Taking a break? Retired? What? Is he ever going to direct another movie again or just produce? What is the deal with Megalopolis?
Quote from: Duck SauceWhat is the deal with Megalopolis?
Production was scheduled to start in late 2002 or early 2003, with at least some filming to be done in New York City (Coppola is considering other cities as well, like Montreal). Part of the film is being shot on digital video, using the new Sony 24p hi-def video cameras George Lucas is using on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. The budget is around $65-70 million. Filming was originally scheduled to start in early 2002, but Coppola is working on a post-September 11th rewrite. Charles Lyons of Variety also reports that Coppola has already shot over 30 hours of second unit footage, from both before and after September 11th. One of the changes being made post-September 11th is that the premise now gets its start as New York City has to rebuild from the ground up following a horrible tragedy.
Premise: This is the story of an architect who dreams of building the city of the future, hoping to enable people to live in an utopia where people only do the work they love to do... Utopia is something people have long sought. Is it attainable? (one major character is the Mayor). "The mayor is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the past, while an architect-planner is dedicated to leaping into the future. When a massive renovation project is planned for an area running from 8th Avenue to the Hudson riverbank and from 34th to 20th streets, it becomes the nexus of a battle over vision, scale and profits, involving 'every layer of society from workers, labor unions, the man on the street to the idea men, the money men and all those involved with them,' Coppola said."
How Coppola Describes It: (from BusinessWeek Online): "The setting is modern New York. It deals... with the idea that the future world we're going to live in is being negotiated today... It's kind of a shape-of-things-to-come film in which the characters are concerned with artists, businessmen, proletariat all having a stake in the future but very few of them having a hand in what it's going to be like. It's a little bit like an Ayn Rand novel" (The Fountainhead, specifically). More here: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2000/nf20000912_919.htm
Concept art:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mauroborrelli.com%2Fconcep%2Fextra%2Fimg%2Fmegacity.jpg&hash=5ed16ae59077dac044e263e0c2d01b492926e531)
What about casting info?
Quote from: Duck SauceWhat about casting info?
Cast: None announced yet.
Cast Notes: (7/18/01) Among the stars reportedly reading for roles are Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Parker Posey, and Kevin Spacey.
Coppola Focusing on Making Megalopolis
The Hollywood Reporter says that MGM and director Francis Ford Coppola have ended their official relationship, partly due to his commitment to Megalopolis.
MGM spokesperson Lea Porteneuve said, "With demands on his time from both his business and creative ventures, specifically the intense focus he's placing right now on getting 'Megalopolis' made, Francis felt he couldn't devote the attention he wanted to continuing to serve on the MGM board. We were respectful of his decision."
Coppola said some time back what this project was about. "The setting is modern New York. The mayor is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the past, while an architect-planner is dedicated to leaping into the future. When a massive renovation project is planned for an area running from 8th Avenue to the Hudson riverbank and from 34th to 20th streets, it becomes the nexus of a battle over vision, scale and profits, involving 'every layer of society from workers, labor unions, the man on the street to the idea men, the money men and all those involved with them".
Quote from: MacGuffinCoppola said some time back what this project was about. "The setting is modern New York. The mayor is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the past, while an architect-planner is dedicated to leaping into the future. When a massive renovation project is planned for an area running from 8th Avenue to the Hudson riverbank and from 34th to 20th streets, it becomes the nexus of a battle over vision, scale and profits, involving 'every layer of society from workers, labor unions, the man on the street to the idea men, the money men and all those involved with them".
Hmmm.... Sounds about as exciting as CSPAN.
Quote from: PawbloeHmmm.... Sounds about as exciting as CSPAN.
i don't know how exciting that is to u, but i think it's a great idea.. it has to be hardcore tho. none of this gangs of new york love story bullshit. i wouldn't mind if it's 99% political with a nipple now and then.
Quote from: Pi don't know how exciting that is to u, but i think it's a great idea.. it has to be hardcore tho. none of this gangs of new york love story bullshit. i wouldn't mind if it's 99% political with a nipple now and then.
You say that... Now think about Coppola's "Tucker." The plots aren't too different.
Quote from: PawbloeYou say that... Now think about Coppola's "Tucker." The plots aren't too different.
tru, but that was a retrospective kinda deal. "then" as opposed to "now". didn't think it was bad tho.
Quote from: MacGuffinIt's kind of a shape-of-things-to-come film in which the characters are concerned with artists, businessmen, proletariat all having a stake in the future but very few of them having a hand in what it's going to be like.
Sounds really far out...
Funny, but I said the same thing when I saw a trailer for the Life of David Gale, only I thought Alan Parker was dead.
I would like to share P's optimism here, but I anticpate bloat.
Quote from: MacGuffinParker Posey
:-D
shit, when i first heard the plot, it sounded like an adaptation of Huxley's Brave New World. Now its gonna be a story about business plans? Im bummed. BNW would make a great movie if they did it up right. Maybe Aaron Sorkin should do it.
I'm with P here, think it looks like it could be good if done right...
Brave New World's a good book... needs to stay a book... everything in it has been taken and used or parodied, it's been sucked dry... if they were to adapt it now, it just wouldn't play right... maybe I don't know what I'm talking about though.
everything would be good if done right.
I'll side on the other side and say likelihood that this movie will be a mess is more likely than not, considering how this movie feels very tough to do right from the get go and Francis Ford Coppola hasn't made a great movie since Apocalypse Now. Not arguing good movies here, but great ones. And yes, if one of you thinks that he did make a great movie after Apocalypse Now, then it would mean you disagree with me so save your typing hands to not say just that and jack off or something instead.
~rougerum
Quote from: RegularKarateBrave New World's a good book... needs to stay a book...
Totally agree....haha, remember that cheap TV movie with Leonard Nimoy? Exact reason it should just be left as a book...
Quote from: The Gold Trumpetif one of you thinks that he did make a great movie after Apocalypse Now, then it would mean you disagree with me so save your typing hands to not say just that and jack off or something instead.
With the invention of the internet, I've learned to do both at the same time. So I will practice that skill to state that I disagree with you.
Dracula was good.
Quote from: DerekDracula was good.
:yabbse-thumbup:
Quote from: budgie's pleasureDisagreeing with GT and sucking up to Guffy while he jerks off
:yabbse-thumbup:
The Godfather, Part IV: Andy Garcia talked with The Calgary Sun about a possibile fourth 'Godfather' flick which he wanted to do but Paramount declined the offer - "The irony and fascination for me is that with all the movies Paramount takes risks on each year they have this franchise people are desperate to see and they won't green-light it". Has he heard anything from Coppola about it? "There was a moment where Francis did want to have Mario [Puzo] write a script. I knew that Francis had this story that him and Mario had worked out, to do a parallel story of a piece of the book that has never been told, which is the [19]30s. In the 30s, Sonny Corleone, who was always Mario's favorite character, would basically be Leo [DiCaprio] in his 20s, or you know, Leo could play him. And, then he would do a parallel story of my character [Sonny Corleone's son] in the future, you know, running amok...Anyway it accelerated, and all of the sudden it was like, this would be a very interesting movie. Because, Robert DeNiro could play the Godfather, and Leo DiCaprio could play Sonny, and you could get a couple of younger people to play Michael and Fredo and Tom. So on one side of the movie, you would have the demographic that you would be looking for, you know the young kids, and then on the other side...you can actually bring Al [Pacino] back, because he died a very old guy. But Mario [Puzo] passed away...after that, I have never really heard anything more about it. I have asked Francis about it, and his attitude is, "Yeah, I can do it," but you know, they have to hire me, I can't hire them".
I dont want a Godfather 4 for obvious reasons, but if they had to do another one why not do one about another family?
Coppola's idea is very ambitious (obviously) and sounds like it could either be really boring or really interesting. Let's hope it's the latter.
Quote from: PawbloeQuote from: Pi don't know how exciting that is to u, but i think it's a great idea.. it has to be hardcore tho. none of this gangs of new york love story bullshit. i wouldn't mind if it's 99% political with a nipple now and then.
You say that... Now think about Coppola's "Tucker." The plots aren't too different.
Shit, I didn't know he made Tucker. That's a great film. I'll have to rent it again.
This Megalopolis sounds really fucking cool.
He's been talking about Megalopolis for a long time. So, I've been waiting a long time. I read an interview with him a while back where he said that Megalopolis was written like The Conversation, but on a scale to equal Apocalypse Now -- and that it was as strange as the latter. He also mentioned Fellini's La Dolce Vita as an unimpeachable masterpiece and that Megalopolis was his attempt to do something on that scale. He wants it to be a film that works intimately and also as a great social epic.
Thematically, it sounds like pure Coppola: the lone visionary up against a mass force of conservativism. That's what all his best work was about. If he pulls it off, if he makes the masterpiece that he's been talking about for years, I will have no problem declaring him the greatest living filmmaker. As far as I'm concerned, his '70s output was so astonishing that he could've directed Police Academy sequels for the last 20 years and still be better than 99% of other directors.
Quote from: mutinycoAs far as I'm concerned, his '70s output was so astonishing that he could've directed Police Academy sequels for the last 20 years and still be better than 99% of other directors.
This is a terrific fucking quote...
aw
Incidentally, has anyone seen He's a Big Boy Now? This is one of Coppola's earlier films, and I just watched it this afternoon. I thought it was hilarious.
Well I just finished watching Coppola's segment from New York Stories and thought it was absolute shit. How does one guy make some of the greatest movies ever and so much crap? I don't want another Godfather movie but that storyline with those proposed actors sounds pretty good...
FFC recently has presented a Thai film called "The Legend of Suriyothai." It is the most expensive film from Thailand and the highest grossing film over there. The sets and costumes are elaborate and the battle scenes are impressive.
Rumble Fish was pretty hot. Pretty out there. But generally, Apocalypse was his last great film.
QuoteFilm director Francis Ford Coppola is hunting for the perfect city as he seeks inspiration for his first film in six years.
The director of The Godfather trilogy has spent a week in Curitiba, a sleepy city of 1.6 million in southern Brazil, known for its clean streets and efficient public transportation.
"I want to create a mixture of the Roman epics of [director] Cecil B DeMille with a modern New York," Coppola said in an interview with Reuters.
The new movie, to be called Megalopolis, has been in the works for four years and could take Coppola to three continents before he settles down to film in New York City.
Coppola said he wrote the original script with actor Russell Crowe in mind for the lead role as the visionary architect that sets out to design a utopian city.
"But that was before he became so famous," Coppola said.
"I don't think it would be viable anymore," Coppola said of Crowe.
Asked to describe the perfect city, Coppola said it would be one without advertising and billboards at every turn.
Since the release of his last film in 1997, Coppola has spent most of his time tending to his Napa Valley vineyards and his restaurant businesses, a task he says is often more rewarding than filmmaking.
source: ABC News Online (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s922319.htm)
Quote from: The Silver BulletQuoteSince the release of his last film in 1997, Coppola has spent most of his time tending to his Napa Valley vineyards and his restaurant businesses, a task he says is often more rewarding than filmmaking.
Not surprising coming from him. If
my second last film was "Jack," I'd say the same thing.
Coppola Looks to Brazil for Inspiration
Curitiba, Brazil (EFE) – Francis Ford Coppola traveled to the South of Brazil to find inspiration to finish the script for 'Megalopolis' a film he has been developing for the better part of a decade. The award winning director of 'The Godfather' has been in the city of Curitiba for about a week with producer Dean Tavoularis, who will co-executive produce the project.
According to El Mundo Coppola himself described the film as a "futuristic epic, passionate and humane, set in New York, a city which will not be left under rocks at the end of time." Coppola has avoided the press while in Curitiba but did manage to surprise a group of film students at a local university by attending a weekend film conference. The local news paper Gazeta do Povo reported that in the conference Coppola talked about his past projects and explained that his next project will not be made "make money" but to satisfy the four fundamental concerns of any artist, "create, learn, perfect and celebrate." 'Megalopolis' will mark Coppola's first film as a director in six years. He directed the 'Rainmaker' in 1997.
Yeah, he's traveling to about half a dozen cities wordwide to study urban planning. There was an article last week, but I can't find it. By the way, Ron Fricke, who shot Baraka, has been mentioned as the DP.
Quote from: mutinycoRon Fricke, who shot Baraka, has been mentioned as the DP.
Beauuuutiful! :-D
Quote from: MacGuffinCast Notes: (7/18/01) Among the stars reportedly reading for roles are Nicolas Cage, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Parker Posey, and Kevin Spacey.
How great do you have to be to get THOSE guys to READ for you???
Quote from: kotteQuote from: MacGuffinHow great do you have to be to get THOSE guys to READ for you???
I heard Gary Coleman is gettting the lead......
Quote from: mutinycoRon Fricke, who shot Baraka, has been mentioned as the DP.
Wow, cool...can't wait to see Baraka.
QuoteNicolas Cage
Great.
QuoteRussell Crowe
Bad.
QuoteRobert De Niro
Great.
QuotePaul Newman
Great.
QuoteParker Posey
Great.
QuoteKevin Spacey
OK.
Quote from: ebeaman
QuoteRussell Crowe
Bad.
QuoteKevin Spacey
OK.
Now, I'm not too fond of Russell Crowe, but I can defenitely appreciate him as an actor...have you seen the insider? or LA confidential? He gives two great performances there and something tells me we've had this argument before.
Kevin Spacey deserves a lot more than OK.
Copied from a Toronto FF report at AICN:
"Speaking of Coppola, I chatted with George Hickenlooper, the director of Mayor of the Sunset Strip and co-director of Hearts of Darkness (the brilliant Apocalypse Now doc), at the Sunset Strip after-party. About a month ago he was talking with Francis about a DVD release of Hearts of Darkness -- the sticking point is the infamous Martin Sheen heart attack scene. Coppola wants a bit of narration added to the beginning of the sequence to further clarify exactly what he means when he goes on his "Martin Sheen isn't dead until I say he's dead!" rant.
Now, it's not my place to tell Francis Ford Coppola what he should do, but I think it's an unnecessary and somewhat futile step. The film, as is, gives plenty of context for the rant -- Coppola is clearly pissed at his staff for going behind his back and telling the studio about Sheen's condition before Coppola had figured out how he was going to handle the situation, not railing against God and trying to shout back the specter of Death or something. And further narration won't dispel the urban legend that's grown up around that interpretation, just as Sting telling people 10 years later that he was pulling Bob Geldof's leg with that tantric nonsense is going to change the way the general public sees him. That moment has become part of the mythology of Francis Ford Coppola, for better or worse, and delaying the release of Hearts of Darkness won't rewrite it. "
That movie NEEDS to come out on DVD. With or without the lame new narration.
Apocalypse Now should've had a commentary track. :(
It should also have been shown in the correct aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and not 1.85:1! How stupid was it to see Redux on the big screen in it's original aspect ratio, then have it cropped a few months later on DVD? Coppola seems to do that with all of his widescreen videos. Did it for Tucker too.
Once again taking the independent route, Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope have today announced an exclusive distribution deal with Fantoma Films.
