Is Francis Ford Coppola dead?

[ElPandaRoyal]

too much "yeah".

Yeah.

[MacGuffin]

Coppola seeks stolen script's return

Film director Francis Ford Coppola appealed on Friday for thieves who broke into his Buenos Aires house to return a computer disk containing the screenplay for his new movie.

The director of "The Godfather" trilogy said the thieves carried off items including a laptop and a backup disk late on Wednesday.

"If someone kal and his posse could bring me back my backup, I'd be very happy. It would save me years of work," the five-time Oscar winner told a local television station.

Coppola, 68, said the disk also holds "all of the photographs of my life, all of my writing."

Coppola has set up a production company in the house in the Argentine capital, where next year he is expected to start shooting "Tetro," a film about an artistic Italian immigrant family starring Matt Dillon.

It is said to be partially based on his life.

[Pozer]

(COPPOLA picks up the phone)
Coppola: You know, Matt... that script we talked about... Tetro... you remember.
Dillon: Yeah. You still want me to do it, right.
Coppola: Yeah, about that... remember that you insisted with me that you didn't want a copy because you would do anything for me, and didn't need to read it?
Dillon: Yeah! You're Francis-Ford-Fucking-Coppola!
Coppola: Yeah... well, the reason I'm calling, Matt is... how's the lady?
Dillon: Fine.
Coppola: Yeah... what about the kids?
Dillon: Francis, what's going on?
Coppola: Well... I kinda sorta lost... the script...
Dillon: What?
Coppola: Yeah... it was robbed. By argentinian people.
Dillon: You want me to believe some argentinians robbed it?...
Coppola: Well... yeah!
Dillon: And you didn't have a copy?
Coppola: Well, no...
Dillon: Yeah, you shoot on Sony HDC-F950, but don't know how to make backups with your computer?
Coppola: Well...
Dillon: Just say it! If Al Pacino wants my friggin' role just say it. Don't bring Argentina into this.
Coppola: Hey, calm down. Go easy on me.
Dillon: You know what? I'm a busy man, I got nominated by the Academy and got to feel Thandie Newton's ass, and now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go. Maybe I'm still on time to accept the The Flamingo Kid Part Deux role. Good-bye.
Coppola: Bye-bye, Dillon.
Dillon: Yeah, and your wine sucks, man!

Coppola: Well your whine sucks, man.
Dillon: [pause] Dammit!  Who am I kiddin'?  You're all I've got, Franny!!!
Coppola: Look, Matty, just forget this talk.  I'm gonna send out a plead for the homeboy and his posse to bring back my disk that contains my whole life's work.  In fact, I'm gonna make a movie about this whole incident.
Dillon: Holy shit, Francis.  You ain't foolin'... and how awesome of a flick would this be?!  You gotta let me star.
Coppola:  Actually, I just now texted Pacino and he's in.
Dillon:  Sonuvabitch!  Well can I at least play one of the Argentinians?

[72teeth]

(COPPOLA picks up the phone)
Coppola: You know, Matt... that script we talked about... Tetro... you remember.
Dillon: Yeah. You still want me to do it, right.
Coppola: Yeah, about that... remember that you insisted with me that you didn't want a copy because you would do anything for me, and didn't need to read it?
Dillon: Yeah! You're Francis-Ford-Fucking-Coppola!
Coppola: Yeah... well, the reason I'm calling, Matt is... how's the lady?
Dillon: Fine.
Coppola: Yeah... what about the kids?
Dillon: Francis, what's going on?
Coppola: Well... I kinda sorta lost... the script...
Dillon: What?
Coppola: Yeah... it was robbed. By argentinian people.
Dillon: You want me to believe some argentinians robbed it?...
Coppola: Well... yeah!
Dillon: And you didn't have a copy?
Coppola: Well, no...
Dillon: Yeah, you shoot on Sony HDC-F950, but don't know how to make backups with your computer?
Coppola: Well...
Dillon: Just say it! If Al Pacino wants my friggin' role just say it. Don't bring Argentina into this.
Coppola: Hey, calm down. Go easy on me.
Dillon: You know what? I'm a busy man, I got nominated by the Academy and got to feel Thandie Newton's ass, and now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go. Maybe I'm still on time to accept the The Flamingo Kid Part Deux role. Good-bye.
Coppola: Bye-bye, Dillon.
Dillon: Yeah, and your wine sucks, man!

