At the 79th Academy Awards, three directors stood on stage ready to reveal the Best Director Oscar. The three directors all came up in the 1970s, stretching the limits of what film could be and dazzling audiences. Those three directors were Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.
Coppola was a great filmmaker whose desire for authenticity border-lined on insanity. 27 years after his last major motion picture, his new film Megalopolis is the exclamation point at the end of a long, storied career.
Coppola’s origins in the movie industry started over 60 years ago as a screenwriter when he was hired to write Patton. This retrospective of his career proves that screenwriters can work in multiple genres, as well as what it means to put blood, sweat and tears into your projects. Coppola has preserved throughout his career by sticking to his vision – it’s what got him fired from Patton (even though what he fought for still ended up in the movie) and why Megalopolis is one of the highly-anticipated films of the year. It’s his passion and vision that has made Coppola a true master at his craft and a celebrated storyteller for over 50 years.
Patton centers on the real-life rebel General as he leads a tank battalion in the deserts of Africa during World War II and then into Europe to bring the downfall of Nazi Germany. He was a controversial figure at the time and Coppola, who wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay, was tasked with taking a larger-than-life, rough-and-tough General and telling his wartime story in cinematic form. For screenwriters interested in writing a biopic, Patton is a great example of how to focus on a specific time period of one’s life, even if that character doesn’t have much of an arc.
Coppola was also fired on Patton, even though most of his work ended up in the final film. He says, “The things you’re fired for are the thing you are celebrated for.”
Often considered one of the best films ever made, The Godfather is about the family dynamic, the Italian experience and organized crime in post-World War II New York. Al Pacino, in his breakout performance, plays Michael Corleone, the war hero son of the Corleone crime family. While even Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), the don of the family, is reluctant to pass the business to Michael, it becomes apparent that he’s the only one who can succeed in running the complex, structured Corleone crime family.
The Godfather established Coppola as an up-and-coming filmmaker poised to take the industry by storm. He was nearly let go from this film as well, but it just so happened that he won his Academy Award for Patton while working on The Godfather, and believes the studios would look bad if they fired him.
This slow-burn thriller takes Coppola away from historical epics and focuses on a surveillance expert who wants to maintain control of every aspect of his life, which makes him of a somewhat recluse. He doesn’t even trust anyone other than him to build the surveillance equipment he uses. When tasked with spying on and capturing a dialogue between a man and woman, he soon believes that their lives are in peril and that the ones who hired him maybe surveilling him as well.
Coppola has mentioned that the film started off as a concept and he struggled to build a character with depth around the idea. He ultimately succeeded and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
The Godfather Part II is an exception, not the rule. It’s likely you can count the number of times the sequel of a movie was just as good, if not better, than the original (Terminator 2: Judgement Day comes to mind). Yet, Coppola returns to the Corleone family to touch on the parts of Mario Puzo’s novel that didn’t make it into the first film; this includes the origin story of Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro) and Michael’s fight for power.
When you tell a story with such intriguing characters, people want to return to that world. Coppola expands on the family dynamic and puts into context the growth of the Corleone family, its loyalties and businesses that began in the first film.
The Godfather Part II earned Coppola another Academy Award win for Best Adapted Screenplay.
It seemed that Apocalypse Now had fate against it. Not only did a typhoon destroy its sets, but star Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack and near mental and emotional break down under the stress. The movie centers on a U.S. Army officer sent into the jungles of Vietnam to assassinate a rogue colonel. The journey into jungle becomes a harrowing adventure as the officer encounters several characters along the way who give him insight into the mentality of the conflict and the colonel he is tasked with killing. There are many great films of this time period focusing on the Vietnam War; Apocalypse Now shows the insanity behind the conflict and what war does to those who fight it.
Along with the movie itself, the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is a great piece of behind-the-scenes work that is a must-see for any filmmaker.
Apocalypse Now was such a monumental undertaking that Coppola decided to take on a smaller film with a budget of just $2 million. But Coppola was ambitious and wanted a grander film, so the budget skyrocketed to over $25 million as he spent money on building massive sets and using new technology and methods.
This romantic/drama/musical is about a couple in a long-term relationship who, after a fight, decide to go on a break and find a new partner. The movie made a little over $600,000 in its small theatrical run and caused Coppola to have to file for bankruptcy.
This film changed the trajectory of his career and forced him to seek out more commercial films.
The 1980s was the start of a new era for Coppola. He still looked at life through a lens that took its audience into the past but the characters were teenagers trying to figure life out. With The Outsiders, a film based on a bestselling young adult novel, it wasn’t an organized crime family, a troubled surveillance expert or the Vietnam War, but a group of rebellious teenagers who must answer for the trouble they’ve caused. The movie looks at two rival gangs in rural Oklahoma and the consequences when one member accidentally kills someone from the other gang.
Coppola had already made some movies about gang members. The difference with The Outsiders is that it focuses on young kids and men who know that they are making poor decisions and how it impacts those with money (Socs) and those that don’t (Greasers).
Coppola returns to the family that made him famous with the third film of The Godfather Trilogy. Released 16 years after The Godfather Part II, the latest sequel brought a lot of expectations and hype; on top of that, its release date was three months after Goodfellas. The Godfather Part III is about an attempt at redemption as Michael Corleone tries to rid his family of the sins of his past and find a legitimate means to continue his empire.
Coppola relies on themes of family, religion and power to help bring the Corleone family saga to its conclusion.
When it comes to directors and the movies they want to make, there can often be immediate intrigue. Nolan wants to do Batman, Greta Gerwig is taking on Barbie, and then there’s the idea of Coppola making Dracula. It’s hard being a brilliant filmmaker and having to live up to the hype but the masterpiece that became Bram Stoker’s Dracula was filled with his blend of unique storytelling as well as characters and set pieces that are larger than life. It shows that directors shouldn’t be pigeonholed in a specific genre and that Coppola was ready to tell a darker story.
Coppola is now returning to his roots, in some respects. Megalopolis is the ultimate passion project - a story that he’s been eager to tell for decades and want to share with the world regardless of its potential for success. It’s a modern take on the fall of the Roman Empire, an epic filled with crime, power, family and loyalty – familiar themes from his collection of classics. As a screenwriting role model, Francis Coppola shows writers not to compromise on their vision, and to write and dream big.