First up from the legendary American auteur is is landmark 1982 cult favorite One From the Heart, which will get the two-disc deluxe treatment on January 27th. While not a box office hit, it is a notable piece of Hollywood history - Coppola was one of first directors to make extensive use of computer technology to help realize the intricate visuals, and the film has amassed a dedicated cult following.
Newly remastered in anamorphic widescreen, extras are set to include an audio commentary by Coppola, the featurettes "The Dream Studio" (30 minutes) and "Tom Waits and the Music of One From the Heart" (12 minutes), unreleased demo recordings and alternate music takes, deleted and alternate scenes, rehearsal footage, storyboards, still galleries and additional footage. Retail is $29.95.
Quote from: mutinycoIt should also have been shown in the correct aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and not 1.85:1! How stupid was it to see Redux on the big screen in it's original aspect ratio, then have it cropped a few months later on DVD? Coppola seems to do that with all of his widescreen videos. Did it for Tucker too.
Vittorio Storaro, the TP of AN and Tucker, is a propnent of the 2:1 Univisium format, which is fine, but did he have to advocate cropping a film shot at 2.35:1 down to around 1.90:1? AN at 2.20:1 might be okay, since 70mm prints were made, but I somehow doubt it was framed for 2:1.
The problem isn't even that they were cropped, per se -- but they were originally shot in scope. And scope has a round image. So when it's cropped it looks distorted.
Quote from: mutinycoIt should also have been shown in the correct aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and not 1.85:1! How stupid was it to see Redux on the big screen in it's original aspect ratio, then have it cropped a few months later on DVD? Coppola seems to do that with all of his widescreen videos. Did it for Tucker too.
Why would he do that? Fuck, I didn't notice, but now I'm glad I at least caught this in the theatre...
He does it so you can ask why he does it.
Was in the grocery store today, saw Coppola on the cover of October 2003's Cigar Aficionado. There's an interview with him inside, though they're mostly asking him about The Godfather Trilogy, from what I read. That is, from what I saw in my brief skim through it. Still, thought some of you may be interested.
I just finished watching The Godfather series back-to-back.
I've always found the films good but this time...they are truly amazing.
This 'masterpiece' word is thrown left to right but these films are true works of genius.
This has been said more than once, I know, but I got this urge to write about it now when I'm done.
Pacinos performance when his daughter dies at the end. Fucking magic movie acting.
i went on a spree with his films, i watched the godfather, and then the conversation, then apocalypse now and finally jack.... :shock:
He came here to Denver a couple nights ago and he is most surely alive. He gave a nice speech, screened an early film of his that was taken out of cinemas really quickly (and for good reason; it was all style and no substance), but being he was very self aware, it made for a nice night. Also, he said he's begun writing again, and talked about always trying to reach a place that he has to struggle to get to, so whatever he's cooking, I think it'll be a delicious meal.
What early film? Sounds like it was One From the Heart. If so, it certainly wasn't early -- it was a decade after the Godfather.
Quote from: mutinycoWhat early film? Sounds like it was One From the Heart. If so, it certainly wasn't early -- it was a decade after the Godfather.
Yes, One From The Heart. Early as in -- comparitively speaking.
Yeah, I suppose I consider anything post-Apocalypse Now late Coppola.
What about Jack?
Yes, everything after AN (except maybe Rumblefish) was jack!
Yeah, I always hear this comments about filmmakers of the seventies losing it" like by their fourth film and the only one that seems true to me is the Coppola case...after Apocalypse he really kind of...you know...lost it...
Rumble Fish is great and I think Dracula was really cool too, but the rest, even if it's not crap, it's not on the Coppola level I would like to see...
I'm specially shocked when I see something like Cotton Club which is incredibly bad, or that episode from New York Stories...
However, Jack wasn't that bad, considering...and The Rainmaker was at least nice entertainment...
I always considered Jack and Rainmaker to be his biggest falls from grace. And this is coming from a guy who liked Godfather 3.
Fuck I hope his next one is good...
I don't count Godfather 3 as a post Apocalypse film...it's a different thing for me...I always think of the three Godfather films as a unit or something, I don't know...
Godfather 3 is his best film in the last 23 years...
Quote from: AlexandroGodfather 3 is his best film in the last 23 years...
my vote is for dracula.
Am I the only person who thinks "Tucker" is on the same level as his "Early Coppola" films? Maybe I'm the only one who has seen it.
Dracula is next to The Godfather 3...
Someone told me about Coppola actually talking about AIDS in Dracula, which is interesting but I haven0t seen it since so I don't know...
Tucker is good, but not on that level...
I've seen Tucker. It think it's exactly what it's trying to emulate: a 1940s glossy promo. It's all style and virtually no character development. Not bad, but certainly not on his '70s level.
dracula had an amazing laserdisc with commentary and making of stuff. any word on a SE of some kind of this for dvd?
i dont remember if this is posted somewhere else...
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB0000YRL8K.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg&hash=2b83f30a5f97dbe18a959897c95dc2ef8ad404be)
Kicking off this week's news is the announcement from American Zoetrope of the full specs for the long-awaited DVD debut of Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart. This cult favorite was much-maligned at the time of its original 1982 release but ahead-of-its-time in its use of computer-assisted technology, and now seems like the perfect opportunity for a reevaluation. Rykodisc will release this two-disc set that is quite extensive in its supplements and sporting a new high-definition transfer in the original film aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (supervised by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro) and a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix. Extras include a new audio commentary by Coppola, an isolated 5.1 track with Tom Waits' Oscar-nominated song score, "The Dream Studio" documentary on the history of the Zoetrope Studios, additional "The Electronic Cinema," "Music of One From The Heart" and vintage 1982 "The Making of One From The Heart" featurettes, previously unreleased demo recordings and alternate takes of Tom Waits' score in PCM stereo, deleted and alternate scenes, rehearsal reels, rare Zoetrope archival footage and a still gallery. Retail is $29.95 and will be released on January 27, 2004.
What's One From The Heart about, anyway?
Quote from: SoNowThenWhat's One From The Heart about, anyway?
a chick walks on water towards fireworks and neon signs.
Quote from: PQuote from: SoNowThenWhat's One From The Heart about, anyway?
a chick walks on water towards fireworks and neon signs.
Hey, I must be psychic -- that's what I thought it was about!!
(actually she's walking on a wet-down street)
Quote from: SoNowThen(actually she's walking on a wet-down street)
But it's still water.
if we must nit-pick...
then I'd say "concrete/asphalt surrounded by puddles". :roll:
But seriously, can anybody give me a quick little synopsis, minus spoilers?
For the lazy:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084445/
Hank and Frannie don't seem to be able to live together anymore. After a five-year relationship, lustful and dreamy Fanny leaves down-to-earth Hank on the anniversary of their relationship. Each one of them meets their dream mate, but as bright as they may seem, they are but a stage of lights and colours. Will true love prevail over a seemingly glamorous passion? Welcome to Coppola's Broadway-like romantic musical.
Las Vegas. It's the Fourth of July, and today marks five years since Hank and Frannie moved in together. They'd planned to celebrate, but instead they fight. Hank is a "stick-in-the-mud;" Frannie is a "flake." They break up, and, in no time Frannie meets a suave singer-waiter, and Hank meets a lovely circus performer. Time to find out just what Hank and Frannie's relationship is made of.
Hmm, that's about the weakest shit I've ever heard. I thought an admirer of this flick on the board would've wanted to post about it, but whatever. I guess my lazy ass will have to wait until it comes out on dvd...
Why did he just stop directing movies? Too wrapped up with wine?
Coppola talks about his two regrets, the current state of cinema and his next project:
A special place in Coppola's 'Heart'
The director's 1982 musical is being re-released, and despite what critics said, he's proud of the work. - Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK — Francis Ford Coppola can die happy.
"To me, a happy death is the end of a happy life, when you sit there, wherever you are when you're about to die and you say, 'I got to have a nice wife and beautiful children … and I got to be in the wine business, and I got to be in the movie business, and I got to see my father work with me,' and by the time you're thinking of all these things, you die — you don't even notice it," says the 64-year-old filmmaker, who, rest assured, appears hale.
He cites only two regrets.
One is related to "One From the Heart," his magnificent 1982 failure that's being re-released today.
His "beloved associates" — a term used with no apparent sarcasm — didn't share his vision for the film, so he capitulated in several ways while trying to create a movie that had the elements of theater and live 1950s-style TV drama as well as cinema. "I should have said, 'Fellas, I love you, but if you don't want to do it as a live production, I have to tell you that I'm gonna get people who do.' "
But he didn't.
And the romantic comedy went over like a sumo wrestler trying to pole-vault.
The New York Times called it "unfunny, unjoyous, unsexy and unromantic," while the Washington Post dismissed it as the "most lavish, ponderous clump of stale cotton candy ever confected by an important director." The $24-million-plus musical fantasy did little box office — particularly since Coppola, who was "hurt" by the reaction, pulled it from theaters.
Adding injury to insult, the production brought Coppola to his knees financially, forcing the man who accumulated five Academy Awards in the '70s to become a director-for-hire in the '80s, when he made forgettable films such as "Gardens of Stone."
After "those more serious masculine pictures" of the '70s — "The Godfather," "The Godfather: Part II," "The Conversation" and "Patton" (for which he won a screenwriting Oscar) as well as "Apocalypse Now," Coppola says, "I was anxious to look into another area of my background, which was as someone who directed musicals in college."
"One From the Heart," which comes out on DVD on Jan. 27, starred Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr as live-in lovers who break up on the eve of their fifth anniversary. Each quickly pairs off with another paramour (Nastassja Kinski and Raul Julia) and much of the action — in a Las Vegas built on a soundstage — is set to a score by Tom Waits, who sings it along with Crystal Gayle.
Some cinephiles may find the movie worth revisiting since, in retrospect, its influence can be seen in music videos and modern movie musicals such as Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!"
" 'One From the Heart' as a visual language reference was continually and constantly in our dialogue," says Luhrmann, whose highly stylized 2001 movie was well-received.
"Sometimes, you can fail as easily by having your ambition too great as to have it be too small. I think I've done that many times in my life," Coppola says. "I go for the whole shining dream and then very often fall short of it, because you sort of have to."
And the movie wasn't even as ambitious as it could have been.
"My superproduction, my great work that I was thinking of, was going to be basically taken from the Goethe novel 'Elective Affinities.' And I had this idea to set it in modern Japan starring a film director who makes a film in Japan…. "
Whew!
A vibrant, bearded, roly-poly teddy bear of a man, Coppola can laugh while saying he sometimes will "venture forward on blind faith."
"So often, I make my decisions not on the basis of total logic but sort of a kind of intuition. Now, as I'm older, I realize one thing that makes me different is that I sort of go to the finished vision, finished — then back up and figure out how to do it…. Like building castles in air but then putting the foundation afterward.
"Because, if you do it the other way, each time you come up to an obstacle you change the finished vision. 'Oh, well, we can't get that much concrete.' 'OK, then we won't make it out of concrete then.' 'The county won't give you the permits.' 'OK, what will they give us the permits for? All right.' If you're constantly changing your dream in order to suit the hundreds of practical problems, then the dream won't be there when you're finished."
Coppola says he's not looking for any revisionist upgrade of opinions about "One From the Heart," to which he still owns the rights; he just wants people to see it and say, "Ah, that's a pretty film."
He doesn't argue that it's a great film; still, he compares critics' vicious pans to spiking a high, slow-moving shot in pingpong. He attributes that partly to "what's-he-doing-that-for? syndrome, where you're judged based on what you're known for."
"The filmmaker wants to experiment, but the market forces and the audiences and maybe the critical faction wants you to stay in your place," he says.
That stay-in-your-place syndrome, he says, comes from the feeling so many people suffer from: "I have to stay in my place; I'd like to go the South Seas and write a novel, and be Gauguin … [but] I got to be here and be in the rat race and you have to as well."
It's like crabs in a barrel, he says; one starts climbing up to get out and the others pull it down.
When somebody tries to take a chance, others will say that must be wrong because they wouldn't do that. "But deep down in their heart, they want to. And everyone should!" he says.
"Life is basically a journey that is so much fun, so exciting, that to give up anything for the sake of — what? Die … what? Rich? Or respected, or something. You can't do that. You have to live life for what it really was meant to be, which is to take all the options and do them."
Coppola, who chuckles when he says "a lot of what people misunderstand about in me as megalomania is [actually] enthusiasm," is enthusiastically working on another film that meets his criterion for being extremely ambitious.
Titled "Megalopolis," it's an original screenplay that he's been laboring over for a long time and is reminiscent of "The Shape of Things to Come" by H.G. Wells, he says.
Set in New York, it's about planning the future and having about 30 blocks as a tabula rasa on which to build.
He hopes to make it next year ("I have a script that's starting to come alive"). But for the man who's made two acknowledged classics and two other arguably great films, he says he's not driven by the urge to reach those heights again.
"I think it's the desire to really be fulfilled as a writer-director. The films that I appreciate the most of my own would be films more like 'The Conversation' or elements of 'The Godfather: Part II' — things that I wrote," he says. "I would say my goal is to be fulfilled as a writer-director of cinema: make a big film that I've written."
And his other regret? "My generation, me and my colleagues, didn't leave the film industry in a better place for the young people coming now…. It was terrible then, but it's worse now."
Despite the success of some art-house fare, including his daughter Sofia's current movie, "Lost in Translation," he thinks it's harder than ever to create personal, experimental films.
Francis Coppola recalls dealing with moguls such as Jack Warner, Darryl F. Zanuck and Samuel Goldwyn, "who were certainly concerned about business, but they were showmen."
"They were more like Harvey Weinstein, in truth. Harvey Weinstein [the Miramax Films boss] is, you know, a controversial figure. But you gotta say that besides the fact that he's bright, and he's vulgar — but they were vulgar — he loves movies. He loves movies.
"But I don't know that Rupert Murdoch [head of News Corp., owner of 20th Century Fox] loves movies, or that Viacom [owner of Paramount] loves movies. Any of them! They don't. They're building empires."
Consequently, last summer saw a record number of sequels. "Look, I've been blessed by the film business. I'm not saying this with any rancor," he says. "My idea of the perfect studio was: You make one film that has a real shot to make a lot of money and then you make another one that has no shot to make a lot of money, but one protects the other.
"That's why you have them both. You have the vitality of new areas of experimentation and you have the security — you have a horror film made each year or something. But they don't do that. Now they just want to make money."
Quote from: SoNowThen
Hmm, that's about the weakest shit I've ever heard.
Were you referring to the plot synopsis? 'Cos to me, that read exactly like a summarization of a Fellini-type film. Of course, any plot synopsis is going to be dull because movies are less about plot than any so-called dramatic art... but there's nothing particularly weak about that one, I don't think.
Any news on Megalopolis, anyone? I just know that he's doing the final adjustments on the screenplay and then he will start shooting "shooting".
http://www.davisdvd.com/news/daily_news.html
02.18.04 LEAVE THE GUN, TAKE THE CANNOLI
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in: Paramount Home Entertainment has confirmed that they will re-release Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in May. Previously available as part of The Godfather Trilogy box set, this new release will feature new digital transfer clean-up by Lowry Digital Images. Whether or not this matters enough to you to repurchase the title, it really piques my curiosity to see what they pull off with the picture quality. The disc will also include the previously available commentary track from director Francis Coppola. Unfortunately, there's no word yet if the other two films will receive the same treatment down the line. (thanks to Keith for the help)
Quote from: cronopioAny news on Megalopolis, anyone? I just know that he's doing the final adjustments on the screenplay and then he will start shooting "shooting".
