Eleanor Coppola recorded how a cinematic triumph almost came unstuck

The downdraught of the helicopter’s rotor blades, as it landed, blew her and her tripod sheer off the ground. Smoke from earth-shaking explosions shut down her view entirely. A trek through a rice paddy ended with the camera almost being sucked under. The firing of four thatched huts by the special-effects department destroyed the prop store where she kept her gear; her camera cases lay in the doorway, melted. Yet Eleanor Coppola took it all in her stride. She was so elated to be usefully working, recording the disaster-every-minute making of her husband Francis’s “Apocalypse Now”, that this was a small price to pay.