E-mail a friendFrancis Ford Coppola
airdate June 24, 2009
Having directed some of the most successful and critically acclaimed movies in film history, Francis Ford Coppola is considered one of the greats. He's among an elite group of directors who have won Best Picture, Director and Screenplay Oscars for the same film (The Godfather: Part II). From a show business family, he first gained international attention for his screenwriting and has exec-produced films and TV series. Coppola is a vintner, magazine publisher and has his own specialty food line. Next up for him is the drama Tetro.
Coppola talks about his wife shooting a documentary during the making of Apocalypse Now. (2:26)
Full interview. (9:29)
Francis Ford Coppola
Tavis: There was so much to talk about with Francis Ford Coppola there was no way we could get it all in just one program. The iconic filmmaker was kind enough to stick around for a few more questions. As you'll see tonight, I began the second part of our conversation by asking him about the financial ups and downs of his life and career.
Tavis: What lessons have you taken from that part of your life, having fame, having fortune, losing it, being able to get it back again? Just talk to me about that.
Francis Ford Coppola: Well, from the time I was about college age, really, 17, I kind of came into my own. I was very much a lonely kid. I was always the new kid in school. I went to many, many, many different schools. I went to six high schools.
Tavis: You guys moved around a lot, yeah.
Coppola: Yeah, my father, for some reason - I don't even understand the reason - moved around a lot and I never had any friends in school because I'd be gone in six months.
But in the last year of high school and finally in college I came into my own and I was a theater major. I used to like theater even in high school because I was good with technology, I could run the lights and build sets. But also that's where the girls were, around the theater school, so I wanted to get to meet them (laughter) if I could.
Then I won a little playwriting kind of a partial scholarship, nothing spectacular, and I came into my own in college, where I was starting to direct the productions and became the head of the various drama and musical clubs, and I really was successful.
And then my, like, last year, I was going to go to the Yale graduate school to be a playwright, I noticed there was a theater that said, "Today's showing of a film by Sergei Eisenstein." Silent film called "October: 10 Days that Shook the World." And I peeked in and there was four or five people sitting there, and I saw this four and a half hour silent film of Eisenstein, and I had never seen anything like it in my life.
And I came out and I said, "I want to make movies, and I'm not going to go to the Yale drama school, I'm going to go to the UCLA drama school." And then really from that point I was very successful. At 20 I was - I won a very important UCLA award, the Goldwyn award, got to meet Sam Goldwyn.
He was a very interesting man and he used to stay in touch with my career. And then I wrote the screenplay "The Life of General Patton" when I was just about 22. I got the job because they said to me, "Young man, do you have military experience?" And I said, "Yes."
And then I never said anything else; they didn't ask me, but the truth was I had been in military school for a year. (Laughter) I ran away. So "Patton" was - I had a screenwriting career. And really from the time I was 20 I was on my way so that this fall from grace you speak of is like once I made "The Godfather," I was always famous.
And even though I was broke at some times because I never hesitated to risk my own money - and I was young, so I figured well, I'll work hard and I'll make it back. Little did I know that I was going to spend age 40 to age 50 paying a humungous bank - $27 million. I used to make a payment every year, every nickel I had, so that I could keep my home in Napa.
And so I was still famous, I was well-known, but I was also famously broke for a while. (Laughter) It was so cute; Sophia was just a little girl at that time. We lived in a beautiful home at that time, a Victorian place on the vineyards, and the process servers would come. They're not supposed to come on your property, but they did. So of course we'd run away and little eight-year-old Sophia would step up and say, "What are you doing here? You're not allowed to be here. Leave, this is Tara." (Laughter) She wasn't afraid of them.
So it was hard on my wife, I would imagine, because I never had corporations, so that when I went broke they would cut off the account at the grocery store, too. But we never starved by any means and I was able to pay off that debt, and albeit I was making - I was working on projects, they would give you the script and you would direct it and I would always try to find something I loved about it, but that was that period of movies.
