Is Francis Ford Coppola dead?

Started by Duck Sauce, February 06, 2003, 12:43:58 AM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Sleepless

Hope cinephiles aren't expecting a new Godfather. Cos this is going to be entirely shot on a camcorder and the actors will all be shadow puppets.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.


tpfkabi

I read through this thread after watching The Rain People.
Have any of you seen this film?
It's the film he made right before The Godfather and I never hear about it. I was probably familiar with the title from looking at his Filmography at some point, and I recorded it off of TCM last year.
If this is considered your 5th best film, I say you've done quite well for yourself.
It is only available as a burn on demand Warner Archives DVD.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

MacGuffin

Francis Ford Coppola Sees A "Live" Future For Film
BY Deadline
   
Francis Ford Coppola can see the future of cinema, and it's going to be "live," like a digital play or a virtual opera. Speaking before an overflow crowd at the closing of the Producer Guild's Produced By conference, Coppola said he sees a future in which movies will be presented "live" to audiences all around the world at the same time.

With the digital revolution, he said, "movies no longer have to be set in stone and can be composed and interpreted for different audiences that come to see it. Film has always been a recorded medium," but live cinema remixes might be "30 percent pre-recorded as the actors do it live. You can do anything and you can do it live."

Coppola said he might even essay such a "live" movie himself.  Coppola, who is currently writing a saga about multiple generations of an Italian-American family (ed.: why does this somehow sound familiar?), said, "Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and do it live."
The Godfather of American cinema said that he is "very optimistic about the future of cinema and the world," and he's especially bullish on independent filmmaking. "If not for independent filmmakers," he said, "all we would have would be these big industrial films. The cinema is too important to allow industry high finance to stop it. Cinema is too big to be defeated."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

wilder

Francis Ford Coppola Wants To Do His Brewing Family Saga As Live Television
via The Playlist

The latter-era career of Francis Ford Coppola has been marked by experimentation. He went black-and-white for "Tetro;" played with digital, 3D and on-the-fly editing in festival screenings with "Twixt;" and during his address at the Marrakech International Film Festival, called out the creative gatekeepers of the industry who put profit over progress. It may be why the director is now saying he's going to hang it all up, though he's going to go out by once again trying to push the boundaries of storytelling.

Last year, the director revealed he was in the midst of writing what he described as "a multi-generational saga about an Italian-American family not unlike his own." Now, in an interview with Screen Daily, he reveals a few more details about the project, titled "Distant Vision," and the approach he wants to take.

"I may only make one film more in my life, but it may be very long, and it may go in different places," Coppola said. "It's sort of like [Thomas Mann's] 'Buddenbrooks' because it's about three generations of a family. It happens during the birth of television; the growth and omnipresence of television and finally the end of television as it turns into the internet. Then I decided that I wanted to do it as live television."

Maybe he can ring up NBC, as they've recently revived the format commonly used in the pre-tape era of television for their recent batch of musicals — though, given what the director has said about the project, wouldn't a live web stream make more sense? At any rate, Coppola sees a convergence happening between cinema and television.

"It has all become one. There is no more film, there is no more television — there is cinema. And it can be everywhere and anywhere and it can do anything," he stated. And at 76 years old, the director is still ready to go out on the high wire in the pursuit of making something great.

wilder

Watch: Francis Ford Coppola Explains His "Live Cinema" Project 'Distant Vision' And More In 57-Minute Talk
via The Playlist

"We're not gonna talk about wine," legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola quipped at the Tribeca Film Festival where he sat down for a wide-ranging Storytellers talk moderated by author Jay McInerney. And it was an appropriate setting for the man who gave the world "The Godfather," as he's now embarking on another epic story.

"Distant Vision" is a massive undertaking that Coppola has been working on for a while now. In 2014 he described it as "a multi-generational saga about an Italian-American family not unlike his own" and later explained the unique approach he was going to take with it.

"It's sort of like [Thomas Mann's] 'Buddenbrooks' because it's about three generations of a family," Coppola said in 2015. "It happens during the birth of television; the growth and omnipresence of television and finally the end of television as it turns into the internet. Then I decided that I wanted to do it as live television."

