Francis Ford Coppola interview (1994)

welcome to our broadcast the Hollywood studio system collapsed after World War two it made way for a new breed of independent filmmakers they included and think about this list Marty Scorsese Brian De Palma Steve Spielberg George Lucas and especially Francis Ford Coppola with the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now Coppola developed his epic and very personal style within the major studios then he started his own company zoetrope and even bought his own movie studio in the early 1980s the creative outlet he sought would eventually bankrupt him having lost nearly everything he has recovered in the 1990s he continues to make movies and he continues to make wine from his beautiful home in the Napa Valley and I'm very pleased to have him here today to talk about many things about living about film and yes about wine welcome thank you yeah how come you became a winemaker is it part of being of your own heritage and your father's a musician not a winemaker and those living in the Napa Valley and everybody's around you do you say I want to do that - well the Italian family you know drank wine with the table long before the average American family considered that and I'd always heard stories about the why my grandfather made in upper Italian Harlem in the basement and it was always these stories were always told and our Italian Harlem in the basement yeah upper Lexington Avenue 10th Street Inn at at what was known as Italian Harlem and they would have cement concrete from mentors in the basement and every year they would buy a boxcar of grapes from California so anyway there was this myth or this this romance in my family so that when we we of course all live in San Francisco and Napa Valley is very close and I had the idea would be nice to have a little cottage you know like a summer house with an acre of grapes and when we were looking for such a house the realtor said oh this isn't for you but the Engel look estate is going to be sold and it's a chance just to see it and he showed it to us and it really wasn't the type of thing we were thinking of but it was so beautiful it was like a national park that eventually we did come into possession of it and with 120 acres of the you know among the finest Cabernet in America and little by little having this fruit and having everyone wanted to buy it from us we began to actually make the wine and that was over 15 years ago did you bring a lot of smart people to help you make it I mean you know art were they there as part of them well the Napa Valley does have a community and there was a great winemaker famous winemaking him Andre collet chef who was a man in his 90s and was I think the winemaker at BV and we did we did the go to him and and he took over the winemaking and yes we were always in the hands of experts and that value is this what you drink it in your better moments when you are you slipping away to get someone else's who's been at this longer than you have well you know I do if I do find that my taste really now run to Napa Valley wine and I mean I always have enjoyed wine and but there is something unique about the Napa Valley wines I like to drink our own wines and we also make some family wines that are you know less aged and this is sort of for a great meal yeah 1980 here yeah but you know I do like the Napa Valley wines I like Australian wines as well how about French wines well you know those are those are the the model that we strive for but more and more I am starting to drink a French wine and a and a Napa Valley wine and realize that I'm now either used to it or I prefer its its character let me go back way back to the beginning for you there was early on this sort of fascination what you tell me about I mean your father was a musician who started in Detroit he was a with the Detroit Symphony no he was with the four tower which was a radio program that would go on in a late 30 in the 30s and it was sort of Henry Ford's pet project or one of his pets and he would actually be there and because I was born there but I left as an infant but my name is Francis Ford because the boy named him after Henry Ford and I was also born in the Henry Ford Hospital and then he came to you being live in Queens when he came to join Tchaikovsky's no in NBC something was that Toscanini just me and my dad was the solo flute and for the NBC Symphony and really during the war years and up into the nineteen forty-five or forty-six when did you what were you like then what was it like growing up in your household and when did all of this sort of sense of feeding this nail legend direct Coppola imagination began it was a I think very magical childhood in fact for years I thought my father when I was little was a magician and it was only when I was a little older that I realized he was a musician yeah but I very much remember the sound of the flute as a little kid because being a symphony musician he practiced you know and prepared and warmed up and I always used to hear this kind of beautiful sound and to this day when I hear a flute I just it brings back my father to me I lost him a couple of years ago and I had an older brother who was extremely important to me five years older and always leading me into exciting new areas literature when I was young and and it was just it was just a very magical family I think and we had the italian-american influence my dad always although you know my grandparents my parents really loved America as the Italian America does they always made me feel as though our Italian culture was something to be proud of and we ate pizza when no one ate pizza and we had wine at the table they used to call you science yes why was it well I was a boy scientist I loved more than anything technology and learning about the lives of the scientists and I always had in my life I do now a little shop where I would build things and try to make inventions and and ultimately was always I was always involved in the radio Club or the science club right I could make little bombs that would blow up a remote when I was little and I just loved science and puppets and I think ultimately and because puppets are sort of scientific a little bit you know you have a string in the mouth opens and that ultimately led me to participate in the lighting of the school plays in the love of movies I always loved movies my brother used to take me my first impression of films were the Corte