Director on Beach (Francis Ford Coppola)

Character Analysis

The director plays a director in this movie—very meta.

Francis Ford Coppola has a brief cameo as the director on the beach. When Willard and his crew land in search of Col. Kilgore, the director tells them not to look at the camera and to keep fighting. The moment calls out the fact that this is actually a movie and not a real war, and also highlights the fact that the Vietnam War was a war seen on TV, like no other war before it.