Then your one step ahead of us.
$20 CAD (monoply money) says Megalopolis never gets made. Any takers?
Quote from: Duck Sauce$20 CAD (monoply money) says Megalopolis never gets made. Any takers?
Don't be such a pessimist. He'll make Megalopolis.
Right after Gilliam finishes The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
And that rough cut of The Magnificent Ambersons turns up.
sure and then what? the Beach Boys decide to go back and release Smile? :lol:
Quote from: themodernage02sure and then what? the Beach Boys decide to go back and release Smile? :lol:
Sure.
And then George Lucas will put the original theatrical releases of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi out on DVD.
Quote from: themodernage02sure and then what? the Beach Boys decide to go back and release Smile? :lol:
I saw Brian Wilson perform the completed version of Smile in London on Friday. I assume the CD will be released....
Quote from: ®edlumI assume the CD will be released....
Then I guess this is good news for the ear, but bad for the wallet as Smile is being released April 24, the same date as Spielberg re-releases E.T. with director's commentary.
He's in no rush. It's his movie. He's funding it. He controls everything. If he's taking his time it's because he can afford to.
How does he create, arguably, the best 4 movies of the 70s and once the 80s hit...well, lets just say I'd rather not Remember the 80s when it comes to Coppola's films, same goes for the 90s. Perhaps he is using Sofia as a front and is actually resurrecting his own career. Perhaps he directed and wrote Virgin Suicides & Lost in Translation. You have to admit, in interviews she doesn't seem that insightful.
That's cause she's just in touch with her feelings, which is why her movies are so good.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is basically the only good Coppola film in fifteen years. But whether or not Megalopolis is good, hopefully its ambition will make it a grand final stand for a once great director.
Well I'll be keeping my fingers crossed, and hopefully it'll see the light of day before my fingers start to hurt too much.
I think whatever Megalopolis ends up as, be it good or bad, it'll most certainly be interesting. And it's not really hard to notice that Coppola does best with ambitiously scoped projects (though his involvement in Supernova is worrying).
Quote from: SHAFTRHow does he create, arguably, the best 4 movies of the 70s and once the 80s hit...well, lets just say I'd rather not Remember the 80s when it comes to Coppola's films, same goes for the 90s. Perhaps he is using Sofia as a front and is actually resurrecting his own career. Perhaps he directed and wrote Virgin Suicides & Lost in Translation. You have to admit, in interviews she doesn't seem that insightful.
Pretending that you're being completely serious about that, Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation just aren't his style. I think Sofia is less than enthusiastic because, reportedly, that movie is her on a slab. Would you be enthusiastic or loose-lipped about things leading up to your divorce?
But going back to Francis, his output of late has been less than spectacular (though Dracula was good and The Rainmaker was at least decent, the best Grisham adaptation thus far) , but it makes me wonder if he really is just pulling a Kubrick and is spending forever doing pre-production on Megalopolis because he, naturally, wants it to be his return to greatness that we've all been waiting for.
Or at least, that's what I tell myself.
Excuse me as I put on The Conversation and watch it on a loop until the day Megalopolis comes out.
He can't be dead! I saw him at the Oscars!
He's not dead. That's just his career.
No, seriously, Sofia is very sweet. She's just not the extrovert her father is. But a moment in her presense and you know she knows exactly what she's doing. You instinctively trust her.
As for the stiff, I think he's pulling a bit of a Kubrick/Malick. He's basically stopped making films just to concentrate on Megalopolis. He's been slowly simmering the hype. Letting the DVDs of his classics do the talking (he does the best commentaries).
It could be argued that after his success in the '70s, he really needed 20 years to get to a place where he had lived enough to take his work to the next level. Think about where he was back then. Those movies were so ahead of their time. He had the greatest career shoved into 10 years. Culture probably need 20 years to catch up to him, as well.
I'm sure it'll have been worth the wait.
Quote from: GhostboyBram Stoker's Dracula is basically the only good Coppola film in fifteen years. But whether or not Megalopolis is good, hopefully its ambition will make it a grand final stand for a once great director.
i watched dracula high, and when i watch a movie high i can cut through all the bullshit and pretension. i hate using that word (pretension) but that's just the word to describe what that movie was. a big, fat, piece of annoying crap.
i love dracula. i think its one of my 3 favorite films of his for sure. its so different from most of his movies/most horror movies/most tellings of that familiar story. the way he used a lot of simple trick photography that was used in nosferatu and other old movies to get a lot of creepy effects in the film i thought was great. gary oldman is great, monica belluci is naked, keanu reeves is horrible, what more do you need?!
..i likes dracula also..its a great looking film......and you have to give coppola mad props for making a great film w/ keanu as a lead.....
Quote from: mutinyco(he does the best commentaries).
Like the one he did for that Apocalypse Now DVD, the two disc version that included Hearts Of Darkness and both cuts of the film.
Oh wait....
I guess I'm the only one (as usual) who liked:
Tucker
Rumble Fish
The Outsiders
The Rainmaker (along with The Firm, the best Grisham adaptation)
Peggy Sue Got Married
Quote from: MacGuffinI guess I'm the only one (as usual) who liked:
Tucker
Rumble Fish
The Outsiders
The Rainmaker (along with The Firm, the best Grisham adaptation)
Peggy Sue Got Married
No, your not the only one. I'm a big fan of Tucker, Peggy Sue, and most importantly the outsiders. the outsiders only because Diane Lane is hottily rawktastic as a redhead. haven't seen it for awhile. All I remember is that corny mickey mouse/product placement t-shirt Gordon Bombay wears.
Quote from: StefenQuote from: MacGuffinI guess I'm the only one (as usual) who liked:
Tucker
Rumble Fish
The Outsiders
The Rainmaker (along with The Firm, the best Grisham adaptation)
Peggy Sue Got Married
No, your not the only one. I'm a big fan of Tucker, Peggy Sue, and most importantly the outsiders. the outsiders only because Diane Lane is hottily rawktastic as a redhead. haven't seen it for awhile. All I remember is that corny mickey mouse/product placement t-shirt Gordon Bombay wears.
But that "Stay Gold" song damn near kills the movie.
Quote from: hacksparrowQuote from: StefenQuote from: MacGuffinI guess I'm the only one (as usual) who liked:
Tucker
Rumble Fish
The Outsiders
The Rainmaker (along with The Firm, the best Grisham adaptation)
Peggy Sue Got Married
No, your not the only one. I'm a big fan of Tucker, Peggy Sue, and most importantly the outsiders. the outsiders only because Diane Lane is hottily rawktastic as a redhead. haven't seen it for awhile. All I remember is that corny mickey mouse/product placement t-shirt Gordon Bombay wears.
But that "Stay Gold" song damn near kills the movie.
yeah, it is corny as hell. I think it was in the book also though. But come on, your gonna turn down this? http://www.dianelanefan.dnswh.com/OS-005.jpg
Quote from: StefenQuote from: MacGuffinI guess I'm the only one (as usual) who liked:
Tucker
Rumble Fish
The Outsiders
The Rainmaker (along with The Firm, the best Grisham adaptation)
Peggy Sue Got Married
No, your not the only one. I'm a big fan of Tucker, Peggy Sue, and most importantly the outsiders. the outsiders only because Diane Lane is hottily rawktastic as a redhead. haven't seen it for awhile. All I remember is that corny mickey mouse/product placement t-shirt Gordon Bombay wears.
I second all of the above notions. Plus Rumble Fish had it all over Pleasantville (Schindler's List, too) what with the black and white film, and the red fish Mickey Rourke sees.
"You know a rumble ain't a rumble without me!"
Quote from: Stefenyeah, it is corny as hell. I think it was in the book also though. But come on, your gonna turn down this? http://www.dianelanefan.dnswh.com/OS-005.jpg
They should make Diane Lane flavored ice cream.
Quote from: hacksparrowQuote from: Stefenyeah, it is corny as hell. I think it was in the book also though. But come on, your gonna turn down this? http://www.dianelanefan.dnswh.com/OS-005.jpg
They should make Diane Lane flavored ice cream.
Future XIXAX.com marquee there.
I'd never seen any of the Godfather movies, so I watched them all today, back to back. The first two: brilliant. The third: good, but rather perfunctory. It would have been better if they never made it, but the opera finale is brilliantly staged. I also enjoyed the Vatican conspiracy stuff, although I might have liked to see it in a different movie. But the first two...my expectations were met. A good day. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stop staring at pixels and go to bed.
Now go listen to the excellent commentary tracks.
Quote from: MacGuffinNow go listen to the excellent commentary tracks.
They are excelent, no doubt, but Coppola's voice is kind of weird.
Quote from: ElPandaRoyalThey are excelent, no doubt, but Coppola's voice is kind of weird.
Not as weird as it taking Ghosty this long to finally watch The Godfather...
What can I say, I'm a procrastinator. Also, I really have to force myself to watch things at home...I'm a big screen junkie. But in the interest of cinema history, I've gotten a lot better at sitting down in front of my TV.
I guess it was a sort of timely decision to view them on Wednesday.
Quote from: mutinycoQuote from: ElPandaRoyalThey are excelent, no doubt, but Coppola's voice is kind of weird.
Not as weird as it taking Ghosty this long to finally watch The Godfather...
not as weird as you calling him "ghosty".
Quote from: GhostboyWhat can I say, I'm a procrastinator. Also, I really have to force myself to watch things at home...I'm a big screen junkie. But in the interest of cinema history, I've gotten a lot better at sitting down in front of my TV.
I guess it was a sort of timely decision to view them on Wednesday.
You were just waiting to sit down and watch the entire trilogy at once. It's okay, I've still never seen Gone With the Wind.
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so, i started my Coppola Week this month with One From The Heart. between this and new york, new york, its interesting to see two of the 70's biggest directors try (and fail) to resurrect the musical. both tried to combine a classic musical format with more modern touches. the story was a familiar one, a couple whose relationship has gone stale, breaks up, investigates other relationships and wind up back together. harry dean stanton and nastassja kinski made interesting supporting characters. but because of the constantly changing tone of the film it was hard to actually care about what was going on, HOWEVER i was never bored.
this was singlehandedly due to the way this movie was shot. the lighting colors in every scene were just wildly vibrant. greens, blues, reds, yellows, sometimes in the same room! they also never wanted to stay one color for the course of a whole shot, if it started out fully lit the shot would end up a silhouette, etc. *(there is a great shot where a blue neon sign turns into kinski's face that is just fantastic.) in addition the camera movement was creative (if not a little distracting). this was all due obviously to shooting the entire thing on a soundstage and coppola taking full advantage of that by making every shot interesting to look at if nothing else.
perhaps he became so consumed he forgot about telling a good story, or perhaps he just couldnt nail the proper tone between a musical and a modern romance, or perhaps he just fucked up. i didnt think about it at the time, but after reading a review or two i can see an influence on Moulin Rouge (which i love) so, maybe fans of that film can appreciate this for trying as it did. regardless, it was certainly an interesting failure if nothing else and i almost want to recommend that people watch it just for that reason.
More thoughts on One From the Heart: http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=5404&highlight=coppola
yeah i was looking for that. thanks.
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a few nights ago i watched Rumble Fish. which, during the film i kept thinking 'wow this seems like the Outsiders'. not until after did i find out they were based on books by the same author.
regardless, this movie was also, worthwhile but overall a miss. its so interesting though that when the 80s hit Coppola sort of went 'i'm the future of cinema, at least thats what everyone has told me for the past 10 years, so what the hell do i do now?' and he tried something weird and different with One from the Heart and that didnt work, and went 180 degrees with Rumble Fish and that didnt really work either.
also, this movie had a UGE cast. in the first five minutes there was Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Nic Cage, Tom Waits, Chris Penn, Lawrence Fishburne, plus the later addition of Dennis Hopper and Mickey Rourke. mickey rourke, i've recently discovered must've been the absolute coolest guy on the planet for about 5 years in the early 80s. i'd only known him from his 'comeback' roles in Spun and OUATIM, and he is completely different (looking sounding everything). Matt Dillon, on the other hand IS and has always been absolutely terrible. i dont know how keanu reeves catches as much flack without any being directed at this guy. he's awful and how he scored lead roles in movies with Gus Van Sant, Cameron Crowe and FF Coppola is just beyond me. and since the movie rests somewhat on his shoulders, i just couldnt love it.
its almost impossible for me to believe that the guy who made 2 Godfathers and Apocalypse Now went ON to make THIS MOVIE! i just cannot believe it. it seems like he was de-evolving because i could've swore i was watching like his student film. which is really exactly what this seemed like. the black and white the moody character driven without really going anywhere, fish symbolism ( and selective color), and the overbearing impressionistic score by police drummer Stewart Copeland! (although i could hear shades of Brions percussive pdl score in there....) it really just seemed like a (really good) film he could've made in college. but like i said it was 180 from OFTH, so i guess he knew he was supposed to do something with cinema, but just didnt have a clue what it was. but again, i was never bored but never completely captivated.
for anyone who hasnt seen either, if only for historical purposes, i RECOMMEND a double feature of One from the Heart and Rumble Fish. it will blow minds.
Has anyone seen You're a Big Boy Now?
I found it to be rather sloppy, but nonetheless entertaining. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061209/
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saw The Cotton Club and Tucker: The Man and His Dream today. the cotton club was watchable, but not great. from what i read about his becoming attached to the project when it was already way over budget and only having a short time till he began to film and as many drafts of the script as he had written to film, i give him a lot of credit for being able to make the best of it not so bad. the film itself seemed like a cross between New York, New York and Once Upon A Time In America, but not as bad as either. it was interesting to see a handful of the Coppola Regulars again (Diane Lane, Tom Waits, Nic Cage, Lawrence Fishburne) and Gere was pretty good as the lead but there just wasnt enough going for this film to really make it interesting. (again, its just unfathomable how the man who made the Godfather could go on to make this. was it just a fluke?)
Tucker was pretty good and very enjoyable. it was interesting to note the similarities to Seabiscuit as far as Jeff Bridges character and even the narration, historical americana feel, etc. the first 30 minutes or so of the film were just pure joy until things started to go wrong. by the end of the film i felt more beaten down than the lead character for all the things they had tried to do to him. it was an interesting story, and also interesting to see Coppola put a few of his One From The Heart filmmaking techniques to good use in this film where they were used selectively and well.
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FINALLY finished up Coppola week (two weeks, whatever) with The Rainmaker yesterday. i really have never been interested in a courtroom or john grisham-type movie but i was entertained nonetheless. great cast, incl. matt damon pre-anybody-giving-a-shit-who-he-is, (peak) claire danes (where the hell has she been?), mickey rourke (pre-comeback) and danny devito and jon voight. story kept me interested and cast kept me entertained. pretty good, but sort of by-the-numbers seeming movie. what kept ringing in my head was a quote by coppola (i believe) about basically being ashamed at having to do a john grisham adaptation when he really wanted to be an auteur. that was kind of sad, especially when he was able to make it pretty good. so, i think the ones i've seen would go something like this...