films The Thief of Bagdad the man who could work miracles to this day I adore the the work of Alexander Korda and that unique style that they had but you know we went to the movies I always went with my brother and but but I first became involved in theater before really thinking that I might be a film director I was i from going from being the person who did the lights and worked on the tech crews of high school shows or what-have-you ultimately I became in my college career you know kind of interested in directing mainly because I was always up on a ladder hanging a light and watching be the professor direct the actors and after a while I got the confidence that I could do it and I started to do that other than then Alexander Korda who influenced you and who was shaping the way you thought about film in a way you thought about what you wanted to do with your life well first I have to say that it was the theater and the work of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan being a drama student of the 50s these were the magical names of course Marlon Brando I really loved and responded as many people to Tennessee Williams plays and read them very young and in fact I did a production of streetcar named desire when I was 17 in college I became a little bit of the Boy Wonder of Hofstra College I in fact started the drama club that's still there the one that I did and I even tried to start a Hofstra cinema workshop which in those days funny how it is now but I think two students came but I had a very merged something though there was something you created something called a spectrum or you merged aspect but yeah what it was is there were two big organizations that one was the drama organization what was the musical comedy organization which I was at and I discovered that the funding for the plays was really coming from the Student Activities fee and what I did basically was become president of both of them at the same time and merged them together and issue a decree that the only students could direct the major directions of course and that's how I got my chance was being at Hofstra shaping influence totally Hofstra was a wonderful place I had wonderful teachers some of them were gone professor Beckerman who later went to Columbia and you know this was presidental to let us young students take over actual normally in a school the faculty directs the shows the big shows and after I had a beautiful theater still does and you know partly my own political maneuvering but also I think under a proud eye of the faculty we took on some enormous production as kids and and musicals regional musicals and it was I think the encouragement of you know an artist needs a young artist needs to know that they can even do it in order to aspire to do things and I got that at Hofstra I read a story about you and going to the movie and seeing Sergei Eisenstein's ten days that shook the world based on the john reed book and this somehow you had changed your outlook well i wanted to go to the Yale Drama School and I really wanted to be a playwright in those days and it was a you know it takes years to make a writer and certainly my efforts as a playwright although I had a playwriting scholarship at Hofstra I just was you know I just didn't feel that I had any talent and talent it was a big commodity in life my family I mean my father was you know very tough on whether you had the gift of talent or not an area I didn't feel I had any writing talent although I would write every day and try and so I sort of became a director in school almost by default because I seem to have ability to get the show on and get the sets built but one afternoon around four o'clock on a fall day the Little Theater saw a poster that said they were going to show this Eisenstein film I had never heard really of Eisenstein and I saw ten days that shook the world with three other people in this room and I was so impressed I've never seen of course the silent film I'd never seen film that worked like that and it was on that day that I said wanted to to be a film director and not a theater person and it's funny because Eisenstein himself who was a theatre designer in his in his autobiography refers to the fact that on a certain day equally he said the cart broke and the driver fell into cinema so he had a kind of and for a while Eisenstein became a little bit of a guiding influence because I felt it was very good that I get a good theatre basis in theater craft and acting and then go on to movies and to this day for young people I would very much recommend that they work in one act the one-act play form and and with actors and and in theatre before they get involved in in the movies and a lot of directors don't have really the experience with working with actors that they might get a thing because what they go to film school and then go directly to working in the movies and they never hit a there so even in film school it's amazing really all over the country there could be a film department in a theatre department and the students don't mix they don't know each other the directing students in the film department will never go and do one-act plays which is the best thing a film director could do the first work with the performances in the content without the burden or the the obligation of the camera you know and then having done some one-act plays and really have a sense of how you you help an actor get to what you want then go on and start to see what's the best way to put a camera to it but how did you get from from being influenced by Sergei Eisenstein to working for Roger Corman everybody knows is the king of the B movies yet at the same time has touched the lives of a lot of people well I went to the UCLA film school in 1960 and you know the first thing they told you at UCLA was well 10 percent of you are going to even stay in this program much less become movie maker yeah and it was very much what we felt was you know our wildest hopes were that we could maybe make an industrial film or you know or or whatever kind of film a US agency film was something but the film feature film directors didn't seem you know they were older and they didn't know no one from a film school had ever directed a feature film so you know it wasn't it wasn't as it is now where young people have the model of Steven Spielberg and they want to go in his footsteps it was it seemed like a closed thing and and of course I I having a