Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola (Detroit, Michigan; April 7, 1939) is an American screenwriter, producer and film director. He is one of the most prominent figures of the New Hollywood that took place in the 1970s, alongside filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma and George Lucas, among others.

He has won five Oscars, three of them as a screenwriter (for Patton, The Godfather and The Godfather II), one as a director (for The Godfather II) and one as a producer (also for The Godfather II), being the second filmmaker to have received three statuettes for the same film, after Billy Wilder, and the first to win it for a sequel. Likewise, he has won two Palme d'Ors at Cannes, for The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, being one of the few filmmakers to have won the festival's top prize twice. most important cinema in the world. He was also the winner of the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Festival for Llueve sobre mi corazón, among many other international awards.

His trilogy The Godfather, based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo, with whom he wrote the adaptation, made in 1972, 1974 and 1990, is frequently considered one of the most important of the history of cinema. The first was, for a few years, the highest-grossing film in history. Another film by the filmmaker, Apocalypse Now, based on Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and which may have been the first film filmed by Orson Welles, has been appreciated On numerous occasions. His later works suffered from incomprehension from the public or critics, and sank his company, Zoetrope, and his studios. With The Godfather III he was able to pay his large debts and rise from the ashes, and with Dracula, by Bram Stoker, the controversial and umpteenth version of the vampire myth, he was able to demonstrate that could still connect with the general public.

He is Nicolas Cage's uncle.

Childhood and youth

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, with the name Francis Coppola (the middle name, Ford, was chosen by his parents in honor of Henry Ford), son of the conductor and flutist Carmine Coppola and Italia Coppola, an actress who worked in his youth in Italy. He is the brother of Talia Shire Coppola, father of Sofia Coppola and uncle of Nicolas Cage. At the age of nine he fell seriously ill due to poliomyelitis, which left him bedridden for nearly a year in an almost paralytic state. During that time his only distraction was puppets and family movies on "Super 8."

In 1957, determined to become an artist, he entered Hofstra University at the age of 18 and enrolled in a Dramatic Arts degree, where he attracted attention for a production he made of the play A Streetcar Named Desire (A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams). There he met several collaborators, including Ronald Colby and Robert Spiotta, who would help years later in the production of The Godfather, and also the actors James Caan and Lainie Kazan, with whom he would establish lasting friendships. In 1960 he obtained a degree in Theater Arts and that same year he graduated from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), whose curriculum he did not like, but it provided him with his first contacts in the industry, in which he planned to make his fortune. and glory.

1960s

At the beginning of the sixties he began to make films, although the first thing he did were low-budget nudies (erotic films), but this did not matter to him. In this period he completed the films Tonight for Sure and The Bellboy and the Playgirls , medium-length films with nudity and in which he showed little interest. In 1962 he met Roger Corman, who saw in Coppola a talented young man with the potential to be instructed in the film medium, and they subsequently established a professional relationship in which she practically became his personal assistant.

Dementia 13

His first credited film was Dementia 13, a low-budget horror feature made for Corman in 1963 and shot over the course of nine days in Ireland. But that same year he had already participated in the making, without appearing in the credits, of another film for the same director and producer, called The Terror . It is known that Coppola edited and collaborated on many of his mentor Corman's films while he was studying at university. However, Corman did not like the final result of the film and hired another team led by Jack Hill to finish filming, definitively breaking his relationship with Coppola.

You're a Big Boy Now

It was not until 1966 when Coppola would direct his first notable title, You're a Big Boy Now, among other things because for the first time he included themes and concerns that were his own, such as the search for vital independence and the portrayal of youth as one of society's wasted treasures. Filmed as his final year project, he obtained an honors degree. Partially autobiographical, with a ridiculous budget, today it is a very unknown film and awaiting review by the general public.

