Francis Ford Coppola
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Notable Festivals: Toronto (Special Presentation) By 2011, director Francis Ford Coppola was well into a new phase of his career, a phase that saw him financing his films independently with the profits from his lifestyle brand, Francis Ford Coppola Presents. This approach resulted in the reinvigorating success of 2007’s YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH and 2009’s TETRO—so…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes (Quinzaine des Realisateurs), Melbourne, Belfast The release of 2007’s YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, while middling in its critical reception, proved to be a reinvigorating event for director Francis Ford Coppola. After a decade-long absence from the screen, the middle-aged filmmaker had found an energy and inspiration matching that of an ambitious and inquisitive…
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After the release of 1997’s THE RAINMAKER, director Francis Ford Coppola’s next move was the most surprising of an already-unconventional career: he took a ten-year hiatus. Like his counterpart Terrence Malick, Coppola all but disappeared from the film scene for a ridiculously extended period of time, and many assumed he was simply retired. It had…
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Notable Festivals: Berlinale (Out of Competition) The 1990’s saw director Francis Ford Coppola regain some of the clout he had squandered in the 80’s with high profile hits like THE GODFATHER PART III (1990) and BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992). Fortunately, he was able to close out the decade (and the millennium) on a high note…
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I knew this moment was coming, and I was dreading it just as soon I decided to focus on the work of director Francis Ford Coppola. How is that one man can be the author behind both one of the greatest films of all time, and yet also be responsible for one of the worst…
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Academy Award wins: Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Art Direction Despite its disappointing critical reception, director Francis Ford Coppola’s decision to make THE GODFATHER PART III proved to be a fruitful one. His company, American Zoetrope, earned a stay of execution by the forces of bankruptcy, but it wasn’t in the clear yet. …
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Notable Festivals: Berlinale (Out of Competition) Facing a seemingly-insurmountable mountain of debt stemming from the box office failure of 1982’s ONE FROM THE HEART, director Francis Ford Coppola struggled throughout the 1980’s to make films that would dig him out, only to see them fail and Debt Mountain rise even higher. By 1990, Coppola had…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes Director Francis Ford Coppola closed out a particularly brutal decade for his career on a down note, unfortunately. Having firmly established himself as one of the leading filmmakers in his generation (dubbed the Film Brats due to their being the first wave to come up through the institution of film school), Coppola…
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Despite the minor failure of 1987’s GARDENS OF STONE at the box office, director Francis Ford Coppola seemed to be experiencing a second wind. Spurred on by the loss of his eldest son–a producing partner and car enthusiast– Coppola turned his attentions to a long-gestating passion project about a plucky entrepreneur’s quest to revolutionize the…
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The 1980’s could read like a lost decade for director Francis Ford Coppola. After the career coronation that was 1979’s APOCALYPSE NOW, there seemed to be nowhere else for Coppola to go but down. Most of his films from this period are either regarded as outright disasters or merely forgettable. However, time has allowed these…
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In the year 1982, actress Shelly Duvall began producing a television series called FAERIE TALE THEATRE. Originally conceived as a nourishing antidote to commercial-heavy children’s programming, Duvall and company set out to create a series of fairy tale retellings with lavish vision and elaborate production design. I like to think she started it to reclaim…
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Director Francis Ford Coppola spent the majority of the 1980’s taking on for-hire film work featuring commercially-viable stories as a way to erase the debt suffered by 1982’s box office disaster ONE FROM THE HEART. Unfortunately, most of these films were hit-or-miss themselves, and the infallible talent that gave us THE GODFATHER (1972) and APOCALYPSE…