lot of theater experience I was dying to work with a camera and I was very and I and I was a writer which and I was a writer who had put in a lot of years trying to be a writer whether I thought I had talent or not at least I I did it a lot and there was an ad for Roger Corman we all knew that one thing about Roger is he made a lot of films and if you would work cheap you could work in films and be around a set and I hadn't even been on a movie set in my life so I remember that the day I was waiting for the callback of whether I could go in for the interview was also the day that the phone company was going to cut off my phone because I didn't have any money to pay the bill and I was just sitting there saying please don't cut off the phone because I'll never get a job yeah because it will you know and then sure enough I did get the the call and they did cut off the phone about an hour later and I went was interviewed and and and I got this job which was a funny job Roger's assistant interviewed me and that led to a relationship where I so I became his assistant because I would do everything I would wash his car I would move the sod of his lawn I would rewrite scripts I'd be the dialogue director on the Vincent Price movie and I would edit all night in fact I even used to slump over the movie olla and even be sure that when he came in at 9:00 there I was with my arm over the movie Ola and she would taking care of ya he would see that I had you know been there all night which I had what led to the first film well Roger Roger in his closet had you know sort of these rolls of old film you know really even they weren't even little trims was whole cans of films that he had leftover and there was a there was a perfect tone recorder which was a sort of movie sound recorder and I mean equipment to a young film student is you know is such a scarce and difficult thing to come by especially in those days before video that I heard that Roger was going to go to Europe and make a film called the young racers and he asked me to Francis well you're at UCLA and you know any young guy who could be a sound mixer as I can and I went home and I read the manual and sure enough Roger brought me to Europe as the sound man for film he was making and I and I did that and I was also second unit photographer shooting the Grand Prix races in a wonderful period for a guy 21 and then miraculously just before we left I won the first prize in the Samuel Goldwyn writing award which had never been given to a film script so I had $2,000 which was the prize and I bought myself an Alfa Romeo sports car that's what they cost yeah and I mean I was in pain I was 21 I was working on a movie around a set and and I knew that Rodger always made a second film wherever he went because he would have the company paid for the first one it was AIP and since everyone was there when the equipment was there he'd always do one on his own who you know kind of averaged out a moonlighting film yeah but he had to go back to do the Raven what a movie that became the Raven with a very wonderful film that he directed with Vincent Price and I think Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre really a nice little little film and so I said to him let me make the second film and stayed up all night and wrote a script and and and got Roger to give me $20,000 to go off to Ireland which was an english-speaking country so that I could you know get actors and stuff and and make my first film and that's how I did it did you remain close as you became famous and yeah I I and had your own studio yeah well Roger was appeared inside in the cast of Godfather 2 he was on the Senate investigating committee Roger loves to act and Roger told me he wants his Frances if you stay thin keep your hair and have a lot of money you'll be young forever yeah he's pretty harder to do than to say most people said well I have two of those talk about Apocalypse Now first because I've got that here and and it is so central it seems to me to your life and if you look at Godfather and then Apocalypse Now look back on it and tell me what your hopes were and your expectations and when your wife has made a documentary that a lot of people thought was an incredibly good documentary Gene Siskel thought it was the best movie he'd seen that year well it was an extraordinary story in itself well the origins of Apocalypse really in a way don't don't begin with me I had become a very young age a director of big studio feature film probably I was the first film student to get that opportunity and I was actually making feature films at at Warner Brothers and around me began to collect through an association with a young USC student who was a kid and who came one thing led to another became a kind of assistant at first and this is george lugo George Lucas and I you know recognized his intelligence and know-how right away and he became sort of my friend I didn't have a friend like a little bit like a younger brother and so George it turned out I didn't even know this when I had met him but George was really an extraordinary USC student had won every student award he was really a heavyweight even in his own world there and a lot of young people gathered around or with George's friends and since George was now working for me at that time and with me they sort of would come in to get inside the studio and and our office was filled with people who later became the famous directors of that period and they included well specifically John Milius but it was John Milius also a writer and he was a writer at Carroll Ballard Caleb Deschanel what's his name Brian DePalma was around and of course you know it was like we we were the Trojan horse we were in the studio and we could get in through the gate and so they were around and we were always talking and the idea I think even Carol Ballard had always been the one to say that he would like to do the classic heart of darkness that Joseph Conrad novel which of course Wells had wanted to do and prepared but never made and also around was John Milius who was beginning he's a great storyteller melius and he was telling about these young guys surfers who came back from Vietnam and and the vision of Vietnam was different than any war I mean it was guys on LSD looking at the the rockets in the air and and of course the the use of drugs as an element in that war and these extraordinary anecdotes that were coming back guys surfing on the