This article contains indepth information about the famed director, Francis Ford Coppola.
Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is an
American film director, producer and screenwriter. Away from show business,
Coppola is also a vintner, magazine publisher and hotelier. He is a graduate of
Hofstra University where he studied theatre. He earned an M.F.A. in film
directing from the UCLA Film School. He is most renowned for directing the
Godfather films, The Conversation,
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 Dracula Film) and the Vietnam War epic
Apocalypse Now.
Life
Childhood
Coppola was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a
family of Italian ancestry (his grandparents were immigrants from Bernalda,
Basilicata). He received his middle name in honor of Henry Ford and because he
was born at the Henry Ford Hospital. Coppola is son of Italia (née Pennino) and
arranger/composer Carmine Coppola, who, at the time, was the first flautist for
the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He was the second of three children (his sister
is actress Talia Shire). Two years later, Carmine became the first flautist for
the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the family moved to New York City, finding a home
in Woodside, Queens, where Francis spent the remainder of his childhood.
Coppola had poliomyelitis, or polio, as a boy, leaving him bedridden for large
periods of his childhood, and allowing him to indulge his imagination with
homemade puppet theater productions. Using his father's 8mm movie camera, he
began making movies when he was 10. He studied theatre at Hofstra University and
graduated from the University in 1960, prior to earning a Master of Fine Arts
degree in film direction from UCLA Film School. There, he made numerous short
films. While in UCLA's Film Department, Francis met Jim Morrison, whose music
was used later in Apocalypse Now.
Family
Coppola has often worked with family members
on his films. He cast his two sons in The Godfather as extras during the
street fight scene and Don Corleone's funeral; his daughter, Sofia Coppola,
appeared in all installments of the series (the first two movies with uncredited
roles). His sister, Talia Shire, played Connie Corleone in all three Godfather
films. His father Carmine, a composer and professional musician, co-wrote much
of the music in
The
Godfather,
The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. His nephew, Nicolas
Cage, starred in Coppola's film Peggy Sue Got Married and was featured in
Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club.
His eldest son, Gian-Carlo Coppola, was in the early stages of a film production
career when he was killed on May 26, 1986 in a speedboat accident. Coppola's
surviving son, Roman Coppola, is a filmmaker and music video director whose
filmography includes the feature film CQ and music videos for The Strokes,
as well as co-writing the Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited.
Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola, is an Academy Award-winning writer and
nominated director. Her films include the critically acclaimed films The
Virgin Suicides and
Lost in Translation. In 2004, she became one of the first American women
to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, in which she directed
Lost in Translation.
Other famous members of Coppola's family include his nephews Nicholas Cage,
Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman. Jason Schwartzman has starred in
several films, such as Rushmore and Slackers. He also co-wrote
(along with director Wes Anderson and cousin Roman Coppola) and starred in the
2007 film
The Darjeeling Limited. His brother, Robert Schwartzman, is the lead
singer in the band Rooney and has made small appearances in several films,
including his cousin's The Virgin Suicides.
Coppola, with his family, expanded his business ventures to include winemaking
in California's Napa Valley at the Rubicon Estate Winery in Rutherford,
California. He produced his first batch in 1977 with the help of his father,
wife and children stomping the grapes barefoot. Every year the family has a
harvest party to continue the tradition. His company, Francis Ford Coppola
Presents, owns a winery in Geyserville, Sonoma County, California. The company
also produces a line of pastas and pasta sauces, and it owns several cafes and
resorts.
Recent
Coppola owns the Turtle Inn in Placencia,
Belize. For 14 years he co-owned the Rubicon restaurant in San Francisco along
with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, the restaurant closed in August 2008.
Coppola serves as "Honorary Consul H. E. Ambassador Francis Ford Coppola." for
the Central American nation of Belize in San Francisco, California. In November
2005, Coppola took part as a special guest at the 46th International
Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece.
Coppola is currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also spends
considerable time in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is establishing a
subsidiary of his production company. In San Francisco, Coppola owns a
restaurant named Cafe Zoetrope, located in the Sentinel Building. It serves
traditional Italian cuisine and wine from his personal vineyard and bottling
company.
