there appears to be no general FRANCIS COPPOLA thread

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-06-03/film/a-conversation-with-francis-ford-coppola/

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/04/maclean%E2%80%99s-interview-francis-ford-coppola/

Q: Are the audiences acting like children, or are the studios treating them like children?

A: Well, the studios brainwashed them for 40 years with television. I think of television as it was in the ’50s, when we had some of the greatest writers in the country writing live television and there were provocative dramas, and then they just murdered that form and invented the half-hour situation comedy. Brainless television—and two generations were brought up on that.

...Cinema oughta be varied. Cinema is a very young art form and it should be encouraged to experiment and try to find new ways of telling stories. ...I make films as a hobbyist and pay for them myself, so no one has the right to tell me, “Why did you do this?” or “Why did you do that?” I do something that I feel I can learn from and that I think the audience—hopefully—might enjoy, but it’s harder and harder. It’s like if you invite everyone over to the house for dinner and they just want what they want—French fries and stuff.

http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/uploaded_images/coppola_chardonnay-730366.jpg

the NY Tetro ads feature a burst w/ the wine bottle.

And despite everything he's done and all that he says there, he still made this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41PF2V1DBDL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

c'mon, that was just the worst idea to get outta debt.

Did it actually help? (Admittedly, I assume so.)

maybe the reason i'm in so much debt is because none of my ideas involve robin williams

The first half hour of Tetro is really good, the last half hour is pretty dreadful. It's a high-culture spin on Rumble Fish.

Julia and I were talking just the other day about how good Peggy Sue Got Married is.

Everyone brings up Jack, but it's "Dracula" that I can't forgive.

Ooh... fair point.

i like dracula! or I did when it came out.

Dracula is soooo terrible. I knew it then, too.

yeah, as a narrative it sux but it's so gorgeous to look at!

all those old-fashion in-camera f/x and such!

and...keanu

...and such

man forgot how much of a camp classic his Dracula is

also lolz was thinking of doing a poll of his worst but there's too many too choose from... is there any other major American director who fell off so unbelievably hard?

his contribution to the new york stories series of short films (back in 1989) was so bad that it made me want to go on a killing spree ... it made the merely-OK scorsese and woody allen short films that bookended it seem like masterpieces in comparison.

I loved Tetro, even when it was terrible.

Me too, especially when it was terrible.

i didn't realize this had a US release

Gross
$416,591 (USA)

Not terrible, given the scope of its release.

ya i got it on dvd this week.. if u guys say go for it i'll watch it

Yes: http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/tetro-its-not-francis-ford-coppolas-newest-wine/

is it more/less ridiculous than the youth without youth

As ridiculous, with more purpose.

Really should get around to seeing Youth Without Youth, if it was the buildup to this one.

i could not make heads or tails of that movie

Alden Ehrenreich is my new celebrity crush.

tetro looks a bit shit. i wish older directors didnt cum in their pants at the very idea of filming digitally (or on electronic cinema as FFC likes to call it).

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/francis-ford-coppola-quietly-shooting-next-pic-and-val-kilmer-is-his-star/

Twixt

We love Francis Ford Coppola, and his warm presence made him a congenial host on the panel for Twixt, his upcoming digital drama starring Val Kilmer and Elle Fanning. However, the movie looked cheap and hammy, like an early nineties CD-ROM adventure game, while Coppola's attempts to cue up and reshuffle scenes via iPad went disastrously. It was a fun disaster, but it doesn't bode well for the director's hopes to take the movie out on a national roadshow.

i read an interview, i guess about tetro, a while back, and it was kinda really heartening & inspiring to hear him so enthusiastic about digital & the ability to make movies fairly autonomously, like some sort of megatron version of agnes varda. maybe shitty movies though.

regardless, more interesting than Scorsese now

3d kids movie vs interactive cd-rom val kilmer rpg

third man

eleanor made a movie? -http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4429194/

She also gets a co-director credit on the Apocalypse Now documentary for all her on-set footage.

I couldn't get past ranking more than eight movies.

I really gotta see Rumble Fish one of these days.

It looks like you may have misspelled Jack in one of your list entries.

watched TWIXT last night. jesus, what an embarrassment. how the fuck can the guy that made The Conversation, The Godfather, The Conversation, and Rumble Fish be responsible for such an awful film? it was like a high school student film

Lol meant to say Apocalypse Now instead of that second Conversation but hey, it's my favorite by him

Francis Ford Coppola Ready To Make ‘Megalopolis’ And Is Eyeing Cast https://t.co/u6t1uxdyAI pic.twitter.com/4Vjw32o8VV

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) April 4, 2019

this man must be stopped

really? out of all the people who could be stopped?

I'm frankly surprised he's still in the game. You'd think he would've hung it up after Williams's death put the kibosh on a Jack sequel.

tsk tsk

I'm no superfan of his, but show some respect

loooll

quite an interview

https://deadline.com/2019/05/francis-ford-coppola-apocalypse-now-cannes-40-anniversary-megalopolis-scorsese-godfather-part-ii-re-cutting-godfather-iii-cotton-club-interview-1202613659/

coming to NYFF

https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2019/films/the-cotton-club-encore/

I love Peggy Sue Got Married, it’s such a beautiful movie.