breaks in Vietnam and this collection of impressions and stories he had heard he wanted to work up into a piece that originally I thought was called a psychedelic soldier and the idea was that George was going to direct it and John was going to write it and Carroll Ballard was in there also talking about heart of darkness and stuff and at one point not not my idea but at one point melius and George decided that they would somewhat borrow the idea of the boat going up the river to attach all these vignettes that John was talking about to something that he would write and I I was interested in getting George the chance to direct the feature film and in fact I succeeded and George made a film called thx 1138 which was his first film and the idea was that George would make as his second film a script that John would write and I at that time I was able to wangle from Warner Brothers some funds to give all these young people money so they could they could do it including George and John Milius began to write a screenplay which finally he called Apocalypse Now and it was it was done and it was a very good script we thought and George was going to do it and then we had a lot of you know setbacks and the administration at Warner Brothers sort of dumped us I think they saw thx 1138 which was so far out in their minds that it wasn't what they thought they want to get into and ultimately all these scripts and stuff because I had had the success with the Godfather Warner Brothers made me buy back which is sort of I mean it's a true when have you ever heard of a studio head that when he leaves has to pay for all the projects in a development well that's what they did to me and I ended up with all these scripts and I went to George and I said well George let's do pocalypse now and by that time George was already going on and doing other things and I think he was even I forget what he what he was doing and or whether he was writing Star Wars but he had already made graffiti but anyway George couldn't do it and then I went to John Milius who who directed a fabulous picture I thought his first picture Dylan Dylan Dylan Jerome and really his bet I've one of his best pictures as a director and I I certainly was impressed with John and I said why don't you do Apocalypse Now it's a haze kind of movie to do yeah and and he um they wanted to do it you know at 16 millimeter and you know maybe do it in much more in a newsreel style which was George's concept and I want to do something else I was writing the conversation I wanted to do the conversation in film later starring Val eight years later I got to do right so also another thing was happening is my entrepreneurial spirit which had been honed at Hofstra College was was in action and I realized that we could basically we always wanted to be independent and control our own destiny with film and against the idea of the big company that would kind of just use us and tell us what to do so I developed with some of my friends the idea that we would go around the world and we would make a film that we would finance by getting each country to put up an amount of money as partners in advance the words Italy would put up so much money France etc and we would get the money by getting distribution advances and therefore we would own the picture and I knew we could do this but the question is you know John Milius wasn't able to do Apocalypse turned it down or I can't do it so it sort of fell to me and I was the head of the company and I believed that I could finance it this unique way which I thought might be a precedent that we could maybe go on and continue to do that and by doing that we would basically build a real company that really could make movies and give new people chances and own the movies so at one point I decided well you know I always like the idea this of the this idea I like the script and that I would do it myself but I had different ideas about how to do it than George and then even John number one I very much wanted to make it even more like heart of darkness and in fact if anything make it be a kind of transliteration of heart of darkness to the Vietnam setting which was not really what they wanted to do the end of the original media script was quite different it didn't didn't really end in the same way as or without any of the kind of philosophy of heart of darkness but rather ended in a in a giant battle in which the Willard character joins with Kurtz and together they hold off the you know in a you know big John Wayne battle scene and that didn't really feel right to me but also I didn't want to make it in 16-millimeter my idea was to do the opposite to go there and make it in IMAX right you know in Takai to make it in 3d make it in quadrophonic sound to kind of be able to go in and and rather than a documentary to make it in in the opposite of that and so what happened was I did basically put up again my own money which was in the form of my house that by that time I had come into possession this is after I mean this extraordinary thing about this is after the enormous success of Godfather right well Godfather and then really what was catching lightning in a bottle Godfather n got on the got to and the conversation so I was in at one all these Oscars had won five Oscars you were the director of the decade right and Here I am no one had ever touched the Vietnam subject no one had ever made a film a feature film other than John Wayne who had made the Green Berets and I was going to take up all the money I had made which I had among other things bought the the Great England ochre state which was the queen of the Napa Valley and I put it all on the line to borrow the money which along with the advances from all the European countries I was going to go off to the Philippines and make this film and but let me interrupt you it as we look at this now I made before I even go to the clip and for you I hear a lot more about this was it the worst decision of your life well not at all not at all I I wouldn't say that at all I think it was I think was a great decision I mean when else is at the time to go on an adventure when you're you know Kyle was what was I 34 years old yeah I don't think I was a bad decision at all but you mean you had all this going for you and some have said that it marked something that it was a turning point in your life in your career and that you roll the dice yeah but that was that you didn't that was the thing