link to the 2007 laist piece.
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