YouSaid · the spoken record

Francis Ford Coppola

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2022-04-21

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2022-04-21

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1. “I would say in my career that my failures are among anyone's most interesting failures, he admits, knowing full well that he had given more ink to the press than just about any director in the business. He was always good copy, whether he was standing on the mountaintop, planning his flag in another successful endeavor, or jumping off the cliff, hoping that somehow, by some unforeseeable miracle, he would beat the odds and survive the fall. It was the story of his life”

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2. “For all his ambition he was in no hurry to direct another picture. He spoke once again of taking sabbatical from filmmaking. There's no distress for me. For the first time in 30 years, no worries. It's time to rejuvenate myself. I've done one movie after another. Now with the success of Dracula, it has given me and my wife security. We don't have to worry about the future, and I'm not worried about covering my ass anymore. I'm totally clear, totally debt-free. I can have much time to rest. Copola was feeling on the top of his game. His vineyard and chateau had reached a point where the wine production and tourism could support his family. His last three movies had made enough money to lead him to believe that he might finally be able to pursue the personal film he had been promising for so long. As monumental as some of his failures had been, Coppola was now in the position where he could be philosophical about that.”

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3. “And then we have the older version of Francis Ford Coppola. It's about 60 when the book comes out, giving us advice. He's giving us advice to himself, but it's too late for him to take his own advice. So we think about he's giving advice to us. All I feel is why didn't someone tell me back in those days when I was so depressed and feeling so untaled? I wish someone had said You know what? Everyone's gonna like you ten years from now. So go out and have dinner. So it takes about 10 years, but you eventually scratches his way out step by step. He's out of debt. He's wealthy again. He finally gets to a point where he's the most settled that he's been.”

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4. “Another benefit of reading these books is you just see that the fear that you have, it just never goes away. Coppola spent the summer wrestling with self-doubt and uncertainty that seemed to turn up with each new project. Throughout his career, Coppola had spoken candidly with interviewers about the fears he encountered whenever he was directing a picture. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassing himself. Both would act as strong motivators. Even though Copala knew that he was by no means alone in confronting these demons. These things are common to all artists, he said. The self doubt, the panic attacks, go easy on yourself. It is not necessary to suffer.”

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5. “And so it says Coppola wasn't so sure if the critics were right. His product, meaning his wine, was starting to gain recognition. Copola dreamed of how much more simple his life might become if he lived at his Napa estate, produced good wine, and made small art films that didn't depend upon huge box office figures to be considered successful And so he tells us exactly several years later what he wants. I want to be free. I don't want producers around me telling me what to do. The real dream of my life is a place where people can live in peace and create what they want.”

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6. “And so I think that's why in the epilogue it talked about did his son's death. Have him reset his priorities in life. And I think the answer is clearly has to. It has to. And so some of that is the fact that he talks about what he really wanted to do. He just mentions what I'm about to read to you really frequently. And people are talking about, oh, there's Francis making investments in wine in his Napa Valley estate. Like, this is going to wind up just like the magazine and the radio station and all the other stuff.”

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7. “I dreaded the nights and specifically the morning most of all, because what had happened would always hit me anew in the morning. It went on like that for over seven years until I could wake up and that wouldn't be the first thought that hit me. And that part was absolutely devastating to read. I had tears in my eyes. Immediately I put the book down and my son was napping at the time. I just went and laid and stared at him for a while I just could not imagine what it's like to have to suffer through that. Like he said, I lost already nothing I'll never be complete again. G was like his best friend. He wind up taking his son out of school early. Letting them not go to high school anymore and just becoming his apprentice, they work together almost every day for years, for almost six years up until that point.”

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8. “O'Neill, who suffered only minor injuries, panicked when asked about the accident, telling police that Gio had been driving the boat when they struck the tow line. I didn't want to have to tell his mother, O'Neill would later say of his lie. I didn't want to have to carry that Burton, which I will have to do for the rest of my life. At twenty two Gio, Carlo Copola, son and brother. I realize that no matter what happened, I had lost, Francis said. No matter what happened, it would always be incomplete. I could have all of my fondest dreams come true and have my dream of dreams of dreams, and even if I did get it, I lost already. There was no way I could ever have a complete experience because there will always be part of me missing. I was in a dream or a nightmare. I didn't know what to do.”

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9. “Now there's one movie that Francis Forcopola has no recollection of making. And that is a movie that he was filming in 1986, 1987. It's called Gardens of Stone. And this devastating, devastating point of life is why he doesn't remember that movie.”