to say I mean I as we know very often the story is written before the story happens and all I had to do was to go off to the jungle in this condition and ask for a modicum of privacy which is let me try to make this film and already as you know the reports were coming back that oh it was a disaster primarily because no one knew and it was just a mystery and the story would to be that the guy who had made the Godfather and who despite all odds made a second Godfather that people thought was as good as the first and made the conversation was out there somehow failing because that would be more interesting than if I were out there succeeding but it was a controversial project for all the reasons you just said I mean you didn't want to do it in the beginning and then you know you the Harvey Keitel was too high it was hired on and then he was fired by you over whatever differences or whatever the differences it was not at all that Harvey is a great actor it was purely that as I saw the material the kind dr. Harvey Harvey's like a magnetic guy in that school of acting which is which is the focus is on Harvey right and the character was a kind of witness who just was passive looking at this stuff and I that was basically in my mind also Harvey was uncomfortable in the jungle and I just you know I had everything riding on it and I just had to make a call still admiring Harvey you know that it's not a question of Harvey it's just a question of the kinds of things that happened to you in this film this is what a director does a director makes decisions and that's why you want to have someone who's not afraid to make a decision you know and I guess I felt that number one the fact first also movies were at that time starting not just Apocalypse but we would to see the trend that movies were going to cost more money than a movie had cost in the past it was in those days you could make the conversation cost under two million dollars but no one had ever heard of a 20 or a 30 million dollar movie I mean Cleopatra was what did the Godfather cost the first Godfather cost six and a half million and the second Godfather cost fourteen million but that index was continuing to go had nothing to do with apocalypse apocalypse being an ambitious production was going to be another milestone on the index of cause we today they talk in terms of films costing eighty million dollars this is a phenomenon of timing and the cinema has nothing to do with what's interesting about this you think that we've come full circle and that the new wave of films are going to be small interpersonal about relationships do you I would I feel in a nutshell to get off a pocket and I'll come back to it but is that we live in a world right now that if anything needs a cinema that sheds light on life and on relationships men and women and family and ideals and and but in a new form and a new content whereas the film industry basically is such an important industry that it by my nature must keep manufacturing a product because it has to have the people go back everyday like you do at a fast-food thing so there in too and the whole and when I say the cinema it's the whole hub of it the criticism the studios everyone wants there just to be basically old content done well and I feel suddenly you know they're there all these young people writing scripts hoping to be discovered to make their fortune and I just feel it sooner or later some god knows 19 year old is going to write a script that's really about life and that is about that it is new because once again it's about something real you fear that you think that's going to happen I would assume that there must be 50 scripts around the about they're all writing scripts that's the next Sleepless in Seattle or the next film noir or no one writes a film about what they think about their their their brother and what are they doing that and I mean that's what Marty started doing - I mean he went back and wrote a film Mean Streets right was about just that the kind of thing you're talking that's why it was so welcome I mean even then now all the more as we live in an age where basically each year whether it's a sequel or not it's basically I recycled and the name of the game even the critical establishment doesn't want anything really new because then they have to say whether it's good or bad they would rather have something this is always what happens in art you know the painters back then wanted a picture that looks ladies the piano something new I haven't seen the piano yet because I've been sort of a way if my life hunches it's probably not probably not probably not new I don't know have you seen anything that that represents what you're talking about that's really new no no no I kind of took a year off you know from film from seeing films from really everything just since I'm 16 years old is the first year I took off just to be able to look at everything with new eyes and so you don't you may be gradual watching films right not right not maybe Reservoir Dogs is new I my kids tell me it is it is you know so so but that's what I think is going to be the next exciting you know do you want to be part of that sure to the extent that my weird personality and abilities can be part of that I feel I think all the time about life and about about the big picture of life which is you know spirituality and philosophy and politics and and and and and what a new society could be like and how it could be beautiful how we can retain the great traditions of the past which is to say you know look yeah right at the same time but have one foot in the past that have yet one foot in the future and somehow I mean this is all I think about what have you learned I'm gonna come back to Paco's and and Godfather because everybody wants me to talk about that with you because it's so much a part of cinema history but what have you learned in this year what have I learned I mean one of those fresh eyes scene it's inappropriate me to try to give you a setting I'm not looking for summary but I'm just giving a sausage so I basically feel that there are going to be some opportunities that happen that that perhaps can give me what I'm looking for which is once again the adventure I think that once again there could be live cinema there could be live television that is writer driven that the whole quality of writing and and the thinking and content that is really the most essential part of the cinema could once