Noting that the script for "Distant Vision" is now running around 500 pages, Coppola explained at Tribeca that he's planning shorter "proof of concept" productions to work out the technical hurdles before diving into it fully, describing the combination of live performance and traditional moviemaking as the "holy grail." He also points to recent live TV productions of "Grease" and "A Few Good Men" as similar to what he's going for, but Coppola is working on a much, much bigger scale.



wilder

Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather Notebook is being published tomorrow



The Godfather Notebook - Amazon





wilder

Francis Ford Coppola Ready To Make 'Megalopolis' And Is Eyeing Cast
via Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: On the eve of his 80th birthday, Francis Ford Coppola is ready to embark on one of his dream projects. He plans to direct Megalopolis, a sprawling film as ambitious as Apocalypse Now, that he has been plotting for many years. Coppola revealed this to me today. He has his script, and he has begun speaking informally to potential stars. I've heard Jude Law's name among those who might potentially be in the movie. I have much to report about Coppola's dream project, and I got to view some of the second unit footage he shot after announcing the project in Cannes, before the terror attacks of 9/11 — the film is set in New York and is an architect's attempt to create a utopia in the city, combated by the mayor — ground progress on the film to a halt.


Steven Soderbergh To Interview Francis Ford Coppola At Tribeca Following 'Apocalypse Now: Final Cut' Premiere
via The Playlist

If you were on the fence about attending the "Apocalypse Now" screening at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, get ready to plan your evening. Even though fans were already excited about Francis Ford Coppola being on hand to present a never-before-seen cut and restoration of the iconic film, in honor of its 40th anniversary, now, we learned that filmmaker Steven Soderbergh will be on hand to hold a Q&A with Coppola.

The screening is on April 28, 2019 at the Beacon Theatre

Tickets

wilberfan

We're 40 years, post-Apocalypse?  Fuuuuck.  I remember playing backgammon in line opening weekend at the Cinerama Dome.  And remember looking behind me during the opening seconds to see if they'd perhaps actually arranged to have Hueys fly thru the auditorium--which is what it sounded like in that moment.  I'll be very curious to see this "Final Cut" of one of my all-time favorite films, although I must admit I didn't think the "Redux" version was an improvement.

Alethia


Sleepless

I think the original cut had the tiger scene, but Redux didn't? And Redux had the French plantation, but the original didn't? Hopefully both are in this Final Cut. Either way, so there.
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

wilberfan

'Apocalypse Now' Final Cut Debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival

QuoteFrancis Ford Coppola has tinkered with Apocalypse Now in the past, but now he's ready to deliver what he considers the final cut. Coppola went back to his Vietnam War epic to craft a new, definitive version, which will debut at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. There's no word yet on what will happen after the Tribeca screening, but it's safe to assume the Apocalypse Now: Final Cut will find its way to Blu-ray eventually.

The making of Apocalypse Now was an arduous experience. The film went over-budget and over-schedule; co-star Marlon Brando showed up on set unprepared; an star Martin Sheen suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Since then, it's gone on to be regarded as a masterpiece, and one of Francis Ford Coppola's best movies. Coppola shot and edited over a million feet of film for Apocalypse Now, and as a result, there are several different versions of the movie. Besides the standard theatrical cut, there's also a five-hour workprint. And then there's Apocalypse Now: Redux, which runs a full hour longer than the theatrical cut, and restores several deleted scenes.

But Coppola still wasn't satisfied, and decided to return to the film once again. The new (and potentially final) result is Apocalypse Now: Final Cut. This new cut will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 28. According to the Tribeca page for the event, this is a "new, never-before-seen restored version of the film, entitled Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, remastered from the original negative in 4K Ultra HD."

Will it have new scenes? That's not clear, but according to Coppola himself, it's going to be shorter than the Redux cut. Speaking with Deadline, the filmmaker said: "When asked which version I personally wanted to be shown, I often felt that the original 1979 was too abruptly shortened, and Redux was too long, and settled on what I now felt was the perfect version, which is what we're showing at Tribeca later this month, called Apocalypse Now Final Cut."

Following the screening, Coppola will have a conversation with Steven Soderbergh to discuss "the huge undertaking of restoring Apocalypse Now: Final Cut and why the time was right for Coppola to do this now, forty years after the original version and eighteen years after Apocalypse Now Redux."

I enjoy both the theatrical and Redux version of this trippy, existential war saga, but I'm very curious to see this final cut. I won't be attending Tribeca, but I'm going to assume this cut will eventually end up being released on 4K Blu-ray.


Source

BB

Quote from: wilberfan on April 05, 2019, 11:52:19 PM
'Apocalypse Now' Final Cut Debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival

Bro, chill. It's a good movie.

LionVJr

#238
Brando vs. Coppola: Debunking The Myth Of Apocalypse Now
Susan L. Mizruchi
09/14/14

~ I have always respected and loved him for what he is. I always felt that Marlon was a genius, not just as an actor, but as an innovative thinker. A brilliant man. But I once told him he uses friendship like bath soap.

— Francis Ford Coppola

It was the late 1970s and one of Hollywood's hottest directors had undertaken an incredible challenge: to make cinematic sense of America's devastating war in Vietnam. The film shoot was wildly out of control: typhoons and cost overruns, a death from an accident on set, and a heart attack suffered by lead actor Martin Sheen. As some tell it, the biggest of all the problems on the terribly vexed set of Apocalypse Now was Marlon Brando.