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10. “I bet everything and didn't turn out. And he says, I would do it again because that's just who I am. I have to push the limits. So it's not really criticizing him. He's like, this is who I am. And I accept the results of my actions. Star Wars would become the most popular movie of its time, making Lucas as wealthy as he could ever hope to be, affording him the opportunity to establish his own filmmaking facility. He and Steven Spielberg were now among the most powerful men in the film industry. Lucas had warned Coppola of the follies of trying to take on the old system by setting up a studio in Hollywood. But Coppola had refused to listen. As a result, the Hollywood magazines would fill their pages with accounts of Copola's sinking fortunes while reporting Lucas's latest triumph.”

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11. “Him, Lucas, and Spielberg created the importance of the blockbuster. And then you raise the bar so high that nothing but a blockbuster is acceptable. And so in that GQ article, he talks about 50 or 30 years later, Hollywood makes trash. He's been saying this for years. They just do sequels. They do all this comic book stuff. And that's why he wants to bet his entire fortune at 83 on this movie he's working on called Metropolis that he's been talking about for like 30 years. But this idea, it's just like there was some kind of when you're reading the story, it's like, okay, there is some, if you don't have like this fundamental alignment between who you are and the work you do and how you do that work, there's going to be some kind of level of misery and unhappiness if you don't resolve that conflict is really what I'm trying to think about a lot as I went through this book. Just saying there's no question he was different from the man he'd been before I started the movie. He had been recently diagnosed as manic depressive and given a prescription for lithium, which Francis and his wife hope would stick.”

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12. “Said represented a different side to him. There was no question that he was different from the man he had been before he started the movie. This is that question. What happened to Francis Ford Copel in the 70s? I think Apocalypse now in large part broke him. I think he would have been better off chasing his real dream like doing small movies because he talks about”

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13. “Wild swings and these like manic episodes that I didn't know he was diagnosed for until I got to that part of the book, but says the film had taken 238 days to shoot at a cost of about $27 million leaving the cast and crew totally blown out from the ordeal and prompting Coppola to remark that he had never seen so many people happy to be unemployed. He would have never guessed that another two years would pass before his movie would hit the big screen. And so while the movie was being made, his wife is making, she's writing a book and I think it comes into a documentary. It's called Notes. And so we get to see a lot behind the scenes because of this. And so it says, and it really is like, she wrote it as a diary and then turned it into a book and I think a documentary. As she noted in her diary, part of her almost wanted her husband to fail. With wealth and fame came numerous complications that Ellie, as a wife and mother, would have preferred to avoid. She wasn't thrilled by all the large parties and gatherings that they had to attend, where she was expected”

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14. “He's fighting with his wife. He said something that was interesting in the interview. Let me go back to it. He says, I always had a rule if I was going away for more than 10 days, I'd take my kids out of school and keep them with me. So he loved being around his family. So when he's on a movie, he brings all of his kids and his wife as well. So says he and Ellie, which is his wife, were fighting all the time. And they were thinking about divorce. Ellie was convinced that her husband had been suffering through a slow but continuous nervous breakdown for the better part of a year. The filming had been going on and on for an unbelievable hundred days, and here they were still thousands of miles from home, risking everything important for them for a movie that still required more work than either of them wanted to consider. And so there's all this weird behavior that's occurring, and it's promptly found out later on that he has to, he's almost like a bipolar, like manic depressive, which I didn't now halfway through the book or whatever it is, then you realize a lot of his behavior can be explained by that.”

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15. “And I'm just going to spend a little bit more time on this because I really think, and I think Francis might agree even, that this is really the high watermark of his career. And so from here, he winds the next movie, the one that almost bankrupts him. But as far as not only critical acclaim, but financial performance, like this is the peak of his career. And so that's why the epilogue starts. It's like, what happened in the 70s? And I think when I study the life of Coppola, I'm like, okay. I already have an inclination towards consistency over intensity and reading these stories just pushes me further down the path because he gave so much and he was so intense to finish this movie. It's almost like it broke him. And so it said his own morale, however, hit rock bottom. His earlier confidence in the film had again been replaced by despair, triggered by Sheen's heart attacks. Martin Sheen has a heart attack on set, winds up coming back to work two months later, so it's remarkable. And his own marital difficulties, so he's talking about...”