again get out of this outrageous kind of what they call developmental process and once again have authors who bring their views which is their views of life and their views of of people to be at the center of then whatever the cinematic or television product is and that ultimately perhaps live Tenjin I tell you think about everyone's talking about television and and the incredible interconnected interactivity and viola phone telephone cables but yet live television which is which is an art form of its own which we demonstrate the United States and the fifth place which is which is writer which starts with the writer and which can go out live with live performance and in a way that is less easy for the so-called corporate mind to control because when you go out live you're in the hands of the artist like this to me is one of the most exciting new fields and I say new field knowing it's an old field where the whole world is going to be able to connect with some actors and some writers and some directors and yet you don't hear a peep about this you know in the world but on the other hand think of this and we we hear about what the well-worn ideas of what's wrong with the world and the destruction of the rainforests and the extraordinary problems yet no one will ever even say what the real problem is which is overpopulation it's the problem is not that they're destroying the rainforest the problem is but the planet was not created to house more than four or five billion people so that very often the things that are at the root and the most interesting is the thing that no one will talk about so for me live cinema or performance cinema could be one of the new areas to to for a person like myself or or anyone who's serious about really interpreting life for the world which is what art does let me test this on you and I'm not a psychiatrist but listening to you and having read a lot about you I see this that's why I was interested in what it shaped you and how you came to get involved in movies it's an interesting combination because I have talked to so many directors on this broadcast and most of them most of them on their short list of great directors is you at the same time there is this question in the public arena what ever happened to Francis Ford Coppola how did someone who did such sort of seminal films like The Godfather why is he making great films Steven Spielberg just made Schindler's List it's continuing to grow let's say we wonder if you're continuing to grow and we wonder if the reason is you had all you were so driven by so many passions family entrepreneurship building empires and institutions that you didn't have a whole lot of time left for doing what you really did which is make great movies well my first response response will be number one my films were not greeted as great films when they came out even Godfather which is the only film I ever made that had what we will call a great success was very controversial and critically was really at the time it was a mixed reaction critical hit my films are unusual partly because I look at art as an adventure and I I mean what other film director if you took his first film in a seventh film or so dissimilar my styles are always different I'm very willing to go in different directions I don't just basically make this no kind of I hear you people can say so right from the beginning in time and I lived through it so I know my work was always greeted even Godfather - I mean if you remember back the reviews and the and the buzz to use a contemporary word was that Godfather 2 was not as good as Godfather 1 I know it because you know I was crushed because I knew that if that happened and then I couldn't live up to the the promise of Godfather 1 which at the time I spent my time defending that I hadn't romanticized the Mafia and that it had value as a piece of art so that since in those days the films that I made which are today considered classics were not considered classics equally so the films that I've made more recently have the same reception but that does not mean that they were as good but but just because they're now saying did I say whether they were good I didn't say the first was all I'm saying is that the judgment of these films in their time was always that Francis Coppola is promising but the reaction is mixed and that's the same thing that they've said about films just to pull one out of the hot the Cotton Club right but look at the Cotton Club and then consider how it was received and yourself see what you think of the picture or you know my theory is that when a film is unusual and tries to break new ground that when that when it like a new food that you put in front of a person I eat that mean I don't like that because I have no mono but six years laters ha that's I remember that stuff my mother used to make Wow I like that better than Hershey bar so my only point is first of all it's not important whether a person is making great films or not because as we know what really makes a great film is one thing whether it lives right and that can only really be judged later on so for me but but let me ask you this because it lives do you think just you the Cotton Club is going to live like The Godfather will live or like conversation or even Apocalypse Now which many people think was 2/3 brilliant and right well that all my films were were were considered that way in my opinion car club is not in the same league even close when was the last time you saw it been a while yeah look at it again the main point but I'm interested in you because I have not one-tenth of the ability to judge a film that you do I'm saying do you believe the Cotton Club is in the same league with the Godfather one Godfather to forget Godfather 3 for a second it's not for me to talk about my films as to what League but I'll tell you this aside from the fact that many of the films I made post my studio were made more because I had to make a film and Bob Evans said I want to make my Cotton Club go make it and I made one film after another basically on demand I would say that the reason you make a film is a very important ingredient and what that film ultimately likes but to shock you I think that some of the films that I've made in this period when you look at in the long term will be reviewed on the same will be viewed on the same level as those earlier picked and that's what I'm interested in Naomi those that you think might have