1. the godfather pt. 1 and pt. 2
2. apocalypse now
3. bram stokers dracula
4. the conversation
5. tucker: the man and his dream
6. the rainmaker
7. one from the heart
8. the outsiders
9. rumble fish
10. godfather pt. 3
11. peggy sue got married
12. cotton club
So glad to see that someone else thinks Rainmaker is an underrated flick.
And why did you skip over Jack? :wink:
Putin Praises Coppola's Films
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the works of director Francis Ford Coppola as the two met for tea at the Kremlin before Coppola received a film award.
"In Russia your works are well known and highly valued," Putin told Coppola during a televised portion of the meeting Saturday. He said he was not just referring to "The Godfather" which is extremely popular in Russia but also to films "that so accurately tell of the horrors of war."
Coppola, in turn, lauded Putin's speech marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, during which Putin said he was ashamed of anti-Semitism's existence in Russia.
"Excellent speech," Coppola said. "But in person you look much younger than you did on TV."
Coppola was in Moscow to receive a Golden Eagle award from Russia's National Academy of Cinematic Arts and Sciences for his contribution to world cinematography.
Coppola gave Putin a DVD of "Lost in Translation," for which his daughter, Sofia Coppola, won an Oscar for best original screenplay in 2004.
Coppola told Putin that both he and his daughter had won their first Oscar at age 32, and the Russian president responded, "Now your granddaughter must do it."
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American film director Francis Ford Coppola, left, gives a DVD copy of his daughter Sofia Coppola's movie "Lost in Translation" to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2005. Coppola met with Putin in the Kremlin hours ahead of a ceremony in which he was to receive a Golden Eagle, a Russian award, for his contribution to world cinematography.
Quote from: MacGuffinPutin Praises Coppola's Films
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Aw, man, Coppola didn't even take those annoying anti-theft stickers off the DVD before giving it to Putin.
This'll cause an international incident, you just watch.
2LB
That picture would have some serious photoshop potential if you could make out the DVD cover.
Tomorrow's headline:
Putin pans 'Lost In Translation'; returns gift
What about Peggy Sue Got Married and Gardens of Stone? To me, Coppola and Lucas were on parallel tracks -- they could do no wrong in the 70's, but neither could make a watchable film in the 80's.
The first four adaptations of Grisham novels ( The Firm, Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill) were prosaic films by Hollywood journeymen directors. The Rainmaker was the first time an auteur tackled Grisham, followed in short order by Robert Altman's Gingerbread Man.
It is interesting and instructive to see how Coppola and Altman find interesting ways to give Grisham legal thrillers a certain amount of style (as opposed to Joel Schumacher's straightforward approach).
Godfather video game (http://ps2.ign.com/articles/586/586934p1.html)
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hmm. his fingers are bigger than that glass of wine.
Now he's dead.
does anyone have a copy of hearts of darkness: a filmmakers apocolypse?
saw a vhs years ago been trying to find a copy ever since.
Quote from: cowboykurtisdoes anyone have a copy of hearts of darkness: a filmmakers apocolypse?
saw a vhs years ago been trying to find a copy ever since.
I do. Though only on the computer. PM me...
Quote from: kotteQuote from: cowboykurtisdoes anyone have a copy of hearts of darkness: a filmmakers apocolypse?
saw a vhs years ago been trying to find a copy ever since.
I do. Though only on the computer. PM me...
for some reason my toolbar funtion doesn't work on this webpage - i can't search, or PM. If you wound't mind could u try Pm me?
thanks kotte
Coppola Angry Over 'Godfather' Video Game
Francis Ford Coppola is up in arms over Paramount's decision to produce (with videogame makers Electronic Arts) a videogame based on his The Godfather movies. In a taped interview due to air on AMC's Sunday Morning ShootOut this Sunday, Coppola said that the studio had never mentioned its plans to release a Godfather videogame. "I knew nothing about it. They never asked me if I thought it was a good idea," Coppola said. Calling Coppola's movie, "one of history's most revered masterpieces," Electronic Arts says on it website that the game, due to be released in the fall, "serves as inspiration for the game as gamers will join the Corleone family and earn respect through loyalty and fear." Coppola says that he was able to get a preview of the game. "They use the characters everyone knows ... and then for the next hour they shoot and kill each other. I had absolutely nothing to do with the game and I disapprove."
Coppola's Megalopolis Update
Epic sci-fi flick status.
Director Francis Ford Coppola has confirmed that his long-in-development epic sci-fi project Megalopolis is on ice. According to Estrenos de Cine (and picked up by Dark Horizons), Coppola advised the press at the Italian Busto Arsizio Festival this week that he won't be making the picture any time soon.
"It's a very ambitious project, perhaps too much," he says. The legendary filmmaker behind such films as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now says he's focusing on a much different project right now: opening an inn in Southern Italy.
The project, which has been in development for years, was once described by Coppola as "the story of one man's battle to build an ideal world ... Megalopolis will be set in contemporary New York and will follow its hero's fight to realize his dream to build a city of the future."
Various big-name actors have been associated with the project over the years and hours of second unit footage are rumored to exist. We'll let you know if anything more develops.
this is crap... :(
Quote from: MacGuffinhe's focusing on a much different project right now: opening an inn in Southern Italy.
MOTHER FUCKER
How do you go from this:
Quote"the story of one man's battle to build an ideal world ... Megalopolis will be set in contemporary New York and will follow its hero's fight to realize his dream to build a city of the future."
to this:
Quoteopening an inn in Southern Italy.
:?:
he figured he might as well live out the film first.
i hope its the best inn since the godfather. it SHOULD be.
at least his sauce is still delicioso!
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Universal's Rumble Fish: Special Edition (9/13 - SRP $19.98 ) will include anamorphic widescreen video, Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, commentary with director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted scenes, featurettes and more.
I saw Copolla get a Lifetime Achievment thing at Lincoln Center, and his speech was basically, 'you'll spend a lot of money to throw me this ceremony, but I'm going door to door trying to get money for my epic, Megalopolis, and no one's giving.'
Nice enough guy afterwards, tho.
id love francis to ditch the epic for now. Most people in the industry judge coppola based on Jack and Supernova. Let's admit, his most recent endeavors are from the good ole' days of coppola. As we've seen, he's having a very hard time finding money for such an ambitious endeavor.. In the mean time, while looking for money, I'd love to see him do a small character peice like the conversation - get back to the basics. He could easily fund a smaller film himself.
myabe santa will grant me this for christmas?
you give him good actors, a good photographer, a good script, and A LOT OF FOOTAGE (ie, let him shoot a HUGE amount of material to cut from), pressure, and Walter Murch, you'll get a masterpeice.
Remove any one element, you're basically screwed.
Quote from: cowboykurtisid love francis to ditch the epic for now. Most people in the industry judge coppola based on Jack and Supernova. Let's admit, his most recent endeavors are from the good ole' days of coppola. As we've seen, he's having a very hard time finding money for such an ambitious endeavor.. In the mean time, while looking for money, I'd love to see him do a small character peice like the conversation - get back to the basics. He could easily fund a smaller film himself.
I have a feeling we'll see Jeepers Creepers 3 before such a film from FFC himself.
It's funny, he mentioned those movies. He said he's doing everything he can to raise the money for Megalopolis. His website, his wine... As he said, we're making these hollywood commercial thrillers for teens, the Jeepers Creepers movies, which are making us a lot of money to put into Megalopolis, in the old American Zoetrope model.
that kinda sucks.
Warner has also announced The Outsiders: The Complete Novel - Special Edition for 9/20 (SRP $26.99). The 2-disc set will include a new longer version of the film in anamorphic widescreen (with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio), featuring footage newly-restored by director Francis Ford Coppola himself. Some 22 minutes of footage has been added, including a new beginning and ending "more true to the book." Extras are expected to include 10 minutes of additional deleted scenes (available separately), a new introduction and audio commentary by Coppola, a new introduction and audio commentary by the actors (including Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe and Diane Lane), the Staying Gold and On Location with S.E. Hinton documentaries, 3 featurettes (The Outsiders on Location, NBC Today Show: Fresno Book to Film and Hollywood Close-Up: The Premiere at Lonestar-Fresno), a look at the casting of the film with never-before-seen screen test and audition footage, and the film's 1983 and 2005 theatrical trailers.
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what's up with emilio estevez not wanting to revisit his past?
I've had my little snapper dvd of the outsiders since as far back as I can remember, it was like 10 bucks. Suits me fine. The commentary may be interesting though.
Quote from: Stefen Posts Ghetto?I've had my little snapper dvd of the outsiders since as far back as I can remember, it was like 10 bucks. Suits me fine. The commentary may be interesting though.
you're not interested in the new beginning/ending and 22 minutes of footage put back into the film?
Awesome news! Now where the hell is the Rumble Fish special edition to go along with it????
Quote from: Weak2ndActAwesome news! Now where the hell is the Rumble Fish special edition to go along with it????
Back one page, at the very bottom.
:oops: :yabbse-thumbup:
Quote from: themodernage02Quote from: Stefen Posts Ghetto?I've had my little snapper dvd of the outsiders since as far back as I can remember, it was like 10 bucks. Suits me fine. The commentary may be interesting though.
you're not interested in the new beginning/ending and 22 minutes of footage put back into the film?
No, does it have that? I hate that stuff. I like it fine the way it is.
Quote from: kotteQuote from: cowboykurtisdoes anyone have a copy of hearts of darkness: a filmmakers apocolypse?
saw a vhs years ago been trying to find a copy ever since.
I do. Though only on the computer. PM me...
sir kotte, i know this is much of a delayed resonpse - but, what format do you have it?
Quote from: kotte
I do. Though only on the computer. PM me...
i read his post - im wondering what file format - whether it would be possible to do a file transfer.
I still have high hopes for Megalopolis. No matter how long it takes, it will be on par with Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. Maybe FFC's movies like Jack have made it a bit difficult. Like Woody Allen said if you act like an artist they'll treat you like one, and Jack was not exactly a work of art to me (but it was still good entertainment).
This makes me think about the behind-the-scenes on Virgin Suicides, where Francis tells Sofia to "bring home the bacon."
Quote from: thadius sterling
This makes me think about the behind-the-scenes on Virgin Suicides, where Francis tells Sofia to "bring home the bacon."
Good advice. I also have high hopes for Megalopolis, but I am still a bit worried how long it'll take.
Quote from: cowboykurtisQuote from: kotteQuote from: cowboykurtisdoes anyone have a copy of hearts of darkness: a filmmakers apocolypse?
saw a vhs years ago been trying to find a copy ever since.
I do. Though only on the computer. PM me...
sir kotte, i know this is much of a delayed resonpse - but, what format do you have it?
.avi
I can send it to you via msn if you want...
Director's Cut: The Outsiders
Francis Ford Coppola messes with a good thing -- and makes it even better.
"I had always intended it as an epic for kids," Francis Ford Coppola says of his 1983 adapation of S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders, which helped launch the careers of Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, and Patrick Swayze. Unfortunately, Warner Bros. didn't see it the same way: After the studio insisted that Coppola's rough cut was too long, he trimmed it by nearly 30 minutes. Now, more than two decades later, the director is releasing both a theatrical and DVD version of The Outsiders: The Complete Novel, with a new rock-infused soundtrack and several reinserted scenes, including a different beginning and ending. "It's not like I want to correct every film I work on," Coppola says, "but this was one I felt could be better served today."
Premiere: So, what made you decide to revisit The Outsiders after all this time?
Coppola: I would get letters from a new crop of fourteen-year-olds saying, "I like the movie, but why didn't you have the scene where Sodapop argues with his brothers? Or the beginning where Ponyboy gets hassled by the Socs?" It reached its culmination two or three years ago when my granddaughter's class was reading the book, and I was asked to [show them the movie] and talk about it. So I cobbled together a new version of the complete novel.
Premiere: In the 1983 release, you were credited as Francis Coppola, but for The Complete Novel, "Ford" has been added. What's up with that?
When I finished Apocalypse Now, I decided that three names was too pretentious, so I thought I'd just use Francis Coppola. I also has a theory that if I was a Spanish lord and my name was Javier Jesus De La Tara Lalala, I would use the whole thing once, and after that, I would just call myself Javier.
Premiere: Then why bother putting it in?
Coppola: Because later on in my career, everyone said, "I really liked it when you used Francis Ford Coppola." In Europe, they think Francis Ford Coppola is one name.
Premiere: How did the cast react to the new version?
Coppola: I think most of them -- Rob Lowe in particular -- feel really vindicated. Imagine how devastating it was that some of his most important scenes were cut out.
Premiere: Now that the movie is more faithful to the book, do you think those letters will finally stop coming?
Coppola: Well, now I can say, "You'll be happy to know there's gonna be a new version. Give me your address and I'll send you one."
Quote from: macagePremiere: In the 1983 release, you were credited as Francis Coppola, but for The Complete Novel, "Ford" has been added. What's up with that?
When I finished Apocalypse Now, I decided that three names was too pretentious, so I thought I'd just use Francis Coppola. I also has a theory that if I was a Spanish lord and my name was Javier Jesus De La Tara Lalala, I would use the whole thing once, and after that, I would just call myself Javier.
Premiere: Then why bother putting it in?
Coppola: Because later on in my career, everyone said, "I really liked it when you used Francis Ford Coppola." In Europe, they think Francis Ford Coppola is one name.
stop talking about ur damn name and make a movie already! sheesH!
QuoteCoppola: Well, now I can say, "You'll be happy to know there's gonna be a new version. Give me your address and I'll send you one."
everyone do this.
I just did.
Quote from: POZERI just did.
Dude! Francis Ford Coppola has your address now! He's gonna steal your identity! Don't you watch "60 Minutes"?
Coppola Returns to 'The Outsiders'
After the critical and commercial disaster of "One From the Heart" and the failure of his Zoetrope movie studio, a bankrupt Francis Ford Coppola found himself at "the beginning of a very continuing low period."
He had to pay off creditors, who were, as he puts it, "holding everything," including his beloved winery.
"So I didn't have a lot of leeway," the 66-year-old filmmaker told The Associated Press. "I had to get a job every year and in the late '80s it got even worse."
Even he calls it a "fall from grace," going from directing "The Godfather" I and II, "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now" as well as writing "Patton" accumulating five Oscars in the '70s to a director-for-hire of such movies as "The Cotton Club" "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Gardens of Stone."
The job Coppola took in early 1982, "The Outsiders" may have seemed like one of those projects, but it came to him through the mail and became a labor of love.
A librarian at the Lone Star Junior High School in Fresno, Calif wrote him:
"We are all so impressed with the book, `The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, that a petition has been circulated asking that it be made into a movie. We have chosen you to send it to. In hopes that you might also see the possibilities of a movie, we have enclosed a copy of the book."
"It was signed by like 110 little signatures," he recalled. "Who can ignore that?"
He didn't. And on Sept. 20 he's putting out a two-disc DVD with a version 22 minutes longer.