The rainbow valley

Coppola was offered to direct a film based on the Broadway musical Rainbow Valley, starring Petula Clark (in her first American film) and veteran Fred Astaire, and produced by Jack Warner, who was taken aback by Coppola's hippie appearance at the time. Adapting obsolete material to a time when musicals were not popular, Coppola managed to make Rainbow Valley a creditable film and his work with Petula Clark contributed to the actress being chosen for the first time as a candidate for the Golden Globe for best actress. Today it is a forgotten film, even by its author, and at the time it was received with indifference.

The Rain People

After this assignment, Coppola decided to return with another personal film in which he could demonstrate that in addition to being a good studio director, with the ability to accept other people's projects, he was at the same time an author with many things to tell and a own style. The result is one of his most personal films, although also the most unknown to the general public: the drama The Rain People, which in 1969 would make him win the Golden Shell at the San Juan Festival. Sebastian.

In 1969 he founded his own production company, American Zoetrope, of which he was executive president and George Lucas vice president. Thus, he closed a promising first decade.

1970s

In 1971, Coppola won an Oscar for best original screenplay along with Edmund H. Northon for the film Patton. His participation in this prestigious and successful title was only the prelude to his golden decade, in which he would progressively become the most influential director in the world, the most successful, and a powerful producer with great ambition.

The Godfather (Part I and II)

During 1971 and 1972 he embarked on the project that would change his life. Initially reluctant to take charge of the adaptation of the novel of the same name published recently and written by Mario Puzo, Coppola would see how his life changed once the infernal filming, which lasted only 52 days, ended and he saw his film become the highest grossing of all time and the winner of three main Oscar awards, and also a creator capable of carrying out the most ambitious projects imaginable.

With the studio unhappy with the cast (especially due to the presence of star Marlon Brando and newcomer Al Pacino), Coppola had to fight bitterly with Paramount executives to respect his decisions and not to be replaced. a week of filming by a more violent director, as they believed that he would not be able to give the film the intensity with which they hoped to attract millions of spectators to the theaters. Coppola showed them, with the sequence of the execution of the gangster Sollozo and his bodyguard, Captain McCluskey, directed by Michael Corleone, that both Pacino and himself were suitable to star and direct the film, respectively. At the same time, Marlon Brando, in his admired creation of the Don, demonstrated, once again, his talent for extreme characterization, which from that moment on was the paradigm of the gangster, which many of them would try to imitate in their professional lives.

Coppola, who rewrote the adaptation hand in hand with Puzo, initially took the project as a professional commission, but little by little he impregnated the story with his own Italian-American experience, giving the story a verisimilitude. and a credibility rarely seen in this type of black stories. The superb photography of the purist Gordon Willis and the production design of Coppola's regular art director Dean Tavoularis, ended up giving the first The Godfather film that aura of unforgettable classicism that during More than forty years it continues to enchant movie buffs.

But Coppola's ambition and talent knew no limits at that time, and he decided to become the greatest, releasing two other important films in 1974. Two years after the release of The Godfather, He became a multimillionaire. He later filmed The Conversation and the second part of Michael Corleone's story in The Godfather II.

At the height of his success and self-confidence, he won six Hollywood Academy Awards for The Godfather, Part II (becoming the first sequel to win the Oscar for best film), and in May the Palme d'Or for The Conversation. This film, starring Gene Hackman in one of his most acclaimed works, was a surprising study of sound directed by Walter Murch, for which he would win the Oscar for best sound editing (not in vain does Hackman play a wiretapping professional), for a somber and slow story, of great psychological density, based on silences and reflection more than in a dynamic more common in the intrigue genre. Considered by many to be one of the director's magnum opuses, The Conversation has aged as well as the first two Godfathers.

For its part, The Godfather, Part II, with a budget that doubled that of its predecessor, achieved the great feat of surpassing a mythical title. Delving into the tragedy (with Shakespearian and Homeric roots) of Michael Corleone, with the presence, once again, of John Cazale, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, and the additions of other giants of their craft such as Lee Strasberg, Robert De Niro or Michael V. Gazzo; The Godfather, Part II is structured in two timelines that are masterfully interspersed. On the one hand, it tells how Vito Corleone flees from Sicily to North America and becomes a king of the New York mafia. On the other hand, it portrays Michael Corleone's struggle to protect his family from the powerful adversaries who harass the Corleones. Coppola won his third, fourth and fifth Oscars that year.

