Francis Ford Coppola: a Film-maker's Life

by Michael Schumacher

Francis Ford A Filmmaker's Life

Genres: Biography, Film, Nonfiction, Art, History

536 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

A lifelong resident of the Great Lakes region, Michael Schumacher is the author of twelve books, including biographies of Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, and Eric Clapton, and the award-winning book Wreck of the Carl D. He has also written twenty-five documentaries on Great Lakes shipwrecks and lighthouses.

Reviews

[Bakunin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"If someone gave me 2 billion dollars, I'd use it as leverage to borrow 30 billion and do something really big" (p. 479)

Coppolas life summarised in one sentence. Coppola is probably the most succesful risk taker in the history of Hollywood and has failed as often as he has succeeded. What first drew me to this biography was that I mostly wanted to know what happened to Coppola after Apocalypse now. Did the years of intensity finally take their toll? Had the director run out of steam? The biography did not answer those questions.

I was also hoping to understand how Coppola could manage the enormous pressure of Apocalypse now. Imagine making a movie in the jungle where the script is constantly being rewritten and shooting had begun without a satisfying ending (Coppolas modus operandi), firing his lead actor a week into the shoot, Martin Sheen having a heartache in the middle of the shoot etc etc etc. The author - Michael Schumacher - is often so impressed with Coppola that the director becomes almost a mythic figure. Mr. Schumacher often manages to make apologies for Coppolas failures instead of viewing them as a natural consequence of a somewhat reckless filmmaker. When writing about Coppolas infidelity, mr. Schumacher mentions - en passant - that Coppola has been diagnosed as a manic depressive and is taking pills for this. It would've been more interesting to read about this diagnosis as it reveals more about the inner workings of this complicated man.

Coppola often risks everything on one move and, more times than one would think were possible, comes out on top. The studio were unsure if they wanted to finance one of his early pictures. ""Look" he told them one Friday in the late fall of 1967, "I'm starting to shoot on Monday and I need some money and if you don't give it to me, I'll get it from someone else"" (p. 64). This is also his way of working: convicing all parties involved that the finances are already in order and then starting shooting without actually having enough cash to actually finish the project (a common ocurrence among indie filmmakers, what makes Coppola stand out is that he manages to do this on such a massive scale time and time again).

I suppose that if you were to look up "resilience", "chutzpah" and "degenerate gambler" in the dictionary you would perhaps see a picture of Coppola. He has tried to start his own studio - Zoetrope - several times, started his own magazine as well as producing his own wine. The list goes on. Charisma is another recurring word which several colleagues describe Coppla as having but I think extreme self-confidence better describes him as a person. Coppola obviously turns out great work when "teetering on the threshold between the rational world and madness" as one colleague described it.

My guess as to why Coppola did not make any more masterpieces after the 70's is because he had had enough of the darkness he explored in the Godfather, The conversation and Apocalypse Now. One from the heart, Cotton club, Rumble fish, Jack etc are all lighter pieces and you can peer into the abyss for just so long until it peers back at you (to paraphrase Nietzsche). Coppola also returns time and time againt to the fact that he wants to write original screenplays even though it is clear that his best work is done while adapting the work of others. The idea of the auteur has perhaps something to do with this but Kubrick (for example) only did adaptions of novels yet everyone would agree that his films express his own personality.

I think I will end this review with a quote from the a colleague from Coppolas early days.
"While we were out, he talked about how about how we could take over the world, how we could finally make the movies that we wanted to make and gain this little upper hand on Hollywood. I suggested that the route tot ake might be sort of like Casear's going to Gaul: Caesar consolidated his power by going away and putting together this gigantic army and then reutrning home when things were not so good there. That's where we got the idea to get out of L.A." (p. 72) Coppola certainly did just that in a megalomanic fashion and the 70's era of filmmaking certainly belong to him regardless of what you think of his later work.

[Chris Leathley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A by-the-numbers biog that fixates on box office stats, corporate wrangles and petty squabbles with the Press. Coppola, according to this book, comes across as a bluffer with a huge imagination and (sometimes) the talent to pull teams together who can deliver great cinematic art. However, there appears to be so much screening of Coppola (not least by Coppola’s own strident defence of his career), that it’s hard to take some of the analysis seriously. I can appreciate the author’s dilemma but, to my mind, Schumacher lets Coppola off the hook too often for his latter day cinematic sins. It’s also hard to feel sympathy for a guy where, even in the midst of supposedly terrible financial strife, he is still able to live in luxury in the Napa Valley.

NB I HATE film books that include blunt synopses of films. If we haven’t seen them, we don’t want/need to know; if we have, it’s extraneous guff that we skip. Stop doing it guys!!!

[Andrewh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coppola famously started at the top and worked his way down. This book charts his artistic and financial demise from the poetic grandeur of the Godfather to pap like One from the Heart, in great detail, but with almost no insight. The reader is left with no real idea as to what happended to Francis, other than suffering at the evil hands of Hollywood's money men (one of the best bits is FCC's vendetta with Bob Evans, the uber-producer at Paramount), and it is all fairly pedestrian and, unforgiveably, somewhat dull.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 4 out of 5]

If readers are fans of both film and director Coppola, this book is an embarrassment of riches—at least as far as it takes us, through 1998 when the book comes out. One may not realize, for example, how easy the 1970s seem for Coppola, succeeding beyond his wildest dreams with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The next twenty years are more arduous, and Coppola loses his credibility at times. He wishes to be more of an artiste, making films that appeal to him but perhaps not the public at large. Even when he makes a big-budget, mass-appeal film, he is almost always at loggerheads with studio execs over scripts and, of course, money. He is a creative man, who also finances, for a time, his own studio, and even publishes a literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, which still exists today—not to mention a number of other enterprises including a winery. He ends the nineties having made enough money to dig himself out of debt and establish an independent life. Although he continues to make film, it is at his own pleasure. One has to admire that.

[Matthew Landless]

It would certainly be interesting to see this book updated as the intervening 23 years have certainly been interesting in Coppola’s career. Particularly as Megalopolis is due this year, 2024, and it is mentioned a number of times during this book. I’d also like to have seen more attention delivered to Coppola’s work in the latter half of the ‘90s but other than helping the director finally free himself of debt that had plagued him since the early ‘80s maybe we need a bit more distance from them, a new edition, so that they can be dissected to the same degree as his’ 70s work rather than feeling like they are rushed through.

But overall a fascinating read that gives me greater appreciation of the director’s work, even if at times he was/is his own worst enemy.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthwhile for those who are interested in Coppola.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this after I discovered the Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now, both of which changed the way I looked at film.

Anyhow, Coppola is an interesting man, although like most people involved in entertainment, the background of the show is less interesting then the show, although that's arguably not true in in the case of Apocalypse Now (the original star dropped ou,his replacement had a heart attack, and the set was hit with a Hurricane, among other things).

Still, ultimately, it's for fans. It's a good biography for fans, but not a lot more.

[Thomas Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lost interest around the time his career takes a dive, just after Apocalypse Now.

[Tom Boniface-Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

One word: excellent. Couldn’t put it down. Lock down helped…