Few filmmakers have made such a profound mark on their craft as Francis Ford Coppola. Yet for 20 years of his career, the great American director lost his artistic autonomy in an long and painful battle with the taxman. With Tetro, his first original screenplay since, The Conversation, Coppola returns not as a formidable legend of modern cinema, but as an artist at peace with his troubled past. Here he talks to LWLies about laying his demons to rest and resurrecting his career.
LWLies: The thing that’s immediately apparent is that in your life you’ve fulfilled the roles of both Tetro and Carlo – you’ve been the one with the artist father and you’ve become the artist father. Does that make you more sympathetic to Carlo as a character? And also, looking forward, were you aware when your kids started getting into filmmaking of the pressures that come with the name that they carry?
Coppola: Well, I think yes when you write something, especially something personal and something that you’ve actually experienced or been involved with characters or people who are people you love, when you write it you tend to be all the characters in it. You know, when you write Carlo, you’re Carlo. When you write the brother, you’re the brother. I was more the younger brother because in fact that did happen to me – I ran away from military school and I went to my older brother to be comforted by him because I was afraid of my father. I never anticipated what happened. I always loved children. When I was a kid, I was a camp counsellor. So when I was a 20-year-old I wanted to get married and have kids – I don’t hear that a lot today. And having kids is a great, great experience, and having them young is great because then when you’re a little older you have them to help you. So I had one rule that I had made with my marriage which is that whenever I went away to make a film I’d take the kids out of school and bring them with me. And what they did since we were in many remote places, it meant that they were just hanging around the set, they knew the crew, they could see what was going on, if there was a little kid part they had to play it because there were no other kids. What happened is that they got this wonderful training and comfort with the movies, like circus kids, they just knew how to do it. I was very encouraging to my kids and when I spotted talent I would go totally to whatever extreme to help them get the financing or get the distribution.
There are some children of famous parents who, when they know they’re going into the same business, will change their name. What does it mean to you that your kids have kept the Coppola name?
I’m proud of their work and their films, of course. And you know, when you interact with young people – either your own people or students or kids doing plays – you learn a lot from them. You learn as much from them in a way as they learn from you. And I’m having that experience now with my 23-year-old granddaughter who just graduated from college. All of a sudden they’re making little films and I’m fascinated with what they gravitate to and their method. It’s different, you know? So I’m benefiting from that. It’s a two-way street and it’s positive on all sides. So I never had a kind of egocentric thing like in Tetro. Famously, the guy says there can only be one genius in the family – and that was really said by the way.
By your father?
Must have been. But it wasn’t said to me. To me, a good parent energises the kid even though that means the kid is going to walk away some day. Those parents that want their kids around them and everything maybe aren’t good parents because they haven’t given their kids the means to be independent. My kids don’t need me, you know? I’m sure it could weigh on a kid, especially with a father if they’re doing the same thing. But I don’t think I put the – I hope I didn’t put the – challenge to the kid going into the same business. Because achievement is such a weird thing. It’s all been skewed by media and everything. For me, achievement is number one ‘have I made films that people will look at in 50 years?’ That’s the real achievement. And ‘have I made films that help me understand life and myself for myself?’ So there’s a very personal benefit in self-understanding. It’s the same you get when you read a book – you read a beautiful book or something and then you suddenly know more. It’s a thrill. Then on the success level of course it’s that, ‘Gee, God, that was 40 years ago and people are still looking at that.’ Even though at the time it came out no one liked it.
Is one way of reading the film perhaps that the father – the domineering force from the past…
Much more than my father. My father wasn’t a success.
Sure, but this dominant force from the past that in the future is casting a shadow, does that represent your own career? Your reputation is something you have to fight with all the time.
I’m the child. It’s a funny point. My kids didn’t grow up working under my shadow, but I am.
Have you ever had cause to regret the reputation that you established in such a short period of time?
I know it’s hard to believe this but most of my films when they first came out were not received well. You go through the list, I mean, The Godfather of course made lots of money and when a film makes lots of money it gets like a soccer score. If you have a big score and you win then nobody can argue about it. But without a lot of money then you rely more on opinion makers, which is the real role of a critic – to interpret and say, ‘That film was good,’ and another says, ‘No, it was terrible.’ There was always disagreement as to whether they were any good. So I really, as a young filmmaker, don’t remember having a big success. I know that I was never able to get the support from the producers to do what I wanted. Even after making two Godfather films – and it was arguably a big thing to make a second Godfather film that did as well as the first – when I made Apocalypse Now nobody would let me do it and I had to ultimately put up the property and borrow the money myself. So as I remember my career going back, there was always an anxiety and worry and only later did I hear, you know, that Apocalypse wasn’t a big flop. People still see it. My films are not the kind of films where when they come out people go, ‘Oh that was great.’ You get people who say, ‘Well it was pretty interesting,’ and people who say, ‘It was terrible.’
So you’ve never felt the pressure to relive any glory days?
I never had success when I was younger. I’m having the same kind of… With the exception of the first Godfather making a lot of money, I was never the golden boy of the movie business in my time. And that’s the same thing now. Nothing has changed.
Do you think it’s possible in today’s Hollywood – in today’s culture even – for a group of young filmmakers to have the same impact that the so-called Movie Brats did then?
