Emilio Estevez recalls dad Martin Sheen’s antics on Apocalypse Now

If there’s one movie that has the most insane behind-the-scenes stories, it’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. From heart attacks to star wrangling to cast firings to stoned actors to actual wars to pretty much everything that could go sideways during production, Apocalypse Now had it all. Don’t believe us? Go watch Hearts of Darkness and you’ll get a pretty good idea of everything that was happening. Don’t plan on seeing that? Just ask Emilio Estevez, son of star Martin Sheen, who watched his dad have a total meltdown on the set of Apocalypse Now when he was just a teenager.

Estevez recently appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he recounted the time he was brought onto the Philippines set of Apocalypse Now only to see his movie star father make film history while also breaking down completely. But first let’s set the scene, which is one of the most-cited ones from the film due to just how scary it got, with Martin Sheen getting drunk and punching a mirror to the point where it caused his hand to bleed profusely, something you see in the final film.

That’s pretty frightening, but the way Estevez tells it, seeing his old man partake in such antics (on Sheen’s birthday, no less) is what made Apocalypse Now so special to him. “He has this meltdown on set because he was celebrating his birthday and he was drinking…Francis had him isolated in his room and I was there. I watched it happen. And I was there when they carted him out and he was ranting and raging and screaming.”

Estevez added that the building where filming was taking place on Apocalypse Now at that point was actually meant for court, something Sheen was all too aware of. “He demanded to go into the courtroom because he says, ‘If I don’t go in there’ — and he’s screaming at my mom — ‘I need to go into that courtroom because if I don’t go in there, some poor son of a bitch is gonna go to jail for masturbating in front of a pig.’ And Francis was like, ‘Martin, Martin, no. Come on, Martin.’…It was hilarious. We got him in the car. We started driving — God knows where, just somewhere away from where we could get him calmed down and he announced to everyone in the car that he had to pee.” Between Estevez and Laurence Fisburne, teenagers sure were getting an eyeful on the set of Apocalypse Now!

What is your favorite behind-the-scenes story from Apocalypse Now?

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