And then quite by accident and not an intentional thing, I was in the wine business more because we lived there and there were grapes and that was that tradition in an Italian-American. And the wine business in general in America took off, and people started to really appreciate wine and the healthful qualities and enjoyable.
Wine is a no-lose situation. It's good with your meal, you can learn about it, you can have a wonderful wine for $10 or even less, and then you can have one that's even more wonderful, and it never stops. It just goes up and up and up and the wine business took off, and I suddenly found I had a company that was doing real well and I had equally gotten involved with these resorts that I built for the fun of it. And so I decided, well, now I can finance my own movies.
Tavis: (Laughs) It is an amazing - amazing - journey that you've been on. Is there anything - and I don't know that there is, but if there is, Francis Ford Coppola would know - is there anything we don't know about "Apocalypse Now?" It seems that movie has been written about, what happened on the set, everything that happened on the set to almost keep that project from being made. Is there anything we don't know about that film, the making of that film?
Coppola: Well, I always like my children to be with me so I had a little rule with my wife that if ever I was going to go somewhere for more than two weeks I wanted to take the kids out of school and have them with me. And it was a good decision, but my wife was an artist and she didn't like just being the director's wife.
So I bought her a camera and I said, "You shoot something." Really what I wanted her to do was to stay, and so she was making this documentary about "Apocalypse Now," a famous documentary. And then I would come home and say, "God, this movie is terrible, I hate this movie, I'm going to flunk, this is the worst movie ever made," hoping that she'd say, "Oh, no, darling, it's going to be wonderful, you'll see."
Instead she'd say, "Can you just wait a second and say that? I want to get the camera so you can say it." (Laughter) So she pretty much covered the - the thing was that not only in a way had I written myself in a corner because Vietnam was not like any other war and so to try to make a more or less conventional war film about an unconventional war and set of moral issues was very tough.
And so I had - I was available enough to what was really going on to make the film be very surreal and explore what Vietnam might have really been like, but then I didn't know how to end it. Plus it was my money because nobody would give me - even after all those Oscars and having won many awards and made two "Godfather" pictures, nobody would let me make "Apocalypse Now."
So I basically put up my home to - which happened to be a beautiful Napa Valley estate - and everything else, by the way, not just my home - in order to make the film.
And so not only was I frightened of, like, what I had gotten myself into creatively, I also knew that the 200 days of shooting that was mounting up, I owed. So it was going to wipe me out, and I was very frightened.
Tavis: So finally, that journey which we've just highlighted various aspects of, it's fascinating life you have lived. I assume that being able at this point in your life to do what you like, to be in control of what you do, to be financially stable and to put out a movie like "Tetro," I assume this is like heaven for you, or as close as there is to heaven?
Coppola: It's a wonderful thing. I have this wonderful family who are all doing interesting things, proud of my children and the fact that they're personal filmmakers, meaning that they make film not because they get money or anything; they do it because they love it.
And I can do the same now, and that's the difference when you're making these kinds of films. You don't care whether you're paid or not, that's not what it's about. It's to learn about cinema, which is this wonderful, exciting field that you can't learn - you could be a hundred years in it and there still would be more to learn, which keeps you young.
And I can finance them myself. I'm proud to have prospered in a way I never expected. I can fly around, do the things I want to do, and I just - as I said, I'm going to be so busy counting my blessings that when I die I'm not even going to notice it.
Tavis: That's a good place to close this conversation, if it has to close - a great place to close it. I was thinking and have been thinking of a better word for iconic, so I've got some work to do because he's so much more than an icon.
What an honor it is to have him on this program, given all that he's done. Francis Ford Coppola, his new project is called "Tetro," a beautiful black and white project; you've got to check it out.
An honor to have you here, as I said.
Coppola: Thank you so much.
Tavis: Thanks for coming to see us.
Coppola: Thank you.
Back to June 24, 2009