Coppola: Well your whine sucks, man.
Dillon: [pause] Dammit!  Who am I kiddin'?  You're all I've got, Franny!!!
Coppola: Look, Matty, just forget this talk.  I'm gonna send out a plead for the homeboy and his posse to bring back my disk that contains my whole life's work.  In fact, I'm gonna make a movie about this whole incident.
Dillon: Holy shit, Francis.  You ain't foolin'... and how awesome of a flick would this be?!  You gotta let me star.
Coppola:  Actually, I just now texted Pacino and he's in.
Dillon:  Sonuvabitch!  Well can I at least play one of the Argentinians?

Coppola: Yeah.

[MacGuffin]

Failure to act: Coppola disses Pacino, De Niro & Nicholson
Source: NY Daily News

Francis Ford Coppola disses Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino in a surprising critique of three of America's greatest actors.

No slouch himself, Coppola directed Pacino in "The Godfather" and Pacino and De Niro in "Godfather II," and was uncredited when directing Nicholson in the Roger Corman horror flick "The Terror."

But in the new GQ magazine, Coppola reveals that he's disappointed in the three as they've gotten older — and richer.

"I met both Pacino and De Niro when they were really on the come," Coppola tells GQ's Nate Penn. "They were young and insecure. Now Pacino is very rich, maybe because he never spends any money; he just puts it in his mattress. De Niro was deeply inspired by (Coppola's studio American) Zoetrope and created an empire and is wealthy and powerful.

"Nicholson was — when I met him and worked with him — he was always kind of a joker. He's got a little bit of a mean streak. He's intelligent, always wired in with the big guys and the big bosses of the studios.

"I don't know what any of them want anymore. I don't know that they want the same things. Pacino always wanted to do theater ... (He) will say, 'Oh, I was raised next to a furnace in New York, and I'm never going to go to L.A.,' but they all live off the fat of the land."

Not one of the actors would comment (De Niro and Pacino were on the set of Jon Avnet 's crime drama "Righteous Kill").

Some might ask Coppola how he has challenged himself lately. He admits he has been focused on his vineyard and on his resorts in Belize and Guatemala. He's coming out with an art film, "Youth Without Youth," for the first time in 10 years, a period when he has mostly executive-produced daughter Sofia 's pictures and, ironically, De Niro's "The Good Shepherd" last year.

"I think if there was a role that De Niro was hungry for, he would come after it. I don't think Jack would. Jack has money and influence and girls, and I think he's a little bit like (Marlon) Brando, except Brando went through some tough times. I guess they don't want to do it anymore.

"You know, even in those days, after 'The Godfather,' I didn't feel that those actors were ready to say, 'Let's do something else really ambitious.' A guy like (38-year-old "Before Night Falls" star) Javier Bardem is excited to do something good: 'Let me do this' or 'I'll put stuff in my mouth, change my appearance.' I don't feel that kind of passion to do a role and be great coming from those guys, because if it was there, they would do it."

[Pozer]

thru texting...

Pacino: OMFG, Franny!! Y U DISN'?!
Coppola: U & UR BFFs R SELL OWTS.  WTF???
Pacino: UR DED 2 ME - FGIDABOTIT! <: (

[modage]

"Nicholson was — when I met him and worked with him — he was always kind of a joker. He's got a little bit of a mean streak. He's intelligent, always wired in with the big guys and the big bosses of the studios.