Deified, exalted and rich, Coppola still had time to write the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby and to produce his friend George Lucas's second film, the great success and generational myth American Graffiti. But Coppola had not yet surpassed his guru, Orson Welles, and was willing to try with the adaptation of Heart of Darkness, the famous novel by Joseph Conrad.

Heart of Darkness (Apocalypse Now)

The young Orson Welles' first film could have been the adaptation of Joseph Conrad's famous novel Heart of Darkness, but that project was abandoned due to its high cost. Almost forty years later, there was no greater incentive for Coppola (as the Dracula project later was) than to carry out the project that the great myth of him in cinema had not been able to do.

Initially, Coppola wanted to offer the film, which he had co-written with John Milius, to his great friend George Lucas. Realizing that he himself was the only one with the ambition to bring it to fruition, he began filming on March 1, 1976, without knowing that it would not be until May 21, 1977 that he would give the final "cut" and that it would not be until 1979. would premiere, with the title Apocalypse Now.

The film only takes as a reference from the original story its two main characters, an atmosphere of primal savagery and the psychological and spiritual journey that Willard undertakes in pursuit of Kurtz. But, once again, Coppola demonstrated his talent for extracting unexpected materials from a text when he gave his film a militaristic and densely dreamlike epic. But almost from the beginning, misfortune was allied with filming, and tragedies and disasters were added one after another. The protagonist Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack that almost ended his life, although he was able to return to filming in surprisingly good shape. A hurricane destroyed much of the sets. Marlon Brando mortified Coppola with excessive demands for money and shooting plans to his liking. The film's budget skyrocketed quickly. The Philippine government took away the helicopters Coppola used for battle scenes without prior notice, as they were at war.

But Coppola knew how to stay afloat and, on the tightrope, used the nightmarish experience to bring to the filming a tone and tension never before experienced in a movie theater. With a sound treatment, the work of Walter Murch, and a photograph, the work of Vittorio Storaro, truly memorable, Coppola signed one of the most important works of art of the end of the century XX. Indebted and almost crazy from filming, he was able to recover what he invested thanks to the fame and box office that immediately accompanied its release. Not in vain at the Cannes Film Festival, even without finishing editing, it was presented and won the Palme d'Or. The press conference in which Coppola said the famous phrase is famous: «My film is not about Vietnam. My movie is Vietnam.

Many years after that film, in 1991, the excellent documentary about the filming and madness of that mythical film, Heart of Darkness, in which the "survivors", especially Eleanor Coppola, talk about their experiences in the Philippine jungle.

1980s

After a feverish and splendid decade, Coppola would see how his dreams, one by one, especially that of maintaining a studio in San Francisco (the Zoetrope), outside the Hollywood industry, led him to bankruptcy, with the banks demanding billions of dollars from him and the delivery of his house and his assets, and with the obligation to return to carrying out commissioned projects, after considering the possibility of not having to do so again.

One from the Heart

In 1982, and convinced that nothing could stop him, he directed the musical, created in the old way, One from the Heart, which cost more than twenty million dollars, and a box office close to a tenth of that figure, it would mean his great disaster as a producer and owner of studios that would be dismantled overnight. A work of great merit but burdened by fitting into a time in which no one was interested in musical titles of this style, One from the Heart represents Coppola's personal "Titanic" and the reason for his life journey by the eighties.

Hammett

In 1982 he finished the film he had commissioned from Wim Wenders, Hammett, which is estimated to be 30% of the film. Wenders made a short film titled Reverse Angle i>, in which he documented his disputes with Coppola during the filming of Hammett.

