Ending his hot streak in the 1970s with one of the most enigmatic, mesmerizing, and audacious films ever produced, Francis Ford Coppola made his grandest statement with 1979’s APOCALYPSE NOW. A film with a famously troubled production that rivals the finished product for wild drama, this Vietnam War-set descent into madness is a herculean feat of filmmaking, particularly on the part of its four-person team of editors: Lisa Fruchtman; Richard Marks, ACE; Gerald Greenberg, ACE; Walter Murch, ACE. This team cut together well over one million feet of film (230 hours) to form a hallucinatory, haunting vision of the hell of war that, 45 years later, has lost none of its horrifying impact.
Lisa Fruchtman is an editor and filmmaker best known for cutting such films as APOCALYPSE NOW (Oscar nom), HEAVEN'S GATE, THE RIGHT STUFF (Oscar win), CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, and THE GODFATHER: PART III (Oscar nom). Her and her team's work on APOCALYPSE NOW was ranked the third best of all time by the Motion Picture Editors Guild, and she also directed the documentary, SWEET DREAMS.