that you think every bit as good and that history will be kind to oh I think cotton club for sure well I think Tucker for sure yeah I agree one I think a film that's really out there and weird and people are just starting to understand that it doesn't work like a regular movie is Dracula you know when I'm a godfather to as I said the first I remember going under my bed on the floor under my bed because that's what a man does because he can't just break out crying at the reaction - Godfather - were things that I overheard what I went under the bed in the space between the bed just to kind of hide because I we're talking metaphor here aren't we no we're talking real space under the bed because there are very few things a man is supposedly allowed to do to express how he feels but because I sat in a room after a screening and could hear people discussing the picture that didn't know I could hear it and heard the the things they said about Godfather - which was you just wanted to go hot get into the under the bed and you did get it I did because I felt secure under the bed so a filmmaker you know basically put something out there on the table and the people judge it and usually with me I have never had a wild hit except for the first Godfather which was based on a wild hit of a book yeah it is right people were very it creates a because I love the people were very critical of that movie Marlon Brando mumbles uh-oh but I said then with that there was a great except there was a great praise of his performance in Godfather and as time went by the praise got greater and greater to me you know what can I say I don't care but I am saying that when you make unusual films that you do not tend to get the praise in time that you get five or ten years later and I can I already hear people telling me things about movies that got that same mixed reaction you know I saw that again that was really you know that was I can't get that but I'm saying to me in your head you that that you have lived up to the expectation that you had for yourself after the start that you I didn't live up to the expectation I had for myself with the Godfather or with the with the pocket we'll talk about Godfather for a second I mean we I want I love apocalypse man I want to talk more about that but we're off to somewhere else now I'm told that when you delivered a rough cut to Evans at Paramount Godfather one it was scheduled for for later distribution that he said Rob Bob Evans said I can't like this is not there you go back and make a better movie is that a true story now you'll get the the real truth okay I was editing Godfather in San Francisco paramount was in LA Bob Evans told me that when you bring me the film and show me the film if it's over an hour and 15 minutes we're not going to talk about it the movie is getting brought to LA and you're not going to work in San Francisco didn't Bob Evans is at that time had a production Pamela I was told that if the picture was longer because they did not want a long picture if you want to retain your privacy and edit the movie in your own studio which is partly why a done Godfather was to keep being able to keep all these young film directors alive and and it was very important to me to be able to finish the film in San Francisco I was told if I brought the film down to Paramount and it was over this length that it was going to be edited down in LA where they could supervise it so we made the film we made a cut of the film it was an hour and 45 minutes and it was the movie I mean I have it on tape even in those days I was editing using a paper everyone you all know what are we going to do we we have a movie that's an hour 45 minutes Evan says if it's over an hour and 15 minutes it's going LA so for a week we sat down we cut out this scene or half of this scene and we brought a movie down that was a hundred was was an hour and 15 minutes Evans looked at it he says you have destroyed the picture you have taken all of the the texture the family stuff out of it he says you're bringing it down to LA which translates into he was bringing that film down to LA where he could kind of be all over it no matter whether I brought it down at 115 or 145 so then we brought it down to LA where we put back all the film that had been before we brought it down and we made it up to 145 minutes and he looked at his ass see now it works yeah I mean this is what it's like in Hollywood I you know this is why you want to create your own studio of course we should be able to allow artists to have freedom from that kind of mentality and got it but then you had to take all these risk and you lost it right I didn't lose anything really I mean do you have you don't have the studio I don't have the one in LA but I have the one in San Francisco I mean do you have the freedom now and the resources to I mean to make the kind of movies you want to make well that's tricky because the kinds of movies that I really want to make are not cannot be easily classified by what was successful two years ago so I really wonder if anyone other than Steven Wright you know can make the kind of movies they want to make if those kind of movies are really new and that really break a lot of what the wisdom of the distribution business and the industry says in other words I don't think anybody can you haven't seen Schindler's right not yet yeah you've said an interesting thing he said if I made channels before I don't think I would have wanted to make a dinosaur movie look I always felt that that Steven was a prodigy and when people used to say that his subject matter was infantile what have us a haze 45 years old every year he gets older he's gonna bring his talent to new you know subject and get his confidence and you know it doesn't surprise me at all that he's made a distinguished mom he's made a lot of distinguished films back to you Godfather why tell me in your mind what it was about everybody wants to talk about that the Mafia is an American corporation they want to talk about the family and all of that what was in the directors mind okay we'll change from what we were talking about it was Apocalypse I that we kind of went half way there but we'll go to the Godfather to me when I read they have time constraints I read the book The Godfather it seemed to me that in the those of you who remember the book there was this story of a family that seemed classical almost you know kind of like a Grecian or or certainly