LOLZ 

[Pubrick]

"I met both Pacino and De Niro when they were really on the come," Coppola tells GQ's Nate Penn. "They were young and insecure. Now Pacino is very rich, maybe because he never spends any money; he just puts it in his mattress. De Niro was deeply inspired by (Coppola's studio American) Zoetrope and created an empire and is wealthy and powerful.

what the hell provoked this? he sounds like stefen.

"A guy like (38-year-old "Before Night Falls" star) Javier Bardem is excited to do something good: 'Let me do this' or 'I'll put stuff in my mouth, change my appearance.'"

obviously he's never seen rocky and bullwinkle, or stardust, or hide and seek, or any of deniro's films of the last 10 years. that man is willing to put ANY old shit in his mouf for a buck, he's the ass-to-ass-climax of actors.

anyway, coppola is rich himself isn't he? he's just mad they're not helping him finance his projects and that he has to put out of his own pocket. it's like when i go out to eat with some of my friends who are loaded like kal and i don't pay for my footlong sub cos they know it'll clean me out, but for them it's loose change. well now i sound like stefen.

[72teeth]

"Javier Bardem is excited to do something good: 'Let me do this' or 'I'll put stuff in my mouth, change my appearance..."

He make Javi sound like one of my ex's... Oh Snap!

[MacGuffin]

Coppola Without Hollywood
In this online companion to Bruce Handy's profile in the December issue, Francis Ford Coppola talks about the restored negative of The Godfather, the beauty of his Napa Valley estate, and recutting The Outsiders for his granddaughter's class.
by Bruce Handy; Vanity Fair

In "The Liberation of Francis Ford Coppola" (December), Bruce Handy profiles the legendary filmmaker as he prepares to release Youth Without Youth, his first picture as a director in a decade—and one of the most audacious in his entire filmography. The movie, which stars Tim Roth and is adapted from a Romanian novella, is dense and at times surreal. Prominent among its many themes are the questions of measuring a life's work, coming to terms with—or rejecting—the personal sacrifices one makes for one's career, and suffering the pain of unrealized ambitions. In these outtakes from their conversations, conducted on the grounds of Coppola's impossibly picturesque estate and vineyard in the Napa Valley, the director talks to Handy about parallel issues in his own life. To read "The Liberation of Francis Ford Coppola," pick up the December Vanity Fair.

If you look at your films as a body of work, what themes or interests—if any—do you see yourself coming back to again and again over the years?

Well, I just saw The Godfather last night, in an exceptionally beautiful new print. [The film's negative was recently restored.]

Is someone going to release it theatrically? Please.

I don't know what they'll do. But I saw it last night. I thought it would be a very tough experience for me—I sort of hate the movie because of what it was like to work on it.

When was the last time you'd seen it?

Oh, I haven't seen it for I don't know how long. A long time. But I have to say that, you know, it was a beautiful movie. It had fabulous actors, beautiful photography, wonderful music. And the story—Mario Puzo's story was so interesting. And a lot of the techniques, how in my screenplay adaptation I used a kind of shorthand, even when all these interesting things are happening, like the ending with the baptism [which is intercut with a series of killings consolidating Michael Corleone's hold on power]. Really, a lot of the things I did were just trying to distill the novel into as short a time as possible—even the idea of the juxtaposed killings during the baptism, which was the central metaphor of the story. I mean, I could see how it's a more beautiful movie than I think of it as.

I think I made a lot of films that are very different from one another, that seem to get at the essence of what their themes were using different styles. Apocalypse Now is as different from The Godfather as it can be, and yet, in its own way, it caught something that's lasting about ... what it was about. Even littler films like Rumble Fish [1983] or The Conversation [1974], or even The Rain People [his third feature, a family drama, released in 1969]. Did you ever see The Rain People?

I haven't.

The Rain People is sort of amazing for, you know, a 25-year-old guy [i.e., Coppola] writing and making a movie about, basically, women's liberation 10 years before it became a cultural thing. So I would say of myself, I always had good information. I made films out of a lot of enthusiasm. And I loved the actors; the actors often show well [in his films]. And the music is interesting. But in terms of themes, it's hard for me to understand, because most of my films are in some way personal. And so for me to say something about my overall [body of work], I would have to say it about me. [Laughs.] And I don't know how to say something about myself in a general sense—other than I've always loved children. And still do.