Over the years, Coppola has received letters from kids praising the movie, but wondering why more of their favorite book wasn't in it.
"I think for me, the showdown was when my granddaughter's class asked me to come and show the film and I was embarrassed to show the normal version," says Coppola. "So I cobbled together a version of the whole movie, the whole novel, and I remember looking at it and wondering, `Why did I ever cut this down?'"
The chief addition to the movie (subtitled "The Complete Novel") is a long opening sequence that better establishes the characters. There is more of the Curtis brothers, including one scene showing an intimate conversation in bed.
"There was a little bit of tittering when the young boys were in bed, partly because they were such beautiful kids," Coppola said. "But of course, brothers have slept together in beds for hundreds of years."
Also new is more rock 'n' roll replacing his father's sweeping, orchestral score. Coppola had originally wanted to do the whole film with Elvis Presley songs.
Making the film in the first place amounted to an escape for Coppola. "One From the Heart," a lavish musical for which he supplied much of the $24 million budget himself, was savaged by reviewers and yanked from theaters.
"There was a bit of a backlash against Francis at that point," says Matt Dillon, who starred in "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish" for Coppola. "He had succeeded at such a daring, high level for so long."
And Zoetrope had been put up for auction.
So as a getaway, Coppola took up the offer of the kids from Fresno and headed for Tulsa, Okla., where he would shoot "The Outsiders" and then decide to adapt "Rumble Fish," another S.E. Hinton book.
"It was, I hate to say, maybe therapy," said Fred Roos, who produced "The Outsiders" and many of Coppola's films.
Harkening back to the crucible of making "Apocalypse Now" a few years earlier as well as the "Heart" fiasco and bankruptcy, Roos said: "He just wanted to get out of town and be with kids, young actors."
Coppola, ever concerned that "The Godfather" threw him off his original, smaller ambitions, saw it as a return to his natural self: "I think it was more like the original Francis before `The Godfather' who just wanted to make personal films and use sensible-sized crews and equipment."
For the '50s teen drama about the battle between the kids from the wrong side of the tracks (the "Greasers") and the preppy kids (the "Socs"), Coppola assembled a cast of then up-and-comers: Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise.
Dillon remembers extensive rehearsal for the film conceived of as an epic, widescreen "Gone With the Wind"-for-kids but doesn't recall a downtrodden Coppola.
"I never got the sense that he was licking any wounds," the actor said. "Who would know better than Francis about the ups and downs of being a creative person, to roll with the punches?"
More punches would follow. Though "The Outsiders" was a modest success ($26 million in domestic box office), the critics didn't like the sentimentalized tale of troubled kids fending for themselves in a seemingly parentless small town.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times said the movie wasn't "conventionally bad. It is spectacularly out of touch, a laughably earnest attempt to impose heroic attitudes on some nice, small characters purloined from a `young-adult' novel."
As with "Apocalypse Now" and "One From the Heart," Coppola succumbed to pressure to shorten "The Outsiders."
"And sometimes, the wise thing to do is to lengthen," he maintained.
After "Apocalypse Now Redux," the 2003 reissue of "One From the Heart" and now "The Outsiders," Coppola said he's done with revisionism and continues to think about what his next film might be.
He's taken a year's break from "Megalopolis," a script about New York in the future that he's labored on for more than two decades.
"`Megalopolis' is like being in love with a beautiful woman who doesn't want you," he said. "So you don't get to meet anyone else and you don't get her."
FFC did a commentary for the new Patton DVD.
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10 Questions for Francis Ford Coppola
Source: Time Magazine
With his Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now due out in a DVD set this month and production of his next movie, Youth Without Youth, completed, Academy Award--winning director, vintner and hotelier Francis Ford Coppola talks with TIME's Rebecca Winters Keegan about why all war movies are antiwar movies, what grapes have done for his filmmaking career and what he has learned from his daughter, Oscar-winning screenwriter Sofia Coppola.
You say you never thought of Apocalypse Now as an antiwar movie. If this isn't an antiwar movie, what is?
All war movies are antiwar movies in that they describe horrible incidents and the most profound thing of all, to lose a young person. But I was more interested in examining the idea, from Heart of Darkness, that society could send people in to kill on behalf of some moral ideal.
The DVD contains the 1979 version of Apocalypse Now and the longer Redux version, released in 2001. Which do you prefer?
I like it longer. When it first came out, it was supposed to be a Hollywood war movie, but the first people saw it and said, "This is surreal." I got sort of shy, and so we cut it. Years later, I was in a hotel room in London and it came on, and I watched and I thought, "Hey, this isn't strange at all." I realized that over the years we, the audience, had changed.
Making Apocalypse Now almost killed you. As a young director, did you think art was worth dying for?
I was forlorn and frightened, but reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated. The Godfather was equally tough because I had little kids and I was always on the verge of being fired. Is art worth it? Probably yes.
What percentage of your films is the product of happy accidents?
Art is partly being available to accidents that fall into your lap. The ideal way to work on a project is to ask a question you don't know the answer to.
You say you would like to make "little" films now. Is this a promising time for directors with that ambition?
The movie industry is interested in films that can have sequels--"tent poles," they call them. But theoretically, every work of art is unique. My generation wanted to make personal films. A Fellini film was a Fellini film, and no one else could have made it. In wine, we call it terroir--wine speaks of the earth it comes from.
With your wealth and Hollywood stature, surely you of all people can make a personal film.
I'm fortunate to have made it in other industries, like the resort industry and the wine industry, so I could finance a small film myself every couple of years and have my dream come true. And that's what I aspire to do.
Is Youth Without Youth a "little" film?
It's a story by Mircea Eliade, a Romanian writer, that I found provocative. It wasn't about undercover cops. It was about consciousness. It starts in 1938 and runs through the Second World War and goes from Bucharest to Switzerland to India to Malta. It's a big movie in terms of tackling the production. But I financed it through my wine business, and I took a page from Sofia's--my daughter's--book where she had made Lost in Translation for just a modest amount.
I was going to ask you what you have taught Sofia about filmmaking, but perhaps I should ask what she's taught you?
I had been hitting my head against the wall for six years on a big, ambitious project, and I realized, well, even if I get this thing where I like it, who's gonna wanna make a movie that's so unusual? It's like being in love with a woman who doesn't want you. So I thought, well, I'll do what Sofia did and make a more modest film that I can just go out and do.
Why do you call yourself a young old man?
I still have the feelings of a 16-year-old. All my life I wanted to be a writer. I'm thinking now of an original story I would love to be able to pull off for my own self-respect. Choice is a theme I want to look at. When I was younger, it was regulated--you're gonna get through school, get married, have kids. Now there's a million variations on that. I think I'm more interested in personal questions.
Do you have a personal story you're saving until ...
Until all my relatives die? All of us have stories related to our families. I'm sure I could go to town if I had the courage to do it.
from AICN...
I attended a Q & A with Francis Ford Coppola at the DGA Tuesday night. I'm surprised that no report has yet showed up on your site, as there were tons of USC and UCLA film students in attendance. Anyway, here's a report if you want one ( please forgive the typos):
The evening started out with approximately 50 minutes of clips from the new Apocalypse Now DVD. Then Coppola entered -- it was quite a thrill to be in the same room with the man responsible for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. I'm not sure how long the Q & A lasted, but it seemed to go on a for at least 90 minutes. Coppola had a very "mentorly/fatherly" air, and was very gracious in answering students' questions. He was very candid with his answers, and there did not seem to be any questions that were "off limits."
Here are some of the highlights:
Coppola's new film Youth Without Youth is currently being edited by his longtime collaborator Walter Murch. I don't believe Coppola mentioned a release date. He said that the current cut of the movie was around 2 hours and 45 minutes, and gave the impression that it was going to be shortened. He alluded to some other film projects in the works, which he described as "personal films."
He mentioned the fact that he hasn't directed a movie in ten years. He said that he has been writing a screenplay called Megalopolis, which has not lived up to his expectations.
When asked about how he felt about the move away from film to digital cinematography, he responded that "you have to use the weapons that are on hand." He said that he did not believe anyone would be shooting on film in four years.
The new DVD release of Apocalypse Now has been criticized by completists for not including the "Heart of Darkness" documentary. Coppola said that he didn't want to include the documentary because he considered it a separate film, not a "supplement." He also said that another company(Showtime) produced "Hearts of Darkness," and there would have been complicated rights issues involved in including it. He also mentioned that not everything in the documentary was accurate or fair to him; some of the footage was taken out of context. He wished that he could do a commentary track on the documentary to correct the misimpressions.
Regarding his opinion on the neverending conflict in the Middle East -- he mentioned something about how he wanted to gather a group of Palestinean and Israeli artists, and have them create art together, while discussing ways of solving their problems -- then film the experience and show it in cinemas across the world. (It was something like that ... it sounded a lot more eloquent when Coppola described it.) I got the impression that this was more of an idea rather than a firm project that he had in mind.
On firing Harvey Keitel and re-casting Martin Sheen as Willard in Apocalypse-- he said that it was one of the few times in his career that he had to fire an actor, and it was a very difficult thing to do. He said that Keitel was more from the New York school of acting and drew too much attention to himself -- which he felt was inappropriate for the character, who he viewed as being more passive.
He was quite vocal in his dislike for The Godfather video game.
The water buffalo that was killed at the end of Apocalypse was already going to be sacrificed. Coppola said that he just filmed the sacrifice -- it was not killed specifically for the film; it was going to be killed anyway. However, he did have another water buffalo on hand in case they needed to do another take.
He thinks studios and filmmakers put too much emphasis pursuing blockbusters and franchises, and urged filmmakers to pursue personal films.
I was also surprised to learn that Coppola actually owned Apocalypse Now -- meaning, I assume, that he owns the actual film negative and all rights. He said that Paramount holds the film in trust for him, but he is actually owner. He mentioned that he also owns The Conversation, and that Sofia Coppola owns Lost in Translation.
The Godfather Returns
The five time Academy Award winner just wrapped his first movie since 1997's ''The Rainmaker''
Source: EW
Legends often disappear — it's how they protect their legacy against the fading of inspiration and popular demand. But nobody expected it from Francis Ford Coppola, who survived both exaltation (Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now) and a fall from grace (Godfather III, Jack). In 1997 — after releasing the John Grisham thriller The Rainmaker — the five-time Oscar winner abandoned filmmaking for his Napa Valley vineyard, which he quickly built into a hugely profitable empire.
Now, just as unexpectedly, he's roaring back, with a pair of movies he's writing, directing, and financing himself. He just finished editing Youth Without Youth, a philosophical time-travel romance starring Tim Roth and, in an uncredited cameo, Matt Damon. He hopes to shoot his next film, an immigrant saga called Tetro, this fall. In a revealing chat, the 67-year-old discusses his burst of creativity, a desire to go amateur, and the misunderstood work of his new mentor: Sofia Coppola.
What can you tell us about Tetro?
It goes back to what I was doing on The Conversation and The Rain People: writing out of my heart. It's an original screenplay set in Buenos Aires, which has an enormous Italian immigrant population. It has to do with a younger brother going out to find an older brother [played by Matt Dillon] who had left his family 15 years before.
Do you feel like you've gotten your groove back?
I'm announcing a new phase where I make more personal films. [That's]what I started out doing. Then I had this fabulous accident that was The Godfather, which changed my life. I found myself shifting from my original intention, which was more akin to Woody Allen. Every year he'd write a screenplay and make a pretty good personal film. I always admired him.
Your last movie was The Rainmaker. Did that play a role in your decision to quit making Hollywood movies?
I knew it before. I was going to use the money I had earned to sponsor a big personal film [Megalopolis, an urban fantasy script that he's been working on for two decades] because I thought, ''I'm known for big productions like Apocalypse Now...'' I did work quite hard on this screenplay and I was never able to lick it. I finally took a cue from my daughter, who went off and made [Lost in Translation] quickly and successfully. I thought I could do another project the same way. And when I read Youth Without Youth [a novella by Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade], I said, ''I could afford to just jump in and make this movie.'' It takes place throughout the '30s and '40s in Berlin, and it's a love story about life and how we see time and consciousness.
How did it feel to get back in the director's chair?
Whether you're introducing a new line of wines or directing a film, you're in a similar position: You're putting on a show. I approached it like a 17-year-old, which was to not be intimidated by my own experience.
Has Sofia seen Youth?
We're going to have the baptism of her new baby in a month, so I'll show it to them all then.
Do you and Sofia trade advice on your works in progress?
I'm totally proud of Sofia because she makes films so uncompromisingly. I personally feel that Marie Antoinette was one of the most original films of the year. But to watch it come out and see it attacked... She's very copacetic about it, and I, as her father, am very annoyed.... It's the third film in a very impressive young career. Fortunately, she's made of steel.
Quote from: MacGuffin on March 22, 2007, 12:54:44 PM
Woody Allen. Every year he'd write a screenplay and make a pretty good personal film. I always admired him.
is Woody Allen dead?
Harry sits down in Austin with Francis Ford Coppola and talks YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, Seventies film, Wine, TETRO and the Coppolas
Source: AICN
Hey folks, Harry here... Yesterday was one of those momentous days in one's life. It began with Yoko and I going to the post office to mail out the wedding invitations. As the stamps were affixed, it seemed to finalize in our minds the fact that, indeed, we're getting married. After that, I was to go to the fabulous Driskill Hotel on 6th Street to interview, one on one with Francis Ford Coppola.
I wasn't so much as nervous about this meeting, as much as I was stunned that it was happening. That I would be sitting down with Coppola in my home town, in the classiest hotel in town, in his room... 1 on 1. It was incredible. Then afterwards, I was going to the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, to meet Farley Granger to watch my favorite Hitchcock film, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and have Farley autograph my original 1-sheet to me. It was a great day/night.
I found Coppola to be a relaxed and calming personality. There was no tension in the room, he seemed to be exactly a physical reflection of the surroundings he was in. Classy, comfortable and hospitable.
Some notes on the below interview. This is actually, the first time... in history, that I've done a sit down in-person ONE on ONE interview. So in preparation for the interview, I bought a fancy mini-tape hand held voice recorder and... after testing it... it turns out, I had it on a setting called VOX, which throughout the interview, it just would shut off, then turn back on. Sometimes missing great deals of our conversation.
What's missing? Essentially our rather lengthy discussion about Coppola's Wines, which I dearly love. And that he is extremely proud of. Also missing is most of the details upon his next film TETRO. That said, what I do have with you is close to 4000 words between Francis and myself.
I hope to have a chance in the future to bring Francis to town for a screening of YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH and to sit with him again, with better equipment to continue our conversation.
Thanks goes out to AICN intern extraordinaire, Mike for his transcription of the faulty tape - and I hope you readers out there enjoy this remarkable opportunity I had with the brilliant, Francis Ford Coppola...
Harry: So what brings you to Austin?
Coppola: Well, I always like to come to Austin and as you know, I'm doing a show... my wife's new documentary tonight, in a few hours and ... I basically told my company, "OK, I'll give you the month of May, but ..."
Harry: Yeah
Coppola: "... and be of what use I can be and then June I'm leaving, so take advantage of me..."