The Outsiders and Rumble Fish

Coppola made two films the following year and the following year, 1984, another one, a commissioned blockbuster. The first two, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish , are among his most personal, risky and best works. Both mean the discovery of a quarry of actors (Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estévez, Diane Lane, his nephew Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn and Mickey Rourke) who will succeed in American cinema of the following decades and both are stories of rebellious young people who live life their own way, with romantic and desperate ideas. Of special relevance is the second of them, inspired by Sed de mal in its treatment of black and white and with the recurring theme of the passage of time (essential in the filmmaker's work).

Cotton Club

But the failure of both films forces him to accept the assignment to direct the ambitious The Cotton Club when it had been filming for a week, convinced by the producer of The Godfather, Robert Evans. Starring star Richard Gere, Coppola managed to place his muse, the very young Diane Lane, as the protagonist's companion. Coppola directed this mix of musical and gangster film with skill and good taste, and critics praised the effort although some of it was received lukewarmly and the public turned its back on him. Its great cost, even higher than that of One from the Heart, and its poor results at the box office, ended up giving Coppola a reputation as a spendthrift and a cursed director. His career thus seemed mortally wounded.

Peggy Sue Got Married

In 1986 he agreed to carry out a smaller but very personal commission, the successful Peggy Sue Got Married, in which he returned to his study, here tempered, of the passage of time and in a romantic vision and naive of audiovisual narration. That year, however, he was cruelly struck by the death of his first-born son Gio Coppola, in a jet ski accident, while he was filming his film Stone Gardens. The following year he filmed a television episode, "Rip Van Winckle" , part of the series called Faerie Tale Theater .

Gardens of Stone

Another assignment the following year, again with James Caan as the protagonist, which meant the actor's return to a film of some prestige. But this story of Vietnam veterans training recruits for the national guard went largely unnoticed at the time, and although it is not without interest, it is undoubtedly one of his least important works. As a personal detail, during the filming of the film, Francis Coppola's son died in a jet ski accident.

Tucker

Trying to overcome the disaster of his family and professional life, he would continue working, even with many difficulties. Lucas, returning the favor of American Graffiti and now that he was rich and his friend Coppola was a broke man, agreed to produce him the very personal and emotional Tucker, starring Jeff Bridges and which became one of the most emblematic films of its author, who through a visionary of the automotive world managed to tell his own story of successes and failures. This was the first film in several years in which Coppola signed himself as Francis Ford, and not simply as Francis Coppola, according to some, implying that the films in which he signed in this second way were nothing more than mere commissioned films.

Tucker represents an explicit alter ego of Coppola himself, as is Michael Corleone and, more disturbingly, the Willard of Apocalypse Now. The visionary designer and builder of revolutionary cars comes to tell Coppola's own story, as both face big companies to try to build their own dreams.

Life without Zoe

The following year, ending his terrible decade, he participated in the ensemble film, along with his friends Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, New York Stories, for which he directed the segment Life without Zoe, which critics did not hesitate to describe as the worst of the three.

1990s

The Godfather III

Determined to get out of his monstrous economic crisis once and for all, Coppola finally agreed to make one more film about the Corleone family in exchange for an astronomical salary and a fixed interest rate. Thus, in 1990 the conclusion of his colossal trilogy about Michael Corleone was released, with The Godfather III. Far from the epic and energy of its predecessors, this "coda", as he himself likes to call it, is a twilight story that was not liked by many who expected a new grandiose adventure of an almighty Michael once again defeating his enemies. The film did not have the same critical results as its predecessors, despite a fairly acceptable success at the box office, which allowed Coppola to balance his bank accounts. On this occasion, Michael is an old man incapable of sustaining a titanic and sinister struggle with the Vatican, and he has to give in in favor of his brother Sonny's bastard son, Vincent (played by Andy García, who was nominated for an Oscar), to guarantee the survival of his family.

Initially the role of Michael's daughter was going to be played by actress Winona Ryder, who left a few weeks after filming began, forcing Coppola to give the important character of Mary to his own daughter, Sofia Coppola, who received a real blow from critics for this performance. The film received seven Oscar nominations and not a single award, in favor of another film, Dances with Wolves, by Kevin Costner.