According to director Francis Ford Coppola, Brando showed up entirely unprepared: he was grossly overweight, had not read Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness (the novel upon which the film was based), and was eager to stall the production to increase his already inflated salary.

Except this is not what happened. Letters between Brando and Coppola, audios of the two discussing the film's conception on a houseboat while filming was suspended, and Brando's personal script, notes, and the many books he read and annotated for the film -- reveal that Brando not only was well prepared for the production, but also contributed ideas and script revisions that shaped the entire film.

Marlon Brando died on July 1, 2004. Now in the aftermath of the tenth anniversary of his death, it is time to acknowledge what has been overlooked: that our foremost American actor had a mind. His curiosity about the world around him was even greater than his more legendary appetites for women and food.

Contrary to Coppola's claim, Brando read Conrad's Heart of Darkness (his 4,000 book library contained multiple editions of the novel). He shaved his head, deliberately, to suit Conrad's description of Colonel Kurtz, Brando's character, as "impressively bald."

Brando's reading to prepare for the film included numerous other books and materials: The Pentagon Papers, writings by anthropologist James Frazer and philosopher Hannah Arendt, T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men," first-person accounts of the U.S. Vietnam mission, and more.

Coppola recognized how crucial Brando's knowledge was to his film. Writing the actor just before he arrived on set, Coppola admitted that directing the film had become a "nightmare" that he would rely on Brando to get through. "Together we can accomplish anything," he wrote -- "even make a movie about Vietnam."

In fact, Coppola relied on Brando so much that Brando himself -- who had famously remarked that the only people who could write better acting lines were Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare -- became uncomfortable with the authority he was granted. As he wrote to Coppola in a letter, "It's not really my job to be involved in the overall concept of the script."

Regardless of Brando's discomfort, audiotapes of discussions between the two confirm that Coppola drew heavily on Brando's vision of Kurtz, and of the whole film.

Michael Herr, the Vietnam War novelist who revised the screenplay on set, recalled that Brando "wrote a stream of brilliant lines for his character." Even Coppola's biographer, Peter Cowie, notes that Kurtz's domain "houses the core of the film's meaning, and Kurtz's scenes alight unerringly on the reasons for the American predicament in Vietnam."

If Coppola in fact relied heavily on Brando, then why have we been told otherwise? Coppola needed a scapegoat. By then a world-famous director who had won two Academy Awards, Coppola this time was in over his head. As the director later admitted, the film production was akin to its subject -- Vietnam. Instead of focusing on his inability to control the fiasco, Coppola turned on Brando.

The actor was an easy target: deeply idiosyncratic and ambivalent toward fame, he made a point of rejecting his celebrity and exploiting it on behalf of causes he believed in. In 1973, just after Coppola had won an Academy Award for the adapted screenplay ofThe Godfather, Brando had refused to accept the Best Actor Oscar for his role in the same film. Instead, he sent an Indian emissary -- Apache tribe member Sacheen Littlefeather -- to decline the award to protest Hollywood's denigration of American Indians in film. It was an act that won him praise among activists and aroused contempt in Hollywood.

What better way for Coppola to absolve himself, then, than to focus on Brando? He knew that Hollywood, with its resentments toward Brando, would jump on the story, and he also knew that Brando would not offer a counterargument. In typical fashion, Brando avoided a public slugfest and instead wrote to Coppola privately to express his dismay about the betrayal.

This is not to say that Brando was perfect: as he himself acknowledged, he had many flaws. He did not weigh 300 pounds in Apocalypse Now as some rumors suggested, but at 210 pounds he was still 30 pounds overweight, the result of an overeating habit akin to his family's propensity for alcoholism (his parents and sisters were all alcoholics). More generally, his self-indulgent lifestyle harmed his children and created untold misery for himself and the many women in his life.

But these personal qualities should not detract from Brando's legacy. His success was due not only to looks and talent, but to his extensive preparations for his roles. He was a genius in the minds of those who directed him (Elia Kazan), those who wrote for him (Tennessee Williams), and those in a position to know (Laurence Olivier).

With Brando's 4000-book library, his personal film scripts, his letters, his audio archive -- all available since his death -- we now have the documents to debunk the myths surrounding him, and give America's greatest actor credit for his contribution to the history of film.

Susan L. Mizruchi is Professor of English Literature at Boston University and the author of Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work.

Vernon Keown, Jr. Personal Journal Entry (2015)

Vernon Keown, Jr.

wilberfan

Tyler Knudsen has posted the first episode in his latest series:

https://youtu.be/lIGAcW86ZJ0