Francis Ford Coppola: As Big as Possible

- by Zach Lewis
Credit: Phil Caruso/Lionsgate

How do you conjure a spectacle as a mere man? Real spectacle, the kind that rivals the infinite colorful vistas of the Northern Lights or the deep terror of a thunderstorm, is the product of God, nature, and Hollywood. Meanwhile, independent movies are the realm of either cheaper thrills or serious lectures or the modernist idea of l’art pour l’art. Cheap-thrills veteran Francis Ford Coppola, a graduate of the legendary UCLA film program and the graduate school of Roger Corman’s productions, embodied this independent filmmaking ethos that was developing in America in the late 1960s. But he also knew that while the American public could only sometimes sit for a lecture, they would always give in to the daily divine intervention of spectacle. That’s why his helicopters play Wagner, why more than one bullet pierces Sonny Corleone, and why all of Dracula looks the way it does. After decades of mergers and acquisitions and belt-tightening from financiers, some independent American productions are still given large budgets, but they’re asked to spend it on conservative elements: A-list cast, IP acquisition, marketing. Coppola was the last American to truly play God.

At least, that’s the legend. Coppola formed his American Zoetrope in 1969 in the same spirit (and aspiring to the same growth) as Chaplin’s founding of United Artists 50 years prior. The dream was to take on the headache of finding funding and pooling investment in exchange for something sacrosanct: autonomy. This dream faltered when Zoetrope began hemorrhaging money and fell into debt to Warner Bros., forcing Coppola into a contract with Paramount to direct an adaptation of a novel he hated called The Godfather. By far Coppola’s most well-known and well-liked film, the gangster epic was the kind of studio headache Coppola dreaded, although he did surround himself with like-minded talent, pushing at first for Corman-alum Jack Nicholson for the part of Michael and winning Zoetrope-alum James Caan for the part of Sonny. When it came time to direct Part II for Paramount, Coppola demanded more control and more money, which they delivered. Working alongside a studio was still the reality for an independent filmmaker at the time, as studios still offered lucrative deals and would frequently distribute a completed production. But if Coppola’s career had stopped here, he still would have been championed as the director who made the studios bend to him.

There had been plenty of independent productions before Coppola’s time, but the films coming out of Zoetrope were the first to operate on a scale we now associate with “indiewood.” It also produced movies that have just as ambiguous a relationship to Hollywood, its major movers, the banks that finance them, and the financial institutions that finance the banks that A-lister-laden indie darlings have today. After all, it seems impossible to talk of films like Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart without simultaneously talking about their tortured productions and the money either won or lost in the process. Focusing on these conversations entirely is reductive and anathema to critical discussion of these films; but, as independent filmmakers relying on financiers today know, to ignore these discussions would be tantamount to ignoring discussions of paint in regards to  Cézanne or talk of bronze around the work of Cellini. As his wife Eleanor’s documentary Hearts of Darkness shows, so much of Coppola’s craft is an improvisational game created with whatever money’s left.

But Coppola’s career would also take him beyond both these massive and personal productions he’s known for. He directed two nudie cuties in the early ‘60s (Tonight for Sure, The Bellboy and the Playgirls), a live video recording of California Governor Jerry Brown’s speech during the Democratic primaries (The Shape of Things to Come, shot with then-experimental chroma-key technology that makes the speech look like a Nam June Paik installation), an incredibly expensive Disneyland attraction-movie starring Michael Jackson (Captain EO), and one of the best episodes of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre (Rip Van Winkle, starring an expressive Harry Dean Stanton). He used his American Zoetrope company to produce and distribute films made by both long-time friends (Carroll Ballard, Robert Dalva, Robert Duvall, Caleb Deschanel, et al.) and filmmakers he admired (parts of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘80s works, Wim Wenders, Norman Mailer, Agnieszka Holland, and, thanks to their shared love of opera, the grand works of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, among many others). Famously, he’s also proud to support the works and careers of his family, leading to a vast filmmaking dynasty that includes the Coppolas Eleanor, Marc, Sofia, Roman, Gian-Carlo, and Gia, as well as Talia Shire (née Coppola), Nicholas Cage, Jason Schwartzman, and even members of the older generation: his father Carmine and uncle Anton, both composers. If Scorsese’s legacy beyond a director is associated with his literal preservation of older films, Coppola’s legacy is similarly a preservation of a certain filmmaking spirit — one of generosity, appreciation, friendship, excitement, and love.

The legend of Coppola’s independence has continued with all the industry buzz around his most recent and longest-gestating film, Megalopolis. No matter its staying power (and it already seems these publications hope it to be a foible), the trades have already guaranteed that it will be forever known as the film financed by Coppola’s beloved winery. It’s worth noting that for all this talk of production and expense, Coppola’s biggest films are really just composed of many small moments — within grand scenery. After all, the parts of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now that have stuck in the culture the longest are the scenes with Marlon Brando talking to a camera in the dark, almost indistinguishable from the wartime noirs made with the most illiquid studio funds in Hollywood history. Therein lies the real legacy of the Francis Ford Coppola who followed in the footsteps of his opera-conducting family: make the setting, the music, and the acting as big as possible, so that he can show humanity in the moments it feels its smallest.

4-5 pieces will be published each day of this coming week, from September 30 until October 4. Individual pieces will be linked below as they are published, and this introductory essay will remain the hub of our Francis Ford Coppola retrospective.

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