12" x 24", acrylic on gallery canvas (ORIGINAL)

In early 1976, Francis Ford Coppola persuaded Marlon Brando to play Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), for a fee of $2 million for a month's work on location in September 1976. Brando also received 10% of the gross theatrical rental and 10% of the TV sale rights, earning him around $9 million.

When Brando arrived for filming in the Philippines in September 1976, he was dissatisfied with the script; Brando didn't understand why Kurtz was meant to be very thin and bald, or why the character's name was Kurtz and not something like Leighley.  He claimed, "American generals don't have those kinds of names. They have flowery names, from the South. I want to be 'Colonel Leighley'."

And so, for a time the name was changed under his demand.
 
When Brando showed up for filming he had put on about 40 pounds and forced Coppola to shoot him above the waist, making it appear that Kurtz was a 6-foot 6-inch giant. Many of Brando's speeches were ad-libbed, with Coppola filming hours of footage of these monologues and then cutting them down to the most interesting parts.

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