For most people there's always a conflict between work and family, but my impression is that you've generally managed to have your family with you when you work. You've cast them. You've collaborated with them. You've taken them on location.

I try. It's very hard today. My daughter [Sofia Coppola, the director] now has a cute little baby, and she's in Paris, and my son [Roman, also a filmmaker] is in L.A. It's sort of a little sad that, you know, I have this ... [Gestures out toward his vineyards and estate.] I mean, you can't believe how beautiful this estate is. There are places on it that are breathtaking, and it's [nearly] 2,000 acres. And to have my kids, my grandkids here—but I don't. It's partly because my kids have been so successful. My wife always tells me that, because I lament: "Where are my kids? Where are my grandkids?" And my wife says, "Well, you gave them a wonderful thing. Aside from everything else you've given them, you've given them the livelihood that they can go and pursue their own lives." You know, parents who empower their children, ultimately their children leave. [Laughs.] But you can be satisfied, you can be happy you did that. Better than kids who are hanging around, sort of dependent on you or something. My kids are not like that.

In the last few years you've released expanded, recut versions of Apocalypse Now [1979] and The Outsiders [1983], your adaptation of the S. E. Hinton young-adult novel, with Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio. Are there any other of your films you'd like to go back into and rework?

I only did those things because American Zoetrope [his film company] was always very advanced technologically. Since we were pioneers in electronic editing, and we had all the original footage, it was possible to say, "You know, we did that movie and cut it down, and it'd be nice to have it back the way it was before." When your film is about to come out, you're really looking at either success or failure. So you do things to hopefully have success. And maybe they're not the right things to do for the film.

With The Outsiders, I got so many letters from kids saying, "Oh, we love The Outsiders, and we love Matt Dillon, and we love all the blah-blah-blah. But where's the scene where such and such? And where's the scene where—?" And I had shot all those scenes. Then my little granddaughter's class was reading The Outsiders and they wanted me to come and talk to them. So I quickly went back and looked for the old cut and put it together, with all the scenes I knew they were reading in the book. And I thought it was better than the originally released version.

The French distributor for Apocalypse had seen a cut when it was—you know, when you start editing, they're very long, the first assemblies. And he said, "Aw, there were all these scenes and images—I never forgot them. Would you ever put them back?" And I said, "I don't know. You know, who'd want to see it? The movie already is long." So, in other words, these projects were sort of casual. It was: O.K., we'll put it in.

It wasn't out of some long-standing desire to rescue wronged films?

No. But I mean, even now there's a movie I'd love to get my hands on, just because I didn't do the final shaping of it. It would probably never be seen but I'd just like to do it for myself. Finian's Rainbow. [He directed the musical, which stars Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, in 1968.] I'd love to take 20 minutes out of Finian's Rainbow because I just think it could be made so much better. The other movie that would benefit from that—although I doubt anybody would want to do it—is The Cotton Club [his 1984 film, with Richard Gere and Gregory Hines]. Twenty minutes of the whole black story was taken out and that could be put back in.

Someday, if I had time, I could just—myself—cut the 20 minutes out of Finian's Rainbow that I'd like to. Just to see it, for myself. And The Cotton Club, I have the longer version, but the people who own it would never want to do it. Maybe, someday, if they ever want to re-release it, they might ask me.

[MacGuffin]

Coppola, Take 2
By REBECCA WINTERS KEEGAN; Time Magazine

"I had an impressive career as a younger person," says Francis Ford Coppola, "but it was like an older director's." Perhaps that's why people have been wondering if he'd gone into early retirement. The director of such indelible movies as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now hasn't put out a film in 10 years and has been, by his own admission, in a creative slump for 25. So now he's changing tactics: since he couldn't scramble out of the ditch going forward, he's trying reverse. For his next film, the aptly titled Youth Without Youth, Coppola, 68, returned to a stage of his career he feels ended prematurely: the beginning. "At 29 I was making an older man's picture [Finian's Rainbow]," he says. "The younger director never had his moment. Now I'm making a younger man's picture."