Dracula

He immediately began work on an adaptation of Dracula that he did not write. It is known that Orson Welles always wanted to adapt it and that is why, among other reasons, Coppola put so much effort into it. With an outstanding cast (Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves) and a great production (although not too big for Hollywood), Coppola undertook an adventure in which he tried to recover the aroma of early cinema made with models, shadows and rudimentary effects.

He thus took advantage of the proximity of the centenary of cinema and the almost coincidence of the publication of the novel and the invention of cinema, to pay homage (see the cinematograph sequence) with a close treatment, bridging the gap, to what they would have done with that material the masters of silent cinema and the early years of talkies, filming with a Pathé camera and its crank mechanism.

Being the most faithful of the adaptations of the famous novel, it is also an example of literary infidelity due to the love relationship between the count and Mina, not present in the novel, but which at no time delegitimizes the adaptation, but instead delegitimizes it. enriches with a new point of view that gives strength to the count's decision, not explained in the novel, to travel to England, which could perfectly have been included in the original story. Some characters, such as Lucy Westenra, who was often merged with Mina in film adaptations, were treated in special detail here. Others who have almost never appeared in films about the count, such as Dr. Seward, the Texan Quincy Morris or the aristocrat Arthur Holmwood, were also endowed with a much greater and more interesting presence.

Certain of Dracula's outfits and accessories are very eloquent, such as a red kimono with a long tail and a kabuki wig. In the film, Coppola wanted the costumes designed by Eiko Ishioka to be the set, to visually mark the film. One of Dracula's three brides is played by Monica Bellucci and the formidable soundtrack is the work of Polish author Wojciech Kilar. The film contains references to the cinema of Pabst, Murnau, Jean Cocteau and Abel Gance, and multiple visual effects that are easy to conceive (made with rudimentary instruments), but difficult to execute: shadows with a life of their own, theatrical illusions, puppets, painted glass models, moving walls, reversing scenes and continuous challenges to the laws of physics, in order to give the story an extraordinary unreal atmosphere; all done by director of photography Michael Ballhaus in collaboration with Coppola's son (Roman Coppola, visual effects director and assistant director) and Gary Gutiérrez, visual effects supervisor.

Despite the aforementioned controversy about fidelity/infidelity to the book and about the visual treatment of the work, so far from everything previously known, and especially far from the typical image of the vampire created by Béla Lugosi or Christopher Lee, Dracula, by Bram Stoker was one of Coppola's greatest financial successes, with the profits of which he bought Inglenook Castle and an extensive territory dedicated to vineyards, and won three Oscar awards: costumes, makeup and sound effects.

Jack

Finally recovered from his economic and vital crisis, Coppola's next project would be Jack, starring Robin Williams and which tells the life of a boy who ages four times faster than normal, so he is 10 years old, in a 40 year old man's body. Jack Powell persuades his parents (Diane Lane and Brian Kerwin) to let him go to school on the recommendation of his guardian, Mr. Woodruff (Bill Cosby). The rest of the film deals with his failures and successes as a student in elementary school until the end of his high school days. Jack also had Jennifer Lopez, Fran Drescher and Michael McKean as supporting characters. Despite being a moderate success at the box office, the film was rejected by critics, who were unhappy with the abrupt contrast between comedy and melodrama. It was also compared unfavorably to Big, starring Tom Hanks, whose leading role was similar to Williams'. Most critics felt that the script was poorly written, not funny, and that the dramatic material was implausible and unconvincing. Other critics felt that Coppola was too good to make this type of film. Despite being ridiculed for the film, Coppola has defended it, stating that he is not ashamed of having made it. Coppola had been friends with Williams for many years and had always wanted to make a film with him as an actor. When Williams read the script for Jack, he said that he would accept it only if Coppola agreed to direct the film.

The Rainmaker

The following year and signing the script for the first time in seven years, he filmed one of his most emotional films with the adaptation of John Grisham The Rainmaker (known in Spanish as Legitima defense, or The Power of Justice),) starring Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover and Jon Voight. A sober and emotional judicial drama with which Coppola closes the nineties.