of that or Shakespearean and at the same time there was this kind of Irving Wallace novel about a woman whose vagina was too big I mean half the book was dedicated to a doctor who made a woman's genitalia smaller people don't remember that now but when I looked at the book in fact I didn't like the book at first because I thought it was sleazy but this story of a man who was a king who had three sons and each son represented an aspect of him and there was going to be a question of succession that is what I saw when I looked at the film whether it was Joseph Kennedy and his children's or someone who live at a patriarch yeah is it I know you hate this question but I'll ask it anyway is it the film that you cherish the most why not at all it's not know what is you know you asked me a lot about what I thought of my work and I said more or less I really believe that my body of work is all about on the same level I mean I have never I my flops of which every director has are probably among the more interesting flops than people and did you learn from them sure every film I make is an experiment in preparation for the next one I never really did what it was I intended to do which was to be really a writer of original material original stories original scripts because I can that I direct the only ones ever done that's Woody Allen and to which I've take my hat off I being a well trained theatre director and versed in musical comedy and and you know the feeling that I could do a comedy I could do Shakespeare I could do anything that worked against me because what I really wanted to do was to write original material for the cinema and then direct it and I only did it on two occasions the conversation and the rain people much earlier and for that reason I and lived up to my expectations and if I am to live up my expectations in this period of my life it would be because I do that you know and your young man is still time to do that I mean my sense of you also I don't wanna impose my projection of U onto you but it is that you know you wanted you had a huge appetite yes you'll give me that and secondly that huge appetite was directed towards creating you know a vehicle that could do the kinds of things without the interference I'm a builder that's exactly what I would like to build a city if someone said to me what do you want to do I was I want to build a new city I want to build a new society I mean I'm just a builder so whatever I'm going to get to do shy of that is going to be what I do in these next years and and your vision is to be something is to the vision you have is still to be the Builder it's what I am I don't have you know my vision we haven't really talked about but but you know it's it's we're living in times that are difficult to navigate through both in a financial sense to be able to gain the confidence of those people who control the financial existence of our society to to somehow position yourself correctly in the public perception which means dealing with the press which is which is tricky as AI my problems the really when you talk about what happened to me after Apocalypse Now happened with Apocalypse Now because of because when we began to be very very criticized and I begin can be very criticized after I had done so much work I couldn't believe that a young American was willing to take all his money to go off and make a film about Vietnam should should basically not have some people who were like supporting him and saying and I would agree with that too I mean you take you it was a gonna way of putting it all on the table and all I got was if you look at look at the stuff they wrote about it you know basically I had done this amazing thing by making a what was to be considered a classic Academy award-winner and then without even wanting to ask to do it again did it again I innovated the whole concept the other one into a part too and then after that it was time for my fall and if you ever asked me why everyone got down on me after Apocalypse Now which is another classic in some people's eyes I would answer it and say simply it was the thing to do it was the nature of the way the world works and it was if somebody goes up the slippery totem pole there's someone to try to reach and say pull again with my personality I mean they're going to do it the Oliver Stone because he has that I mean Oliver Stone is you know wonderful person like melius you know these a lot of times these guys who are you know kind of tough in this net deep down they're the sweetest kind of most boyish kind of people so you have to have the kind of personality that makes it attractive to do it I would say that my problems began certainly in terms of my public image because it became the thing to do it are you saying also a Ted permit is that all it was to it you accept no responsibility for any of the things that happened at in the Philippines well that day Glee I might not have been a little bit crazed over there I wasn't crazed I was making a film in which the concept was the same as really all my films are which is to try to make a film that is as much as possible that is what it's about Tucker say was the film was made like a contraption Tucker was if you look at that film it's like a crazy invention it was about a contraption Apocalypse Now was about a certain madness when morality becomes so stretched that you're in an elemental state and that's the kind of film I made and why apocalypse to this day probably more captures the essence of that war then than maybe other films do so that was part of the directorial style which was also it became very those kinds of stories became very publicized and stressed and the other practical financial logistical things that enabled us to get through that we're not I'm out of time no we do this autumn live to tape as you know let's this is an invitation to you a half the stuff I need you to talk about we haven't talked about can I get you to come back we'll try to work it out well then I've done all right great to have you thank you I don't know if I'm and great to see that you're making great wine good multi Francis Ford Coppola a pleasure thank you very much we had clips to show a lot of other things but the conversation was too interesting we thank you for joining us see you next time

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Id: D9QNgHV4oQU

Length: 54min 29sec (3269 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2016