Harry: So you start filming down...
Coppola: Not filming, but I have to do the preparation...
Harry: Right..
Coppola: Right.
Harry: Cool. I'm supposed to give you the "Hello" from Guillermo del Toro.
Coppola: So you're friend is in London, right?
Harry: He's in Budapest at the moment and I'm heading to Bucharest at the end of the week, I'm supposed to meet him at the end of the week and catch up, so...
Coppola: How long has it been since you've seen him?
Harry: About a year
Coppola: How is his weight, how did that operation go for him?
Harry: He said it went pretty great and he's shed off quite a bit of weight, I'm actually supposed to go through the same process that he...
Coppola: ...went through...
Harry: Yeah.
Coppola: Yeah, it's for his health, you know he's got to really watch it. You too, ya know... you're young. How old are you?
Harry: I'm thirty-five.
Coppola: Oh, you're really young...
Harry: Yeah, I'm a kid, but speaking of youth, when I was reading the diary you had on the site for YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH... you had put out that you were concerned about great talent, recapturing the glory of their youth, and why great artists made great works at such a young age and then trying to recapture that for the rest of their careers, often times without success...
Coppola: Well it wasn't really a concern, I was really using that little essay in three parts, because it was the first time I had announced to our constituency of that site that I was going to return to directing ...it was a guessing game, where I first had one paragraph called "Youth," then a paragraph with a "W" and an "O" and then the third, but it was actually a game I was playing with them ...and they knew it was a "W" and they were trying to guess and you know, it was three little essays on, yes, the phenomenon of why... not to be concerned, but it was pretty evident in those paragraphs that I was just wondering why it is that often artists and novelists, playwrights make their mark when they are younger, than when they try to recapture or move past that and when they do, they discover they only had so many arrows in their quiver, I use that word a lot, quiver. ...but also, I noted that, you know, often these young people come to the public's attention when they are young, whereas it's very rare for someone to be discovered and have their imprint made later in life. I for one mentioned Bill Kennedy as an example of that... You know, just exploring what it takes. As I was saying earlier, that I feel all of us are given a certain quiver of arrows and once you expose them, that's somewhat it and so many... You know, even the great ones, even Tennessee Williams or Joseph Heller or Fellini or the guy with the, what's his name? You know a very famous writer that writes a lot about boxing, what's his name? (Francis was searching for Norman Mailer)
Harry: Yeah, I know, from the Ali/Forman documentary
Coppola: ...he writes a lot about boxing and anyway that guy that you know or who wrote FROM HERE TO ETERNITY? That's Jones? (James Jones)
Harry: Yeah.
Coppola: But, like if you get discovered and then you lay on what you got to lay on and then after you do that, you go on repeating yourself... few artists are able to come up later in their lives after exposing their few quivers, I would, I refer to arrows, but few with a whole new thing... Shakespeare could do it and you know, I was using it to tantalize my group there to the announcement of YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH.
Harry: You also mentioned trying to forget what you've learned as a filmmaker...
Coppola: Well that's also challenging myself and would I be able to, in a sense, be able to make myself young again by trying to forget everything I knew and approach film with in the years of experience making movies.
Harry: So you forget everything you that you know... What did you do on this that you short of shucked off what you have done in the past?
Coppola: Partly in setting up an auspices... in other words, without all the protection.
Harry: Right.
Coppola: I mean as, you know, you look at any important director and when they go out... certainly in the commercial film world, they go out with a script that has been evolved in a long process of... well there are scripts being developed for them and then when the floor get rewritten and they put other writers on it, like the best writers available... they'll take the best one and make that, then the other three will be shopped around for other directors and then they are sure to have the best cast that money can buy, the best photographer that money can buy... so they're going out pretty protected...
Harry: Yeah.
Coppola: ...whereas I was going to go and take myself and go to a place that no one can really get near me and get a cast and crew that may not, today be the best that money can buy, but who knows, it might evolve to be the best that money can buy - and with a script that I wrote myself, but I started off in my younger days wanting to be a playwright in the tradition of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neil.
Harry: You shot YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH digitally didn't you?
Coppola: I had never said how I did it, because I shot film and digital and I kind of maintained that everyone should look at it and kind of figure out how I did it...
Harry: Right.
Coppola: ...but, we did shoot film as well.
Harry: How did you come to the material, YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH?
Coppola: I had been working for a year that period, when I was working on MEGALOPOLIS, during the so-called 10 years when I wasn't doing anything, I was a little preoccupied on this script I wrote that I had made into an extremely ambitious project, that it was very difficult even to get feedback on it, given the fact that the sort of notes I would get would be related to the projects' financial or pop-value.
I didn't want that kind of narrow movie feedback, because I was trying to write a script that was even more ambitious than that. it'll grow up after a while... I sent it to a friend that I had known in high school who was a young woman who became a great [tape blurs here] ...at the University of Chicago and she read my script and gave me some notes, from a broader literary or intellectual perspective, which is what I wanted. That's what I was trying to do and in the course of it, she sent me a lot of quotes from Mercea Eliade, who was this professor and thinker from which I learned a lot of stuff. And she had a lot of quotes relative to a couple of the themes I was playing with related to the consciousness of MEGALOPOLIS and I became curious of the story that these quotes had come from and I managed to get it. It wasn't easy to get. When I read it, I just said "well, here I go. I'll just retell everybody and I'll just write this and go off on my own and use my own dough and just make a film." ...instead of being you know, stuck with this MEGALOPOLIS project which after the events of September 11th, 2001, I just didn't know how to continue with it.
Harry: Is that what happened to it? Was when 9/11, it...
Coppola: It made it really pretty tough... a movie about the aspiration of utopia with New York as a main character and then all of a sudden you couldn't write about New York without just dealing with what happened and the implications of what happened. The world was attacked and I didn't know how to try to do with that. I tried.
Harry: When do you think that you could revisit that material?
Coppola: I have abandoned that as of now. I'm now going to... I plan to begin a process of making one personal movie after another and if something leads me back to look at that, which I'm sure it might, I'll see what makes sense to me.
Harry: I think it's fascinating that you have decided to go and make personal films again, as opposed to the more commercial efforts like something like [THE] RAINMAKER... but did you feel that [THE] RAINMAKER and JACK and DRACULA and those films were more commercial fare, but I assume they were of course personal to you?
Coppola: I'll address that, but there's no question that those pictures where made at a time when I was financially way in hock at that time. You remember that I filed bankruptcy at that time, so I made a series of pictures to pay that off and then when I reached the point with DRACULA, that I had pretty much fixed that. My wife agreed with me, that I should make three more studio films to save money up and that I could keep that money separate and use it to make MEGALOPOLIS, so I made JACK, primarily to work with Robin Williams. It was his project and I was sort of suggested to him as a possibility, and Robin is a personality and a San Francisco neighbor that I had always wanted to collaborate with. I went into THE RAINMAKER pretty much because I was also fascinated by just [John] Grisham's knack to make bestselling stories. After I finished that one, I just said "well I've kind of had it and I'm not going to do a third one," [studio film] and then took the money I earned from most of it to put into MEGALOPOLIS and actually went to New York and did some tests and started looking at actors
Harry: I remember, I was covering all the details at that, many people were quite excited about that project.
Coppola: That's how I financed that. I used... you know, my wife would be generous and said "look, it brought us back from financial disaster, you should make films from yourself, and use that money to make the first one." So I tried and then I got into my snag with um... the events of that date ...and then the World Trade Towers and I didn't know what to do. Then at the time, my company also started to get more successful, so the financial earnings that I had from that period dating back from the bankruptcy to that point was such a success that I could finally afford to just make movies and finance them on my own.
Harry: How have you seen that your self financing route has liberated you from the days having to deal with the modern day studio process?
Coppola: Well, you know it's the same process, even at the independent level... is so geared towards making money, I mean they want to have awards and be considered important artistically, but the biggest reason the big studios have the independent companies, is to uncover talent that they can eventually plug into their mainstream films like with Sam Raimi
Harry: Or some minor leagues going to the majors...
Coppola: Exactly! That's why they're in it... and so those things are operated, like you take FOX SEARCHLIGHT... I mean, they... LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is the perfect kind of movie that they want to find, because not only do get a feel good movie which is essentially the same sort of thing the big studio side is making, that film is a junior version of what they ideally want to be making.. The studios are rarely interested in personal films, unless it gets them closer to talent that they'll want to exploit elsewhere. Like the directors on LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, they'll be working in outside the independent area.
When I was in a position to finance my own movie, my goal was to start shooting the first day without anyone evening knowing I was making the movie and I only got busted really by Variety...who said "tell us about it or we're going to announce it," and I mean what, we were about three weeks away from shooting and I said, "well, you know, ok here it is." But ideally, I'd love to make films without people looking at what I was doing, or second guessing the process. To just go from film to film and be making the next one before anyone caught on to what I was doing.
Harry: Richard Linklater does that here in Austin...
Coppola: Just starts, huh?
Harry: Literally, you will sit around, then the next thing you know you will see "Is that Rick shooting down at the corner? Yes, he is!" He's just shooting digitally and hired actors... nobody knows what he's up to...
Coppola: How does he even finance these things?
Harry: I'm not really sure, but it seems sometimes he just starts and then takes it to somebody at a certain point and says "Hey, I need... at this point I need to bring people on" or he will do rehearsals with his actors and show people that work. At least on his very indie films.
Coppola: That sounds like a good route and in answer to your question, the more privacy that you can maintain while you are in the formulative... It's like, what would happen if a woman had conceived and she had to like half her belly in this glass thing and then everybody going like "well, I don't know about the nose. It's not going good... what do you think about that... I don't think this is working..." There are things you want to do in privacy when you are creating and I think because you're so secure, because nobody can be secure and you don't want to hear all of those opinions, because you are trying to hang on to it all.
Harry: How much of the sort of fantastical elements of Eliade's novella did you stay true to, I mean how accurate to that novella in terms of him being struck by lightning and returned to youth or...?
Coppola: Oh I loved that when I read it in the story, but there was so much more to the story like Eliade would mention that or that other things that he's splitting into other personalities and you have this sense of the characters that were overshadowing the population... And they were superior intellectually, but that they can have their nuclear wars, because the people who would be left would be able to rebuild everything that weekend, you know? As I read the book, it just continued to surprise me with each layer of where he took the story so I tried, within my ability, to get that in a two hour movie.
Harry: When you were making films in the seventies, Like THE GODFATHER and THE CONVERSATION, I have a sixteen millimeter print of that one, because it was so unavailable until recently...otherwise, What was it about the seventies that made the films that you made, and Friedkin and Bogdanovich and Scorsese... That original group of seventies filmmakers. What is so different about the industry today, from back then?
Coppola: Well, I think those days were still, in a way, run by either the great showmen of the past, the Jack Warners and Louis B Mayers... It had, at that time, jus recently lost them. But they were real showmen, kind of like Harvey (Weinstein) is these years, you know, he's vulgar and he's this showman. And the studios in those days they didn't know what to do. The business was changing, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and had been the number one picture.
Then Arthur Penn makes BONNIE & CLYDE with Warren Beatty and suddenly were in there talking a big storm saying "let us do this and let us do that," Then MIDNIGHT COWBOY got made with the great John Schlesinger and so there was suddenly now something to shoot for and Kubrick jumped in and started talking fast and you know, after them, there were accidents, like I made THE GODFATHER. That was supposed to be a regular studio picture, but I sort of took it my own way despite the fact that they didn't want me to and I only got to make THE CONVERSATION because of the success of THE GODFATHER. So, there was just an opportunity that opened up, because the studios thought that they did not know what to do.
Now the studios know what to do, so they make SPIDER-MAN and they want to make PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN and that's their formula that they have. That's why they won't make a drama anymore, they're only interested in franchises. So that's the business they are in now, and the big money of this year and this summer is going to come from three movies – SPIDERMAN, and the PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN and SHREK...so they have what they want... they know what to do. In the seventies, they didn't know what to do.
Harry: What sort of advice do you give to like Roman [Coppola] and Sofia [Coppola], because I mean, I love CQ.
Coppola: Me too.
Harry: I think it is just a spectacular film and everything that Sofia has done has been just...
Coppola: Original! She goes her own way.
Harry: My fiancé's favorite movie of last year was MARIE ANTOINETTE. She wants every shoe that was in the film and was just, in love with the juxtaposition of the music and the era. What advice have you given them? I mean, are they being courted by the big studios to make big projects or are they wanting to stay true to the path that I've seen them on, so far, which is making incredibly personal projects?
Coppola: They only want to make personal films. Sofia has had such success with LOST IN TRANSLATION which gave her the opportunity to turn her MARIE ANTIONETTE idea into something larger, which she wanted to do with that mainly because the style dictated that level of production. Roman hasn't quite had the success yet, that Sofia has, but you take both of them, and you ask what I taught them, well, I taught them to make personal films.
They're already rich from wine you know, so they don't need to make much... Sofia is rich and so is Roman.
Harry: How does it feel to be making movies?
Coppola: It's what I really love to do and I must say that having total control of a production, because it was dough and having the privacy that I want. And just how many more I can make at my age.
*Coppola Laughs*
Harry: Well, I mean currently you're pretty young in comparison to the ages that Hitchcock, Ford and Kurosawa were... they made movies till they were far older than you are.
Coppola: Yeah, no, I didn't... you know, you just hope that I can stay healthy and be in good shape and enthusiastic... the enthusiasm. I mean, enthusiasm certainly is an ingredient that gets you up in the morning and gets you to walk up that hill, which normally you'd go "Oh, you know, what do I want to go to that hill for?" But if that's where the shot is...
Harry: Yeah.
Coppola: You kind of do it without thinking about it. I feel very blessed and am very excited and I hope I make a sort of film right after TETRO, because now I feel I have what I've always wanted, which is the freedom I've always wanted.
Harry: ... you are back doing the directing. What are you doing with Zoetrope? Do you intend to continue to produce and cultivate other talent...or are you concentrating more on your own personal direction these days?
Coppola: Well, Zoetrope is now owned by Roman [Coppola] and Sofia [Coppola]. I no longer own it and they make the decisions there. ... the kids, Roman and Sofia, have decided they don't just want to make movies just for movies' sake. They only want to make projects that they care about personally, ...but, they're ready to do it.
Harry: ...I'm excited to see you directing again, but I'm also hope to see you in a producing level, while also following both Roman and Sofia's careers. It is amazing to me how wonderful their films are turning out. Sofia and Roman are really becoming great filmmakers.
Coppola: They were raised in it as little kids. They've been around movies all their lives. They were on location on APOCOLYPSE [NOW]. They were there.
Harry: So often, great writers or artists whose sons and daughters in turn attempt to become great writers, it doesn't really turn out that way, you hope that they have the hereditary gene for brilliance, but it rarely happens...
Coppola: ...but I think the movie business is more like the circus.
Harry: Yeah.
Coppola: And we are more like a circus family, because there is a talent element, but there's also a lot of other daring and experience and you just have to have the passion and drive to do it. The Carnival has to have you.
Harry: It's a pleasure to meet you!