21st century

Apocalypse Now Redux

In 2001 he presented a new production of his Apocalypse Now at the Cannes Film Festival, carried out with his collaborators Vittorio Storaro and Walter Murch, and which he titled Apocalypse Now Redux , in which he added about half an hour of unreleased footage that he did not like at the time. The new film excited a sector of critics, who considered this production even superior to the first. Other sectors were colder with this proposal.

Youth Without Youth

After almost ten years without releasing a new film, Coppola returned in 2007 with the melodrama Youth Without Youth, starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara and Bruno Ganz, among others. A low-budget film shot in Romania with a European team with which Coppola reinvents himself artistically after ten years of inactivity.

Tetro

In 2008 he prepared a new film in Argentina, Tetro, recounting the Italian immigration that populated Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th century, spoken in English, with the announced participation of Vincent Gallo, Maribel Verdú, Alden Ehrenreich, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Carmen Maura, Rodrigo De la Serna, Leticia Brédice, Mike Amigorena, Sofía Gala, Érica Rivas, Silvia Pérez, Norma Pons and Adriana Mastrángelo.

Megalopolis

In April 2019, Coppola announced his return to directing with the science fiction blockbuster Megalopolis, his most ambitious project in decades, promising to surpass Apocalypse Now, with which he had been working for several years and for which he was already looking for leading actors. He confirmed in turn that the script was already written and that he planned to start filming in 2019.

Reediting montage of The Godfather 3

On September 3, 2020, Coppola announced that he would release a new version of The Godfather Part III with a different ending. The forecast would be to release the new version by December of that year.

I work as a producer

Practically since his beginnings as a filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola has developed a commendable and sometimes fascinating career as a producer, not only of his own films or those of his children and friends, but of very different projects to which he has lent his support so that they could come true.

He participated in the first two films of his close friend George Lucas, THX-1138 and American Graffiti, assuming part of the losses of the first and financing the distribution itself. of the second when it could not find distributors (later it would be a great economic success). He then ensured that the Black Stallion project, and its sequel, were made. Likewise, one of Akira Kurosawa's most emblematic films, Kagemusha , exists thanks to his intervention as a producer.

In contrast to his progressive loss of power and control of his films as a director, his work as a producer has been strengthened over the decades, until a productive, prolific and successful 90s in which he has managed to combine ambitious projects like Kinsey, The Good Shepherd, Sleepy Hollow, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and others like Jeepers Creepers and Don Juan de Marco.

Other jobs

• Wines. In recent years, it has also been dedicated to other businesses, such as winemaking in the Napa Valley of California, with its wine cellar Niebaum-Coppola.
• Pasta and sauce. It also produces a special line of pasta and sauces: Mammarella.
• Hotels. It has opened hotels in Guatemala, Belize and Buenos Aires, in the Palermo neighborhood.
• Magazine. In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope All-StoryA literary magazine that publishes short stories. The magazine has published fiction stories by T. C. Boyle and Amy Bloom, and essays by David Mamet, Steven Spielberg and Salman Rushdie. Since its founding, the magazine has grown in reputation to become one of the most important specialists in literary fiction. Coppola serves as an editor, founder and publicist of all kinds of stories.

Family

His children have followed him in his film career. Sofia Coppola, despite the initial bad reviews garnered by her performance in The Godfather III, has achieved a great reputation as a director and screenwriter with the films The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette. Her other son, Roman Coppola, is the author, among other works, of the outstanding CQ. In addition to his children, his sister Talia Shire, actress of the Rocky saga and The Godfather, his father, Carmine Coppola, who was a renowned composer and musician, stand out. and wrote the melodies for many of his films; and her nephews Nicolas Cage, a famous actor in major Hollywood productions, and Jason Schwartzman (Talia's son), also an actor, but who has based his career mostly on independent cinema.

Filmography

Awards and recognitions

Oscar Awards

Cannes International Film Festival

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

San Sebastian International Film Festival

Princess of Asturias Awards

Venice International Film Festival