I would say yes, and I would say that that form of friendship and collaboration and competitiveness is a wonderful ingredient. In any art movement, it’s always about four or five artists, you know? Even when you think of Guillermo del Toro and Cuarón and that, they’re sort of competing and they’re friends, and that was the case for us because we were friends and we liked each other. I think that’s a very healthy thing so I think groups of young people involved in some sort of movement whether it’s political or artistic or they have an idea like Lars von Trier they have a concept – Dogme and what have you – those are wonderful youthful expressions. That’s why the cinema hops around from country to country – all of a sudden there’s a great cinema in Japan, then all of a sudden there’s a great cinema in France and England, beautiful films were made especially in that period in the ’50s post-war. There does seem to be something that makes the cinema hop around the world – and usually it comes from a group of friends who are very much admiring one another but also competitive at the same time.
There’s been talk among your contemporaries over the years about how they were sidetracked by success and found themselves making the kinds of films that they never intended to make and will soon get back to a more personal filmmaking. But you’re the only one with the guts to actually do it. Why is that? Do you think they should be doing what you’re doing? Do they lack the guts?
Well every story is different and the reality of everyone’s life is different and determines what they have to do. I agree that when we were young we all talked about having a big success, even doing a commercial film or doing a war film or a thriller and having it make a lot of money so then we’d have the money to go and do little personal films. And George in particular, it’s little known what a terrific experimental filmmaker he is. He’s a great editor and he has a wonderful design sense. If he went off and made little four million dollar movies everyone would be shocked because they now, oddly enough, downgrade him as someone who makes huge films. But he has this other ability. And being that he’s a little bit like a younger brother to me I always say, ‘George, you got the money. You got plenty of money. Go make these little experimental films.’ And he always says he will but the truth of the matter is I don’t know what happens that makes it hard to return to what you said you wanted to do when you were young. I don’t understand it in his case because he is so talented and he could do it. I always bug him and now it’s a joke – ‘Oh Francis don’t give me that…’ In a case like Martin Scorsese, I think he really is close to it and the second something breaks in the sky that gives him the chance to make one of the personal films that he is full of and is so good at and everyone wants him to do, he will.
This might sound mad given that the group of you are regarded as legends of cinema, but do you ever feel disappointed by how it turned out? By where you began from versus where you ended up?
I’m only disappointed that the film business and distribution isn’t better for the younger people than it was for us. And it was tough for us. There was no one saying, ‘Make these kinds of films.’ We were just trying to be opportunistic. As bad as it was then, it’s worse now and that makes me sad because you think that the success we all had and the money it generated for the system and our influence, whatever it may be, would have changed it for the people who are in their twenties now. That we helped make it more logical. But I guess for every generation it has to be a struggle, you know. I still would have wished that there was more subsidy for this new generation. But, you know, maybe this new generation doesn’t need it. They’re full of talent, they love the cinema. When Sofia makes her films, she makes them on film, and she won’t allow electronic projection. I fully embraced the new digital cinema because I knew it was coming and I welcome it. But a lot of people Sofia’s age and younger, they’re sentimental about real photochemical film, and they don’t want to lose it but they’re going to lose it.
In the well-documented lean years, did you ever fall out of love with cinema?
I was in a tough spot. I had a huge loan, almost a science-fiction kind of a loan. I had to come up with a payment every October for $3 million or the winery that was our home and which we loved, it was already being held by the bank. So it was a little tough to make a film every year. It was like being a hooker in a way, you know, I would always try to find something about, whatever, Peggy Sue Got Married and this and that, I would always try to find something about it to love because I don’t think you can make a film if you don’t love it. But it was a tough spot. It lasted about, I mean, from my age 40 to 50 I basically blew that decade. There was some interesting work: Rumblefish was interesting. That’s what I think helped inure me to the idea of being a commercial director, even if I was on the top of the heap I don’t think I would want to do projects that people think are good ideas to finance. I have an aversion to that.
Did you ever doubt yourself? Was there a point when you though that perhaps you were no longer the same filmmaker who created The Godfather?
I would say I was always working under doubt but I never thought that I had more marbles on those films than I had later. In other words, The Godfather and The Conversation were made under total doubt. In fact, even later I felt that I had more confidence and more understanding of what I was doing than I did before. So the answer to your question is that I never worried about having lost it but I always worried about having had it.
You said that you went to Argentina to learn how to make films, did any of the lessons surprise you?
Well the process was very good because of course I was my own producer and I was my own financier. I was a dictator of the way the production was done. It was my money. And I always had wanted rather than to take the production method and say, ‘Let’s eliminate this and eliminate that and eliminate that…’ it’s very hard to do that. What you can do is start with nothing and go to a place like when I went to Argentina when it was just me and a bunch of money and say, ‘I’m going to find a photographer or I’m going to find the thing.’ Adding up what was necessary rather than trying to pare away what wasn’t necessary, which I think is impossible. I was able, certainly on the level of film production, to really do that. We’re very impatient with ourselves as artists, we’re very quick to say that something we’re doing is bad or terrible or worse but the real truth about work is that you’ve got to kind of work with a tolerance to let time and what you’re really doing bubble to the top. It’s like cooking. If you took some dough and you worked and you ate it you’d say, ‘That’s terrible.’ It has to bake and then what’s good about it comes to the fore. That’s true about writing and true about filmmaking. I always used to joke that young writers have a hormone generated when they’re working that makes them hate what they’re working on. Therefore you should write the page and turn it over and not read it until you’ve finished. I’ve learned that in the last three years more than ever. What’s important is that you’re writing. Just write. And just make films. Don’t worry about how they’re going to be thought of in the future. That’s what matters. A lot of films that were called the film of the year are long forgotten today.