IT’s Good!

Haven't seen in decades, but the scene with the grandparents made me bawl.

Nic cage’s performance in this movie is deranged but also a very good choice both things can be true

Anyone see his recut of The Cotton Club?

Just watched Peggy Sue for the first time over the weekend & thought Cage was excruciating but miraculously the movie was still good

Sam Wasson has a new book out; a friend says it's good, ordered it today.

https://www.harpercollins.com/cdn/shop/products/9780063037847.jpg?v=1701866614&width=350

This comes up in the Wasson book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuSXOukvBg

That's just before he announces Cimino as the winner of Best Director, a cause for some concern because Apocalypse Now was still in post-production.

I guess it's prophetic, but he's not saying anything that lots of writers had been saying long before that. He forgot to tell us how bad most of those technically wonderful films would be. Supposedly he had unwittingly ingested something drug-laced beforehand courtesy Bill Graham. (Cookies or something...book's out in the car right now.) Ali McGraw very much wants to be elsewhere.

("lots of writers had been saying" = hadn't)

1980 or '81, and lots of famous people are dropping in to look at the new Zoetrope compound.

Twenty-four-year-old Michael Lehmann had the honor of giving the War Room tour to Robert Wise, esteemed director of West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

"I don't know how knowledgeable you are about the details of the editorial process..." Lehmann offered to Wise.

"I edited Citizen Kane."

"Oh. Okay, good."

At that point, hopes for the studio were still high before Coppola made 3D Stake From the Heart.

I still haven't seen One from the Heart. I'm just running out the clock, hoping I die before I talk myself into it.

I saw One From the Heart in 35mm during its 2002 re-release. It looked stunning, but I hate that Coppola cut material out of it, and this new cut is even shorter. There are at least 4 versions of it now.

The Wasson book isn’t nearly as good as his Bob Fosse bio or book on Chinatown. Too fawning and doesn’t really have nearly enough insights into what the fuck happened with Coppola/Wenders on Hammett. Some interesting material on unmade projects that were being developed by Zoetrope pre-THX-1138 and post-Apocalypse Now, though. The material on Carroll Ballard, who is a longtime favourite of mine, was interesting as well

The Wasson book isn’t nearly as good as his Bob Fosse bio or book on Chinatown.

Didn't read the Fosse book, but agree completely with the second half of that. It's been a real slog for me, with some point of interest now and again.

Looks like Megalopolis got screened the other week:

The project, which Coppola first began writing in 1983, cost a reported $120 million to make — funded in part by the sale of a significant portion of his wine empire (the 2021 deal was reportedly worth over $500 million). Clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes, the film follows the rebuilding of a metropolis after its accidental destruction, with two competing visions — one from an idealist architect (Adam Driver), the other from its pragmatist mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) — clashing in the process. References to ancient Rome — including Caesar haircuts on the men — abound.

Coppola, 84, has said no decisions will be made regarding a festival bow until a distribution plan is put in place. But while there was no shortage of curious suitors there — in addition to Rothman and Sarandos, Warner Bros.’ Pam Abdy, Disney live-action boss David Greenbaum, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Paramount’s Marc Weinstock were all spotted — multiple sources inside the screening tell The Hollywood Reporter that Megalopolis will face a steep uphill battle to find a distribution partner. Says one distributor: “There is just no way to position this movie.”

“Everyone is rooting for Francis and feels nostalgic,” adds another attendee. “But then there is the business side of things.”

A third attendee noted “a conspicuous silence at the end of it,” but stopped short of writing off the film as a failed exercise. “Does it wobble, wander, go all over the place? Yes. But it’s really imaginative and does say something about our time. I think it’s going to be a small, specialized label [that picks it up].”

(More at the link, including what sounds like a, how to put it, questionable scene involving Jon Voight.)

Megalopolis scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZL3U1j3K1c

Trying to make sense of the Megalopolis descriptions in Sam Wasson's book--which starts present-day--was a real chore. That clip is sort of interesting, I guess, but hard to gauge much unless characters are interacting--Coppola's masterpieces in the '70s had great performances top to bottom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1QyAYa60g

Reading reports on Twitter, this sounds terrible

Midnight Cowboy reunion! (True: I momentarily wondered if Voight and Hoffman had ever done a film together and googled it.)

good screen slate podcast with vadim rizov sharing impressionss: https://www.screenslate.com/articles/episode-38-megalopolis-vadim-rizov

as someone who thought the teaser looked awful, i'm glad to have been right. though the people who have been annoying about this film will continue to be so.

David Ehrlich and Bilge Ebiri both liked it

https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/megalopolis-review-francis-ford-coppola-1235005694/

https://www.vulture.com/article/review-francis-ford-coppolas-megalopolis-is-totally-nuts.html

i'm more interested in interesting failures than boring ones so this sounds like it might be along those lines.

Two of my favorite film writers.

surprising no one i predict i will love this

I've read some really scathing reviews, but it does sound interesting

Those reviews are a big red flag for me. "Fever dream" turns up in both; "...the beautiful, woozy, unforgettable, financially dead-on-arrival One From the Heart." For some people, I guess; I thought most of it was embarrassing.

looks cool to me. though I liked Twixt so am naturally excited to see what the director can do with a bigger budget.