Youth Without Youth might also be described as a wistful man's picture. An adaptation by Coppola of a novella by the Romanian-born philosopher Mircea Eliade, the unashamedly arty film stars Tim Roth as Dominic Matei, an aging linguistics professor whose youth is restored after he survives a lightning strike. Because of his rejuvenation, Matei is able to work on his unfinished magnum opus and pursue a lost love. With a dense, multilayered plot spanning multiple continents, decades and languages, and heady themes like consciousness and the nature of time, Youth seems a lot more than a decade removed from Coppola's last film, the decidedly commercial Matt Damon courtroom drama The Rainmaker.

Garrulous and avuncular, sipping a Bloody Mary at 4 p.m. in a Beverly Hills hotel, Coppola explains the crisis of confidence that immobilized him, and his career pivot from John Grisham to a Romanian mythologist. In 2004 the director was much like Matei before the lightning struck; he was frustrated and grappling with a consuming project he couldn't complete. He'd spent most of the '80s and '90s making forgettable films like The Cotton Club and Jack to pay off the enormous debts he had incurred on such experiments as his 1982 musical, One from the Heart. Though there were bright spots, like The Outsiders and Peggy Sue Got Married, most of Coppola's studio pictures during this time left the director and his fans unfulfilled. In 1986 Coppola's 22-year-old son Gian-Carlo died in a boating accident. "When you lose your kid, it's the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning for about seven or eight years. Then there's the first morning when that's not the first thing you think of. You get brave," he says. His other two children, Sofia and Roman, are in the business, although the Oscar-winning Sofia is currently focused mainly on being a mom. Roman, an assistant director on Youth, co-wrote Wes Anderson's new film, The Darjeeling Limited.

By the late '90s, Coppola says, "I just wanted to find a place for myself. I didn't want to be a director who was hired: 'Here's a script, we've got Robin Williams.'" After he lost a lengthy rights battle with Warner Bros. over a Pinocchio project, Coppola says he realized, "I don't have that much time. The time has come to do the dream project, the ultimate one that I write myself that's about something really ambitious, that contributes new ideas to the language of cinema." While the Godfather movies are fan favorites, he prefers the films it took critics longer to embrace, like Apocalypse Now, or audiences to discover, like The Rain People (see box). "The easiest way to make sure a movie is successful is to make a traditional movie very well," he says. "If you make a slightly unusual movie or [don't] exactly follow the rules as everyone sees them, then you get in trouble or, like with Apocalypse, wait 20 years to hear that was really good." Coppola's career capstone was to be a utopian story set in Manhattan called Megalopolis, an original script he had been tinkering with since 1984. "You know those advertising-agency guys that were gonna quit and write a great novel? It was like that," he says.

At the same time, the director's side businesses were turning out to be a lot more profitable than his filmmaking. By 2001 his Napa Valley winery (he now has another in Sonoma) and his resort company were earning enough for him to start production on Megalopolis with his own money. But Sept. 11 forced him to reevaluate his fictional future New York City. Banging away on the project year after year was "like being in love with a beautiful, wonderful woman who doesn't want you," he says. "You don't get her, of course, because she doesn't want you, but you don't get anyone else because you can't see anyone because of her."

One friend who sent Coppola encouraging notes on his Megalopolis script was Wendy Doniger, the first girl he had ever kissed and the one who gave him On the Road when they were students at Great Neck High School in Long Island, New York, in the '50s. (Coppola has optioned the book.) He flew his private plane to Chicago to pick up Doniger, now a University of Chicago professor of Hinduism and comparative mythology, and bring her back to Napa to discuss her ideas with him and his wife Eleanor. Over the house wine and Coppola's cooking, they talked about his career. "He was stuck," says Doniger. "For the first time in his life, he could finance a movie, and therefore he didn't have to do what anybody else said, and that paralyzed him. He had no excuse this time if the film was no good. What froze him was having the power to do exactly what he wanted so that his soul was on the line."