Over the years, Francis Coppola has given political contributions to several
candidates of the Democratic Party, including Mike Thompson, Nancy Pelosi for
the U.S. House of Representatives and Barbara Boxer and Alan Cranston for the
U.S. Senate.
Career
1960s
In the early 1960s, Coppola started his
professional career making low-budget films with Roger Corman and writing
screenplays. His first notable motion picture was made for Corman, the
low-budget Dementia 13. After graduating to mainstream motion pictures
with You're a Big Boy Now, Coppola was offered the reins of the movie
version of the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow, starring Petula Clark,
in her first American film, and veteran Fred Astaire. Producer Jack Warner was
nonplussed by Coppola's shaggy-haired, bearded, "hippie" appearance and
generally left him to his own devices. He took his cast to the Napa Valley for
much of the outdoor shooting, but these scenes were in sharp contrast to those
obviously filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look to
the film. Dealing with outdated material at a time when the popularity of film
musicals was already on the downslide, Coppola's end result was only
semi-successful, but his work with Clark no doubt contributed to her Golden
Globe Best Actress nomination. During this period, Coppola lived for a time with
his wife and growing family in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, California,
according to author Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
(Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998).
Early 1970s
In 1971, Coppola won an Academy Award for
his screenplay for Patton. However, his name as a filmmaker was made as
the co-writer and director of
The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), and
The
Godfather Part II (1974). In between directing the Godfather films,
Coppola wrote the screenplay for the critically and commercially unsuccessful
1974 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, which
was directed by Jack Clayton and starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. While at
Warner Brothers Coppola hired George Lucas as his assistant and eventually
produced Lucas' breakthrough film, American Graffiti, which was released
in 1973. Also during this period, Coppola invested in San Francisco's City
Magazine, hired an all-new staff, including mob daughter and writer Susan
Berman, and named himself publisher. Although critically acclaimed, the magazine
was short lived. The magazine floundered until 1976 when Coppola published its
last issue.
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II
In 1972, The Godfather was released to critical acclaim and huge
commercial success. Directed by Coppola (the first choice for director was
Sergio Leone), and adapted by Coppola and Mario Puzo from Puzo's bestselling
novel, The Godfather follows the story of the Corleone crime family under
Don Vito Corleone during the 1940s and 50s. The film won three Academy Awards,
including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Marlon
Brando. Coppola himself was awarded Best Adapted Screenplay, along with Mario
Puzo, and was nominated for Best Director.
In 1974, the highly anticipated sequel The Godfather Part II was
released. Again directed and co-written by Coppola, the second film follows the
story of the Corleones under Don Michael Corleone in the late 1950s, intercut
with sequences depicting Vito as a young man in the early twentieth century
(played by Robert De Niro) and his subsequent rise to power. The sequel was as
commercially successful as the first film and received much critical praise. It
became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; it also
earned Coppola Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay
while winning three other awards and earning five other nominations.
THX 1138 and American Graffiti
In the early 1970s Coppola also helped
launch the career of George Lucas by producing his first two films, THX 1138
and American Graffiti. The latter film became a huge success at the
box office and met to strong reviews, even earning Coppola a Best Picture
nomination. Lucas would later go off to create the extremely successful
Star Wars
and
Indiana Jones series. Coppola would later reunite with George Lucas in
1986 to direct the Michael Jackson film for Disney theme parks, Captain Eo,
which at the time was the most expensive film per minute ever made.
The Conversation
In between
The Godfather
and
The Godfather Part II, Coppola
directed The Conversation, the story of a paranoid wiretapping and surveillance
expert (played by Gene Hackman) who finds himself caught up in a possible murder
plot. The Conversation was released to theaters in 1974 and was also
nominated for Best Picture, competing against The Godfather Part II;
Coppola became one of the few directors to have two films competing for the Best
Picture Oscar since the annual number of nominees was reduced to five in 1945.