Quote from: MacGuffin on May 09, 2007, 08:51:10 PM
Hey folks, Harry here...So in preparation for the interview, I bought a fancy mini-tape hand held voice recorder and... after testing it... it turns out, I had it on a setting called VOX, which throughout the interview, it just would shut off, then turn back on. Sometimes missing great deals of our conversation.
How could he fuck that up? If he didn't own that site somebody would have fired his fat ass by now.
dont do it, fernando. youre sounding like one of the talk backers.
Rainmaker CE Due
A double dip due for Ford Coppola's classic in July.
On July 24, 2007, Paramount Home Entertainment will release The Rainmaker (Special Collector's Edition) on DVD. The double dip of the Matt Damon flick will feature bonus materials and extra features, and will be available for the MSRP of $14.99.
The Rainmaker (Special Collector's Edition) DVD will feature the following bonus materials:
Commentary by Director Francis Ford Coppola and Actor Danny DeVito
Watch The Rainmaker with Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola Directs John Grisham's The Rainmaker
Deleted Scenes
The Rainmaker Screen Tests with Virginia Madsen, Matt Damon, Mary Kay Place, and Claire Danes
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdvdmedia.ign.com%2Fdvd%2Fimage%2Farticle%2F799%2F799508%2Fthe-rainmaker-special-collectors-edition-20070626113017944-000.jpg&hash=0f89df4a4b624c744a3d8f2a69c73d87c302bc14)
What's the difference between the commentary and Watch The Rainmaker with Francis Ford Coppola?
for one of them he is actually in your living room.
Quote from: OrHowILearnedTo on June 27, 2007, 03:09:12 PM
What's the difference between the commentary and Watch The Rainmaker with Francis Ford Coppola?
Watch w/ Coppola is just a fancy way of saying "Coppola Introduction;" 'cause that's all it is; much like his intro on the Apocalypse Now DVD.
Studio Bosses Pulled 'Godfather IV' Plans Over Budget
Movie executives at Paramount scrapped an idea to wrap up The Godfather movies with a fourth film - because they refused to pay an ailing Mario Puzo. Director Francis Ford Coppola offered to help the dying author pen the screenplay for a final film for free, but penny-pinching studio bosses still refused to greenlight the idea. Ford Coppola, who initially balked at the idea of directing sequels to his 1972 masterpiece, admits he was so desperate to help Puzo before he died in 1999 that he offered to co-write the screenplay for no charge. He recalls, "He and I cooked up an idea for what there would be for The Godfather IV and we went to Paramount... and we said, 'Look, Mario is not well. Hire him to write this Godfather IV script, I will help him, do it for nothing...' Mario was very concerned to leave his kids some money and they just never made the deal... Mario died and it was heartbreaking."
shame on you, heartless paramount for not hiring a dying man!
It's sad, but an old story.
Police: Coppola's Office Hit by Thieves
Thursday September 27 12:18 PM ET
Armed bandits raided Francis Ford Coppola's Argentine headquarters and stole a computer with the screenplay for the upcoming feature film "Tetro," according to local news media.
The director of "The Godfather" apparently was not in Buenos Aires at the time of the robbery Wednesday night.
A federal police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give his name, confirmed that a robbery had occurred and a judge was investigating, but he said he could not give details.
The independent news agency Noticias Argentinas reported at least five people entered the offices of Zoetrope Argentina, tied up employees and took computers, cameras and other valuables.
Noticias Argentinas said one of the stolen computers contained the 68-year-old director's script for "Tetro," a story about Italian immigrant artists set to begin shooting next year and starring Matt Dillon.
Calls by The Associated Press to Coppola's New York-based representative were not returned.
Grisel Raynoldi, a 21-year-old university student who lives across the street from Coppola's headquarters, said she heard no unusual noises Wednesday night.
"People get held up in the street a lot at night but normally they (criminals) don't go into the houses. So I was surprised," she said, adding she had seen Coppola on several occasions coming and going from the building in a chauffeured car.
The house is set in the Palermo neighborhood of chic boutiques and trendy restaurants interspersed among homes and abandoned warehouses.
Do you have an alibi, kal?
lol
he is only a few blocks from my office... and i'm here right now... everyone is talking about it!
he is offering a big reward here... cause apparently there is no backup for some of the stuff they stole. kinda stupid that there is no backup...
Quote from: kal on September 27, 2007, 06:12:58 PM
lol
he is only a few blocks from my office... and i'm here right now... everyone is talking about it!
he is offering a big reward here... cause apparently there is no backup for some of the stuff they stole. kinda stupid that there is no backup...
Yeah, how fun would it be for it to go like:
(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!
too much "yeah".
otherwise, nice touch with the Sony HDC-F950.
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.
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 27, 2007, 07:14:27 PM
(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?
Quote from: pozer on September 28, 2007, 06:21:25 PM
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 27, 2007, 07:14:27 PM
(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.
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."
thru texting...
Pacino: OMFG, Franny!! Y U DISN'?!
Coppola: U & UR BFFs R SELL OWTS. WTF???
Pacino: UR DED 2 ME - FGIDABOTIT! <: (
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2007, 02:32:53 PM
"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 :rofl:
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2007, 02:32:53 PM
"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.
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2007, 02:32:53 PM
"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.
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2007, 02:32:53 PM
"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!
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.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.timeinc.net%2Ftime%2Fdaily%2F2007%2F0711%2Fa_acoppola_1119.jpg&hash=646a5f5b96d87f55e46cbcd5467a1d9a733a702e)
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?"
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:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AstW05bDiQU
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Zt-57Cg0U
(yes, that is Anjelica Houston)
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
I really love Coppola. Even with his ups and downs, he's always stayed genuine.
Quote from: Pwaybloe on July 07, 2009, 03:41:46 PM
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.
I just watched Dracula and was blown away by how amazing and how awful it is simultaneously. Visually, it's stunning and audacious, but then the acting is so poor, the interpretation of the text is very bizarre, and it's just a huge mess. But it's so consistently a mess, you start to believe whatever it is trying to convince you of. But I think I fucking loved it, it's just so committed to its intention, and I think I like commitment in directors more than anything.
Quote from: Gamblour. on August 11, 2009, 07:52:14 PM
I just watched Dracula and was blown away by how amazing and how awful it is simultaneously. Visually, it's stunning and audacious, but then the acting is so poor, the interpretation of the text is very bizarre, and it's just a huge mess. But it's so consistently a mess, you start to believe whatever it is trying to convince you of. But I think I fucking loved it, it's just so committed to its intention, and I think I like commitment in directors more than anything.
Now watch Kenneth Brannah's Frankenstein, which Coppola was supposed to do as a follow up to Dracula, and later regretted not doing after Brannah and he had disagreements.
I just watched 'Hearts of Darkness' yesterday and man, it is slight peer into the frustrations of making a film the way you want to make it. Its truly a revelation, but its way too short. I wanted it to be much longer. Is that wrong?
Hell no that's a great flick. UNKLE sampled that cannes speach, which is sick.
my fav part is when he hits his head on the 10k light and keeps walking. didn't turn around and shit on the AD or the grip, he just kept moving thinking about the scene.
gotta love that man.
Godfather director disses 3-D as "tiresome"
Source: SciFi Wire
Director Francis Ford Coppola flanked by his Captain EO co-creators Michael Jackson and executive producer George Lucas
Looks like Roger Ebert has company. Ebert—who last month told us why he hated 3-D (and why he thought you should, too)—has been joined in his anti-3-D crusade by Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and (ironically enough) the 3-D Captain Eo, made with Michael Jackson back in 1986.
"I feel that until you can watch 3-D without glasses, it's the same thing we know," Coppola told Electronic House. "I personally do not want to watch a movie with glasses. It's tiresome."
Turns out the director even took off his 3-D glasses during parts of Avatar—even though that meant he was watching the film out of focus.
Coppola did call Cameron's blockbuster "fantastic," but said that "I don't see why a movie is better in 3-D."
one of many reasons i like this man.
He's correct but I think in five years we could have 3D without the glasses so people like Roger Ebert (if he is still alive) will have to come to new opinions on 3D because it will be very different.
even though i haven't seen this technology you speak of GT, if it's anything like a 3D movie is now just without the glasses, i'm probably still against it. it's a strain on my eyes that i don't want. i'd rather just watch the film without the headache.
James Cameron speaks about the future of 3D often and mentioned that one day 3D will just be the norm, but 3D can be made to feel more seamless than it is now. In films like Minority Report where images pop out everywhere to people and they don't notice a difference can be like how 3D will feel. I'm not saying images will start popping out of the screen in that fashion, but the juxtaposition of images appearing closer to us can feel a lot more normal. Roger Ebert fears we will be forced to use all of our eye concentration all the time, but if the presentation changes and it's no longer based on current standards where it's working against visualized 2D models, then it doesn't have be to just straining. The 3D we have now is based on principles of classical models from the 1950s that haven't be altered dramatically enough to limit the strain on the eye. We see things in life in 3D all the time so technology can work to help make 3D feel more like how we experience life.
3D just seems like the new CG to me. It gets rid of creativity for a gimmick. Aw, fuck it, we'll just add it in CG. Same with 3D. It's just gimmicky. It's a sad day when a film has to be in 3D in order for an audience to give a shit about it.
I cant ever imagine a time when every movie is in 3D. God, I don't want to imagine that.
CG just added more believability to fantastic elements in a film by making special effects work better. If all goes well, 3D can actually change the dimensions of how we see a film. Film stories will have to change their structure to work with 3D. There can be a lot of positives in that. I think people who are complaining are often just believing 3D as it stands now will be what the future is. There will be a lot of updates and I think it 3D will feel more like life on screen.
Technology is updating itself beyond capability these days. 10 years ago everyone knew what a personal computer and what it could be if things developed, but a lot things that are reality now were just "Yea, that would be cool if it happened, but I don't see it coming" back then and if 3D is allowed to develop, it can be made be a really wonderful technology that challenges film structure more than anything ever before. I don't think anyone feels 3D will be all about huge effects and dumb glasses. Some day it will feel as natural to use for a low budget dramatic story as a special effect film. That's how much it can change the natural story of a film.
CG took away the creativity. Nobody ever had to say, "Hmm, how the fuck am I going to do this? How do I pull this off?" They just said, "Fuck it. CG it up!"
the arguments against CG, apart from being bullshit, are irrelevant to the discussion of 3D.
3D is an altogether different way to look at movies. CG was just a natural integration of technology in order to do anything that is imaginable. the use of CG is obviously not limiting creativity as you can see the seamless and amazing ways it has been used by Fincher or Blomkamp. there will always be bad or exploitative directors who will use any new technology simply to make a buck and who never really cared about the art of cinema - so NOTHING will change on that front.
3D will never be the way all films are made, its popularity might increase but other than being another way to charge more for a movie (coppola is right on this, and it's obviously the cynical truth of it) it's gonna be just another way to make a movie. it won't ever mean the end of 2D, just like colour film didn't mean the end of black and white. for budget and artistic reasons ppl will still choose 2D over 3D, glasses or no glasses.
what GT is talking about in minority report is more about holograms, that shit is also advancing but it doesn't mean that everything will hav to be holographic bullshit.
color film was kinda the end of black and white. just as it took about 40 or so years for cinematography to regain its sophistication after sound came out.
but um, 3d will take a while before anyone can clearly see a future for it.
even though stefen's argument against CG is broad, i still think it holds some merit. I strongly disagree, and feel his point was uneducated when he addressed the "oh fuck it, just CG it", that's an over simplification. the spirit of his post i do however agree with. what CG did was change the mentality of the film makers. for the most part what was seen on the frame became the payoff. i believe this changed (or at least cemented) the audiences reasons to go to the theatre. it also changed the water-cooler-conversations regarding the merits of the experience. people seemed to go to the movie more for how it looked then ever before. the detail of the CG and the photo realism is what so many film makers strived for after Jurassic park, and we've come to a point that it pretty much exists photo real in all movies that use CG. this progression is only logical because it was in fact very impressive, for a while there you could see the strives go leaps and bounds year to year. however, the hitchcockian principle of what you don't see makes for a richer experience was lost in this advancement. audiences now wanna see the cool shit, when in the past (consciously or subconsciously) what they didn't see was the payoff. the emotion or thrill of the moment was talked about more than the quality of the special effects.
maybe I'm a sentimentalist, but i prefer what you don't see. It forces the artists to be more creative. CG makes the effect easier to reproduce because attention is put on the detail of the image, and not the rhetoric of the storytelling. or at least a more sophisticated rhetoric by my standards. just look at redletter's reviews of the star wars movies, pretty much addresses this very point.
regarding 3D, if it doesn't make me get migraines and i can still relax during the experience (if the movie warrents this reaction) then I'm all for it. i fear the tricks that it plays on my eyes will always be something that requires my full attention and ultimately makes for a tiring experience.
Francis Ford Coppola Has Started Shooting His Next Film 'Twixt Now And Sunrise'
Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning & Bruce Dern Star
Source: The Playlist
While he's set to receive a honorary Oscar next month, Francis Ford Coppola continues with his late-career burst of energy, as he has already quietly begun filming his third feature in four years.
Titled "Twixt Now And Sunrise," the film is based on a short story by Coppola and while details are being kept under wraps, it is said to be in the horror/thriller vein. The cast is an intriguing one with Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning (also starring in daughter Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere") and Bruce Dern (who starred in Coppola scribed "The Great Gatsby") leading the way. The horror genre isn't exactly new for Coppola ("Dementia 13," "Bram Stoker's Dracula") but it is a genre he's rarely dipped into, so we're very curious to learn more about this one. Filming is underway in Napa though it's unclear if this is the same project Coppola was in Turkey late last year scouting locations for.
We're pretty inspired by Coppola's late career resurgence and particularly his continuing to work outside the studio system. "Tetro" and "Youth Without Youth," while not perfect, were invigorating, creative and highly ambitious pieces of work; the kinds of films you expect from someone half Coppola's age. Clearly, freed from the various caprices of studios, Coppola has never been more invigorated.
http://pitchfork.com/news/41193-dan-deacon-to-score-francis-ford-coppola-film/
Pitchfork reports that the film will be scored by Dan Deacon
QuoteHe recently wrapped his latest picture, "Twixt Now and Sunrise," based on an alcohol-induced dream he had in Turkey. The film even features the latest 3-D technology – but as a brief dramatic segment that serves the story, rather than the typical two-hour, multiplex gimmick.
Interview at The 99 Percent (http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-On-Risk-Money-Craft-Collaboration).