Hoping to help him with some of the themes he was struggling with on Megalopolis, Doniger gave Coppola some of Eliade's works, including Youth Without Youth. The book, meant to be inspirational, became Coppola's lightning bolt. "I realized, well, I can just go to Romania and make this movie and not tell anyone. I optioned the script on the sly, didn't tell my wife. I was so wounded for those five, six years that it felt good to have a secret project. It's like if you had $1 million cash in your purse that no one knew about, you'd feel empowered."

Within his family's company, Francis Ford Coppola Presents Ltd., Coppola can make any movie he wants if he spends less than $17 million. Youth, thanks to financial incentives for movies made in Europe and some scrappy filmmaking, fits into that category. Coppola set up a production office at a friend's Bucharest pharmaceutical company, auditioning actors and cinematographers amid stores of cough syrup and vitamins. He hired a 28-year-old director of photography who had just gotten out of film school to shoot in less expensive high-definition digital video. With the help of old friend George Lucas, Coppola equipped a Dodge Sprinter cargo van with all the camera gear he would need, a technique he had employed on The Rain People, the 1969 movie they worked on together. For the first time since Rumble Fish in 1983, Coppola says, he felt creatively fulfilled while making a movie. "Youth Without Youth got me across the gap," he says. "You lose your confidence. People in the arts — they've got that, maybe, imbalance. Now I know I can make a movie without having to ask anyone's permission."

The film got its first airing at the Rome Film Festival, where the reaction suggested that Coppola is going to have a tough time making young men's pictures again. Rookie directors can experiment quietly; every movie Coppola makes is an international event. "I'm not supposed to call this a small movie or an experimental movie," he says, because he knows it might turn off fans. It probably didn't help that he was quoted in the November GQ as saying he felt Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson have lost the passion for good roles. Coppola told reporters in Rome that the comments were taken out of context, saying, "I was astonished because it wasn't true, and I have nothing but respect and admiration" for the actors. "These are the three greatest actors in the world today, and they are my friends." In whatever context the original comments were made — and Coppola declined to clarify them for TIME — he's not alone in his opinion. While Coppola was searching for creative purpose, after all, De Niro was making Meet the Fockers and Analyze That.

Now that Coppola has shaken the blahs, he'll get back behind the camera again and start shooting a script of his own — still not Megalopolis — in Argentina in February. Tetro, starring Matt Dillon and Javier Bardem, is "about fathers and brothers and creative competition, a little Greek." In September thieves broke into Coppola's home studio in Buenos Aires. "Five guys tied up the people, stabbed the photographer in the shoulder when he resisted and stole our electronics," including Coppola's computer with the Tetro script on it and his backup drives. "The script was finished. It made Hamlet look like garbage, but it's gone," he says, deadpan. Nevertheless, the production is moving ahead. He'll shoot the film in the same guerrilla style as Youth. As Coppola starts describing the Dodge Sprinter, already on its way to Argentina, a pretty, sixtysomething woman approaches his table and tells the director she knew him from Long Island's Point Lookout Beach in the '50s. "Did we know each other then?" he asks, trying to remember. "You were beautiful, and I was the schlumpy kid. You didn't pay attention to me. How are we gonna go back and recapture those moments?"

[MacGuffin]

In loving memory of Michael Jackson, I present to you Captain EO.

I can remember watching this every time I visted Disneyland. Of course, it was much more impressive in 3-D

Part 1:


Part 2:


(yes, that is Anjelica Houston)

[MacGuffin]

Francis Ford Coppola: What I've Learned
The 70-year-old director on meeting Gotti, wanting Scorsese to helm Godfather III, ignoring The Sopranos, and more (wine with Bill Cosby, anyone?)
By Stephen Garrett; Esquire

Tetro, which Coppola wrote and directed, is in theaters. It is his first original screenplay since The Conversation (1974).