While The Godfather Part II won the Oscar, The Conversation won
the 1974 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Apocalypse Now
Following the success of The Godfather, The Conversation and
The Godfather Part II, Coppola began filming Apocalypse Now, an
adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness set in Cambodia during
the Vietnam War (Coppola himself briefly appears as a TV news director). Before
production of the film began, Coppola went to his mentor Roger Corman for advice
about shooting in the Philippines, since Corman had filmed several pictures
there. It was said that all the advice Corman offered Coppola was "Don't go."
The production of the film was plagued by numerous problems, including typhoons,
nervous breakdowns, the firing of Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen's heart attack,
extras from the Philippine military leaving in the middle of scenes to go fight
rebels, and an unprepared Marlon Brando with a bloated appearance (which Coppola
attempted to hide by shooting him in the shadows). It was delayed so often it
was nicknamed Apocalypse When?. The film was equally lauded and hated by critics
when it finally appeared in 1979, and the cost of production nearly bankrupted
Coppola's nascent studio American Zoetrope. The film was selected at the 1979
Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d'Or, along with The Tin Drum, directed
by Volker Schlöndorff.
Apocalypse Now's reputation has grown in time and Apocalypse Now
is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. Roger Ebert
considers it to be the finest film on the Vietnam war and included it on his
list for the 2002 Sight and Sound poll for the greatest movie of all time.
The 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse,
directed by Eleanor Coppola (Francis's wife), Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper,
chronicles the difficulties the crew went through making Apocalypse Now,
and features behind-the-scenes footage filmed by Eleanor.
After filming Apocalypse Now, Coppola famously stated:
"We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much
money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."
In 2001, Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now as
Apocalypse Now Redux,
restoring several sequences lost from the original 1979 cut of the film, thereby
expanding its length to 200 minutes.
The UK's 2008 Top Gear special episode, portraying the presenters' epic journey
across Vietnam, prepended "Francis Ford" before each name in the rolling credits
as a tribute to Coppola's work on this film.
1980s
Napoléon restoration and One from the Heart
Despite the setbacks during the making of Apocalypse Now, Coppola kept up
with film projects, presenting in 1981 a restoration by the British film
historian Kevin Brownlow of the celebrated 1927 Abel Gance film Napoléon that
was released in the United States by American Zoetrope. Coppola's father scored
a soundtrack for this cut of the film. However, more of the film has since been
found and incorporated by Brownlow, and Carmine Coppola's soundtrack is written
to match the film at a different frame speed from that at which Gance shot it.
Coppola's insistence on his father's score (others do exist), and his claim to
have worldwide rights on showings of the film (he purchased some rights from
Claude Lelouch who in turn had purchased them from a penniless Gance), mean that
this film is not presently screened, and its fullest form is unavailable on DVD.
Coppola returned to directing with the experimental musical One from the Heart
(1982). The film was a financial failure.
Hammett
Hammett is a 1982 homage to noir films and pulp fiction directed by Wim
Wenders and completed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film is a fictionalized story
about writer Dashiell Hammett, based on the novel of the same name by Joe Gores.
German director Wenders was hired by Coppola to direct this film, which was to
be his American debut feature. But by the time the final version was released in
1982, only 30 percent of Wenders' footage remained, and the rest had been
completely reshot by Coppola. Wenders made a short film called Reverse Angle
documenting his disputes with Coppola surrounding the making of Hammett.
The Outsiders
In 1982, he directed The Outsiders, a film adaptation of the novel of the
same name by S. E. Hinton. Coppola credited his inspiration for making the film
to a suggestion from middle school students who had read the novel. The
Outsiders is notable for being the breakout film for a number of young
actors who would go on to become major stars. These included major roles for
Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell. Others rising stars in the
cast include Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, and Tom
Cruise. Matt Dillon and several others also starred in Coppola's related film,
Rumble Fish, which was also based on a S.E. Hinton novel and filmed at
the same time as The Outsiders on-location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Carmine
Coppola wrote and edited the musical score, including the title song "Stay
Gold", which was based upon a famous Robert Frost poem and performed for the
movie by Stevie Wonder.