Bruce Dern Says Francis Ford Coppola's 'Twixt Now And Sunrise' A Murder Mystery With Parts In Rhyme
Source: ThePlaylist
Despite production taking place late last year, thus far we've received only trickles of information about Francis Ford Coppola's reportedly gothic and Poe-inspired "Twixt Now And Sunrise," which stars Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Ben Chaplin and Elle Fanning among others. Coppola himself teased that the way he plans to screen the film is "something that's never been done before" which presumably has something to do with the use of 3D technology as "a brief dramatic segment that serves the story, rather than the typical two-hour, multiplex gimmick." Most recently, star Val Kilmer added that he plays a Mario Puzo-esque writer "waiting for his masterpiece" and noted that the 3-D would be utilized for "a couple of dream sequences." Now we have a little to hang from. After being honored at the Gold Coast Film Festival, actor Bruce Dern has discussed the project in a little more detail with writer Roger Friedman happily relaying what Dern spilled on the "gothic thriller that concerns Edgar Allen Poe." Dern has revealed the first hint of plot to Showbiz411 noting that he'll play "the sheriff in a spooky town with a murder mystery [while] Kilmer is a second tier mystery writer who comes to town and investigates its past. There's a clock steeple in the town with different time on each of its four sides." The actor also added that Coppola himself has proclaimed that this project has "more of him in it than any of his films" and, most interestingly, that parts of the film will actually be in rhyme. We guess the inspiration from Poe stems more directly than just his themes then? Comparisons to the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne have also been noted in the past; we can't even begin to imagine what this means for electronic artist Dan Deacon whose scoring the pic. Consider us now completely sold by this latest offering from Coppola which particularly excites us as major fans of his last effort, the black and white drama "Tetro" starring Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich. A release or (at least) premiere sometime around Halloween was previously discussed as the target which has only been affirmed by subsequent descriptions of the project as a "Halloween extravaganza."
http://www.slashfilm.com/francis-ford-coppola/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashfilm+%28%2FFilm%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail
With 'Twixt,' Francis Ford Coppola Wants to Create a Live, Dynamic Cinema Experience
Posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 by Russ Fischer
One word: inspiring. Today Francis Ford Coppola made his first appearance at the San Diego Comic Con since 1991, bringing with him the electronic musician Dan Deacon and actor Val Kilmer. Those two men were among his collaborators on a new film called Twixt, which is a sort of gothic horror story / murder mystery set in a small northern California town. But Twixt, the movie, was only part of the panel and, frankly, it was the least part of why today's event is the best thing I've ever seen in Hall H at Comic Con.
The real hook with Twixt is what Mr. Coppola wants to do with it: he plans a 30-city tour later this year in which he and Dan Deacon, and possibly other talents, will create a dynamic assembly of the film as it plays to each audience. Essentially, they have a great deal of footage which adds up to a movie called Twixt, but depending upon where and when you see the presentation, you might see a totally different telling of the story than others. In other words: 'Remixd'? Something like that.
There's a lot of material to cover here, and I'll begin with a description of the footage and then move into a recap of the panel, after the break.
Let's begin with the footage. What we were shown at first follows a hack horror writer (Val Kilmer) as he enters Swan Valley, where he is set to do a book signing. (At a hardware store, as it turns out. Indignity!) Tom Waits narrates our first pass through the town, introducing local elements such as a clock tower with many faces that show different times, and a group of 'vampire' kids that camp at the edge of town, led by "Flamingo, a seducer of innocent youth," played in exaggerated goth/vampire makeup by Alden Ehrenreich.
Val Kilmer's character is tormented by his inadequacy and the fact that he needs to write crappy books to make a living. ("I write because of the incessant financial burdens that found me," which is seemingly a very personal note from Mr. Coppola.) But he is introduced both to a current murder mystery by Bruce Dern (who also demonstrates "an electric chair for killing vampires") and to an older local murder legend. That latter murder story comes via a dream in which Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin) converses with the writer.
There is a lot more — very funny moments of Kilmer's character trying to write; dream sequences in black and white that are sometimes very old-school from a technological standpoint; a very Twin Peaks-like vibe in the Swan Valley town area; and conversations with what seems to be the spirit of a dead girl (Elle Fanning).
Most of the footage looked great, and Mr. Coppola explained that as he didn't like wearing glasses to watch 3D films ("I watched Avatar, but took the glasses off for much of the movie") he will present Twixt with only certain segments in 3D.
About the story — seem confusing so far? Maybe so. The use of 3D is a pretty old-school approach to the movie, but there is a lot about Twixt that represents what the director called "the evolving technology of the cinema." At the head of the panel, he talked about the fact that cinema is a young art form, only over one hundred years, and still evolving. He bemoaned the idea that cinema now is what cinema will be.
Cinema is so young! How dare anyone think all it has got up its sleeve is more 3D where the ticket prices go up? Cinema is a baby. Of course we're going to see wonderful innovations come; there will be many.
So the meat of the Twixt presentation was a demonstration of an iPad controlled system by which unique edits of the film could be created on the fly. Here's the interface, thanks to @jonniechang:
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What followed was a demonstration of the possibilities of this system in practical use. Mr. Coppola created a couple different versions of the first trailer by reassembling the order of the scenes, sometimes showing much longer versions of various bits of dialogue. We essentially watched him edit the movie, to some degree, on the fly, and that's what's promised for the tour. To amuse himself and the crowd, he even put the system on 'shuffle' and we watched what it churned out — a workable assembly trailer that was quite different from the others. The presentation was a bit glitchy, but the panel participants got through the problems with the tech using humor and charm. It was a dress rehearsal, as they explained, rather than a final performance.
The panel participants were given a standing ovation before and after the panel, and throughout the experience the audience seemed to be totally in the palm of Mr. Coppola's hand. That to me was more important than anything else — there is an audience that is completely willing to go along with this experiment. They may even be hungry for it. Twixt, as a film or a narrative, may not be the next step of cinema. But seeing Francis Ford Coppola experiment is fascinating, and I'm thrilled I was there to experience it. I expect many other attendees today felt the same.
There are a lot of questions to ask about this approach to filmmaking, primary among which is whether or not there is one 'master' narrative that he conisders primary among all others, and then also what the idea of tweaking/remixing the story on the fly says about the construction of a film narrative.Putting certain shots or sequences before others can have a huge effect on their meaning, and by changing the rigor of how footage is ordered, what does that do to the very notion of telling a nuanced film story? I'm eager to discover these answers.
These are the 3D 'glasses' that were handed out before the panel:
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At this point, I would actually be sadder if he quit making wine than movies.
his wine blows
Quote from: polkablues on July 25, 2011, 02:33:58 PM
At this point, I would actually be sadder if he quit making wine than movies.
Yeah, fuck him for trying something different!
I didn't mean he shouldn't do whatever the hell he wants, I just meant that I'm finding I no longer care. If he wants to dress up as Peter Greenaway for Halloween, I'm not going to stand in his way. I'm just not personally interested.
Vulture ripped it.
QuoteWe love Francis Ford Coppola, and his warm presence made him a congenial host on the panel for Twixt, his upcoming digital drama starring Val Kilmer and Elle Fanning. However, the movie looked cheap and hammy, like an early nineties CD-ROM adventure game, while Coppola's attempts to cue up and reshuffle scenes via iPad went disastrously. It was a fun disaster, but it doesn't bode well for the director's hopes to take the movie out on a national roadshow.
This worries me about
The Master since they share the same DP. That's silly, right? RIGHT?
Yes, it is.
It's also silly for anyone to take Vulture's criticisms with anything more than a grain of salt.
For me, FFC is two for two with his late career resurgence and I expect the winning streak to continue.
Of course, this could also be because Twixt sounds right in my wheelhouse. A Coppola horror film starring Val Kilmer, narrated by Tom Waits is probably the most exciting film to look forward to in a post-Tree of Life year.
Even if the presentation is a complete debacle (it won't be), I imagine there will be an interesting an beautifully shot traditionally structured film to look forward to on DVD.
Hopefully, with a thirty city tour, I can catch this a couple of times and really see how much variation there will be from screening to screening.
The idea of FFC essentially DJ'ing cracks me up.
Francis Ford Coppola Quietly Working On An "Ambitious," Epic Studio Movie & Hopes To Start Casting Soon
via The Playlist
You would you have to go back all the way to 1997's "The Rainmaker" to see Francis Ford Coppola's last fully fledged studio picture. Since then, the legendary director has been following his own muse, taking on ambitious if not always entirely successful features made outside of Hollywood, resulting in a trio of pictures: the fantasy "Youth Without Youth," the black-and-white sibling drama "Tetro" and the 3D horror "Twixt." Coppola has long talked about enjoying the freedom that comes with independence, but sometimes you need someone with big pockets to help bring certain stories to life, and it looks like the 73-year-old filmmaker is ready to deliver another big, epic picture.
Coppola recently chatted with EW to talk about the new 5-film Blu-ray box set of his work that includes "Apocalypse Now," "Apocalypse Now Redux," "The Conversation," "Tetro" and "One From The Heart" (yeah, it's a pretty odd grab-bag release). Asked what he was up to next, Coppola revealed that he's developing something quite large in scope, and apparently already has financing in place, and is eager to start looking at actors to take it on.
"I have a secret investor that has infinite money. I learned what I learned from my three smaller films, and wanted to write a bigger film. I've been writing it. It's so ambitious so I decided to go to L.A. and make a film out of a studio that has all the costume rentals, and where all the actors are," he said, with EW noting he'll have an office at Paramount next year. "My story is set in New York. I have a first draft. I'm really ready for a casting phase. Movies are big in proportion to the period. It starts in the middle of the '20s, and there are sections in the '30s and the late '40s, and it goes until the late '60s."
Francis Ford Coppola to Direct Italian-American Saga
via The Hollywood Reporter
The helmer is readying an untitled film that will chronicle an Italian-American family and span from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Francis Ford Coppola is returning to the Italian-American experience for his next directing effort.
The Godfather helmer is readying an untitled film that will chronicle an Italian-American family and span from the 1930s to the 1960s. Coppola became one of the most celebrated directors in cinema after bringing the Corleone family saga to the big screen. The Godfather covers a similar timeframe, spanning from 1945-55.
Coppola is writing the screenplay, which is described as a coming-of-age story that focuses on a boy and girl in their late teens, and has set up offices on the Paramount lot. However, there have been no conversations yet about whether the studio will be involved with financing or distributing the film.
Coppola has hired Courtney Bright and Nicole Daniels, who recently cast daughter Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring. Longtime Coppola family collaborator Fred Roos is producing.
Though Coppola continues to direct regularly -- he most recently helmed the 2011 horror thriller Twixt -- he hasn't returned to the story of Italian-Americans since 1990's The Godfather III, the final chapter about the Corleone crime family. The successful winemaker's past few films have been independently or self-financed.
Coppola is repped by attorney Barry Hirsch.
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.
90 Minute DGA Talk On Francis Ford Coppola's Career, Featuring PTA & Others (http://www.dga.org/Events/2011/05-may-2011/Francis-Ford-Coppola.aspx)
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.
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."
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.
Watch: Francis Ford Coppola Explains His "Live Cinema" Project 'Distant Vision' And More In 57-Minute Talkvia 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.
Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather Notebook is being published tomorrow
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The Godfather Notebook - Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Godfather-Notebook-Francis-Ford-Coppola/dp/168245052X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479156628&sr=8-1&keywords=godfather+notebook)
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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 (https://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/apocalypse-now-2019)
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.
I'm there
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.
'Apocalypse Now' Final Cut Debuting at the Tribeca Film FestivalQuoteFrancis 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 (https://www.slashfilm.com/apocalypse-now-final-cut/)
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.
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)
Tyler Knudsen has posted the first episode in his latest series:
https://youtu.be/lIGAcW86ZJ0
Getting a small theatrical run this weekend. About 35 mins were added back in and it is FAN. TASTIC.
this is one of the best films of the year no doubt
December 8, 2020The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone on blu-ray from Paramount
(https://i.imgur.com/gySU7t0.jpg)
QuoteThis new version of The Godfather: Part III achieves director/screenwriter Coppola and screenwriter Puzo's original vision for the finale, which has been meticulously restored for the finest presentation of the Corleone saga's last chapter. Mario Puzo's THE GODFATHER, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone will have a limited theatrical release in December, followed by availability on Digital home entertainment platforms and on disc.
"'Mario Puzo's THE GODFATHER, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone' is an acknowledgement of Mario's and my preferred title and our original intentions for what became 'The Godfather: Part III,'" said Coppola. "For this version of the finale, I created a new beginning and ending, and rearranged some scenes, shots, and music cues. With these changes and the restored footage and sound, to me, it is a more appropriate conclusion to 'The Godfather' and 'The Godfather: Part II' and I'm thankful to Jim Gianopulos and Paramount for allowing me to revisit it."
Coppola's masterful film adaptation of Puzo's novel chronicles the rise and fall of the Corleone family and the saga is rightfully viewed as one of the greatest in cinematic history. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, The Godfather: Part III was nominated for seven Academy Awards®, including Best Picture and Best Director*. The film follows Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire.
Coppola and his production company American Zoetrope worked from a 4K scan of the original negative to undertake a painstaking, frame-by-frame restoration of both the new Mario Puzo's THE GODFATHER, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone and the original The Godfather: Part III. In order to create the best presentation possible, Zoetrope and Paramount's restoration team began by searching for over 50 original takes to replace lower resolution opticals in the original negative. This process took more than six months and involved sifting through 300 cartons of negative. American Zoetrope worked diligently to repair scratches, stains, and other anomalies that could not be addressed previously due to technology constraints, while enhancements were made to the original 5.1 audio mix. These thorough restoration efforts were not immune to the coronavirus pandemic: midway through the project, all work—even the search for the negative—shifted to the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles and was completed by Zoetrope and Paramount remotely.
"Mr. Coppola oversaw every aspect of the restoration while working on the new edit, ensuring that the film not only looks and sounds pristine, but also meets his personal standards and directorial vision," said Andrea Kalas, senior vice president, Paramount Archives.
Watched this with strandedwriter when it came out -- doens't feel like a wholly different film or edit the way Apocalypse Now does. Mostly truncated in its opening and middle bits? Regardless the film still looks great, and Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, Diane Keaton, and Al Pacino are all playing major league ball.
Francis Ford Coppola has re-edited and restored 'Twixt' with
B'Twixt Now and Sunrise (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN7448YM?&linkCode=sl1&tag=thfist07-20&linkId=2406f0d73c10ccd0c483fe71e5a8666b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)
(https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Btwixt-998x1200.jpg)
Quote"[Composer Dan] Deacon was surrounded by an array of computers – the footage was then screened again, with Deacon doing a live score, scenes re-edited, and Coppola replacing [Tom] Waits' narration. The new score included a goth song featuring Coppola chanting 'Nosferatu!' over and over again. Kilmer joined in the signing live, and after the clip ended, they continued the song, exhorting the audience to put on the Poe masks and dance. Just to demonstrate the potential, Coppola hit the 'shuffle' button, and we got a different remix of scenes, this time with no music at all."
Despite being an adventurous, often hilarious work with deeply personal connections to Coppola's life, reception was widely negative—though some outlets like Cahiers du cinéma stepped up to the plate, naming it one of the best films of 2012—and this never came to pass, Twixt missing a U.S. theatrical release and being relegated to a festival tour. But the film, shot by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., is getting new life thanks to a re-edit and restoration entitled B'Twixt Now and Sunrise (with a defiant subtitle The Authentic Cut) that will arrive on Blu-ray and digital on February 28, following a few theatrical screenings this past fall. With a similar runtime of 88 minutes, there are no additional details yet of whatever changes Coppola has made [...]
Sounds like a scam. Or a typical Coppola move.