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

Did you ever see Rushmore? I was just like that kid.

I've had wine at the table all my life. Even kids were allowed to have it. We used to put ginger ale or lemon soda in it.

I did something terrible to my father. When I was twelve or thirteen, I had a job at Western Union. And when the telegram came over on a long strip, you would cut it and glue it on the paper and deliver it on a bicycle. And I knew the name of the head of Paramount Pictures' music department — Louis Lipstone. So I wrote, "Dear Mr. Coppola: We have selected you to write a score. Please return to L. A. immediately to begin the assignment. Sincerely, Louis Lipstone." And I glued it and I delivered it. And my father was so happy. And then I had to tell him that it was fake. He was totally furious. In those days, kids got hit. With the belt. I know why I did it: I wanted him to get that telegram. We do things for good reasons that are bad.

People feel the worst film I made was Jack. But to this day, when I get checks from old movies I've made, Jack is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that. If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams.

I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.

Ten or fifteen years after Apocalypse Now, I was in England in a hotel, and I watched the beginning of it and ultimately ended up watching the whole movie. And it wasn't as weird as I thought. It had, in a way, widened what people would tolerate in a movie.

I saw this bin full of, basically, garbage film. We had shot five cameras when the jets came and dropped the napalm. You had to roll them all at the same time, so there was a lot of this leader, which was just footage. So I picked something out of this barrel and put it in the Moviola and it was very abstract, and every once in a while you saw this helicopter skid. And then over in sound there was all this Doors music, and in it was something called "The End." And I said, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if we started the movie with 'The End'?"

I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.

To do good is to be abundant — that's my tendency. If I cook a meal, I cook too much and have too many things. I was just watching a Cecil B. DeMille picture last night based on Cleopatra, and I realized how many parts of the real story he left out. So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

When I was starting out, I got a job writing a script for Bill Cosby. He used to have the very best wine for his friends. He didn't drink wine himself, but he had this wine called Romanée-Conti, which is considered one of the greatest wines in the world. I never knew wine could taste like that. He also taught me how to play baccarat. And one night I had $400, and I won $30,000. So I bought $30,000 worth of Romanée wines.

You have to view things in the context of your life expectancy.

The ending was clear and Michael has corrupted himself — it was over. So I didn't understand why they wanted to make another Godfather.

I said, "What I will do is help you develop a story. And I'll find a director and produce it." They said, "Well, who's the director?" And I said, "Young guy, Martin Scorsese." They said, "Absolutely not!" He was just starting out.

The only thing they really argued with me about was calling it Godfather Part II. It was always Son of the Wolfman or The Wolfman Returns or something. They thought that audiences would find it confusing. It was ironic, because that started the whole numbers thing. I started a lot of things.

I was in my trailer, working on Godfather II or III in New York, and there was a knock on the door. The guy working with me said that John Gotti would like to meet Mr. Coppola. And I said, "It's not possible, I'm in the middle of something." There's an old wives' tale about vampires — that you have to invite them in, but once they cross the threshold, then they're in. But if you say you don't want to meet them, then they can't come in. They can't know you.

I never saw The Sopranos. I'm not interested in the mob.

What greater snub can you get than that absolutely nobody went to see Youth Without Youth? Anything better than that is a success.

Some audiences love to sit there and see all the names in the credits. Are they looking for a relative?

What should I do now? I could do something a little more ambitious. Or less. Better less. For me, less ambitious is more ambitious.


http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/francis-ford-coppola-interview-0809#ixzz0KbdPXLKM&D

[Pwaybloe]

I really love Coppola.  Even with his ups and downs, he's always stayed genuine. 

[socketlevel]

I really love Coppola.  Even with his ups and downs, he's always stayed genuine. 

exactly, he cuts himself down as much as he props himself up.  his commentaries are the best for that.  i've listened to so many commentaries from different directors and always wanna hear what they really think, i get that from him.