The Cotton Club
In 1984 Coppola directed
The Cotton Club.
The film was produced by Robert Evans. It was a box-office failure, with a
budget of $45 million and a gross revenue of only $25 million. Despite
performing poorly at the box office, the film was nominated for several awards,
including Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture (Drama) and the Oscar
for best Film Editing.
Gardens of Stone and Tucker: The Man and His Dream
In 1987 Coppola reteamed with James Caan for
Gardens of Stone but the film was overshadowed by the death of Coppola's
eldest son Gian-Carlo Coppola during the films production. Also in 1987 he
directed an episode of Rip Van Winkle.
He followed this with
Tucker: The Man and His Dream, a biopic based on the life
of Preston Tucker and his attempt to produce and market the Tucker '48. Coppola
had originally conceived the project as a musical with Marlon Brando in the lead
role as his next project after the release of The Godfather Part II. Now, with
Jeff Bridges in the role of Preston Tucker, the film received positive reviews,
earning three nominations at the 62nd Academy Awards.
New York Stories
In 1989 Coppola teamed up with fellow
Oscar-winning directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen for an anthology film
called New York Stories. Coppola directed the Life without Zoe
segment starring his sister Talia Shire, and also co-wrote the film with his
daughter Sofia Coppola. Life Without Zoe was mostly panned by critics and
was generally considered the segment that brought the film's overall quality
down.
1990s
The Godfather Part III
In 1990, he released the third and final
chapter of The Godfather series with
The Godfather Part III. Coppola successfully managed to get Al Pacino,
Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire to return to the franchise, but Robert Duvall
refused to reprise his role as Tom Hagen over salary disagreements. While not as
critically acclaimed as the first two films, it was still a box office success.
Some reviewers criticized the casting of Coppola's daughter Sofia, who stepped
into a role abandoned by Winona Ryder just as filming began. Despite this,
The Godfather Part III went off to gather 7 Academy Award nominations,
including Best Director and Best Picture for Coppola himself. The film failed to
win any of these awards, the only film in the trilogy to do so.
Dracula, Frankenstein and recent films
In 1992, Coppola released
Bram Stoker's Dracula, an adaptation of Stoker's novel which tried to
follow Stoker's novel more closely than previous film adaptations, although its
closeness to the book is often debated. Coppola cast Gary Oldman in the films
title role, along with Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins. The movie's box office
success enabled Coppola to keep his vineyard. The film won Academy Awards for
Costume Design, Makeup, and Sound Editing. Two years later Coppola produced, but
did not direct an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which
featured Kenneth Branagh (who also directed the film) in the title role and
Robert De Niro as the monster.
Coppola would only make two more films in the 1990s: Jack, starring Robin
Williams in 1996, and
The Rainmaker, an ensemble courtroom drama in 1997. His next project
would not be for another 10 years.
Youth Without Youth was released on December 14, 2007. It was made for
about $19 million, and was given a limited release. As a result, Coppola
announced his plans to produce his own films in order to avoid the marketing
input that goes into most films (making them appeal to too-wide an audience).
His most recent film, Tetro, was shot in Buenos Aires and was released in
select cinemas in June 2009.
Meanwhile, for years, he has tried to make a movie called Megalopolis, a
film about an architect in a futuristic New York who tries to create utopia
through architecture.
Zoetrope: All Story
In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope: All-Story, a
literary magazine devoted to short stories and design. The magazine publishes
fiction by emerging writers alongside more recognizable names, such as Woody
Allen, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Mary
Gaitskill, and Edward Albee; as well as essays, including ones from Mario Vargas
Llosa, David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Each issue is
designed, in its entirety, by a prominent artist, one usually working outside
his / her expected field. Previous guest designers include Gus Van Sant, Tom
Waits, Laurie Anderson, Marjane Satrapi, Guillermo del Toro, David Bowie, David
Byrne, and Dennis Hopper. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of
All-Story.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Francis Ford Coppola" and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License.