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16. “between 100 and 150 million. So Coppola had to go through all this just to get on the other side of what he didn't know at the time was going to end up being a masterpiece and something extremely financially successful. Martin Sheen, if you've seen the movie, is one of the main characters. And this is what he said about working for Francis this time. I have a lot of mixed feelings about Francis. I'm very fond of him personally. The thing I love about him most is that he never, like a good general, asked you to do anything he wouldn't do. He was right there with us, lived there in shit and mud up to his ass, suffered the same diseases, ate the same food. I don't think he realizes how tough he is to work for. God is he tough, but I will sail with that son of a bitch anytime.”

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17. “There is an immense amount of pressure and emotional pain, but I do it anyway, and I really love to do it. It's like climbing a mountain And so he has multiple near emotional and nervous breakdowns while he's doing this. I said it's over 100 pages. I'm not myself on this page. 40 pages of problems and misery. So I'm 40 pages until I didn't know it was going to be 100 pages. And it says Copala was at a crossroads. He had mortgaged everything he had literally and figuratively on a picture he was no longer certain he could deliver. One evening he climbed on a lighting scaffold and lay on the platform in the rain, unable and unwilling to go on. Hundreds of crew members were waiting for him on the set, but he had nothing to shoot. He laid on the platform in the rain totally miserable. And the important point, and the reason I wanted to pull that out is because apocalypse now was considered by a lot of people a masterpiece. It's usually on the list of 100 greatest movies. It also was a monumental financial success, cost about $30 million to make, and brought in somewhere.”

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18. “And so I'm just going to give you a summary because this section is so long and so detailed of the things that Francis, the effect this film had on him, constant anxiety, weight loss, trouble sleeping, potential financial ruin because he's essentially put up all his assets as collateral. Constant self-doubt, almost the destruction of his marriage because he winds up having an affair on set with one of his employees. And I really think the way to think about the struggle that Francis had is what this quote from George Lucas said I thought of. And he talks about that when you're addicted to making movies, that it's painful but satisfying. And so Lucas said, you couldn't pay me enough money to go through what you have to go through to make a movie. It's excruciating. It's horrible. You get physically sick. I get a very bad cough and cold whenever I direct. I don't know whether it's psychosomatic or not. You feel terrible.”

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19. “And then we get to this unbelievably large part of the book about Apocalypse Now and just the struggle it was to make this movie. And you see that even massive success is not going to keep trouble away. And large part, Fortune is transitory, right? So he's having a hard time. No one wants to make the picture. No one wants to work on the picture. And this is coming after he's won all these Academy Awards. So he's kind of flipping out. And it says one day in the late fall of 1975, Francis Fort Coppola snatched up his five Academy Awards statuettes, marched them to the window of his estate, and flung them into the courtyard, smashing four of them to pieces. As far as he was concerned, all of his past”

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20. “On the next page, I write, what in the world? He's in the middle of this fantastic run, and he buys a magazine and he decides, you know what, I got to show up every day. And so he takes a break from making movies. And it's just, it's called City Magazine or San Francisco City Magazine, something like that. And so it says Coppola began to report to the magazine offices every day, feeling that he needed to take drastic measures to protect his investment and turn the magazine around, he fired the entire staff. In the months to come, he would try anything to get the magazine back on its feet. He hired new editors-in-chief, engaged in expensive ad campaigns, and changed the format of the publication. Nothing worked. Nothing worked. The magazine continued to lose large sums of money. But at this very same time, he's doing all this investments that seem really bad, he makes his life's best investment using the earnings from his godfather films, Coppola purchased a $1,700 acre estate in California's Napa Valley.”

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21. “And so the money he makes off Godfather, he winds up making a lot of investments. And I think one of the lessons from Francis is that if he would just focus, he buys all these things that just don't make sense. But then again, it's not clear cut because I could buy a radio station doesn't work out. He buys a magazine doesn't work out. But his greatest investment he ever made was his estate in Napa Valley. Francis said, I just read an interview with him in GQ, that he made way more money off of wine than he ever did off the movie business. And so again, it's not clear cut, but it's just like, what is going on here? He says, barring against his godfather two prophets. He purchased KMPX FM, one of San Francisco's premier underground rock stations. Although the move might not have been the best investment, it was consistent with his recent interest in purchasing media and entertainment property. So he buys radio stations, magazines.”

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22. “With my own eyes, then in a grandstand gesture that would have people talking for years to come, Coppola fumbled around for an imaginary checkbook if the company didn't like Lucas's picture, he would be happy to take it off their hands right then and there”

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23. “So that's the studio they're working with. This guy, executive named, we'll just call him Ned. I don't know how to pronounce his name, confronting Coppola and Lucas in the theater. Ned made his feelings known. You boys let me down, he said. I went to bat for you, and you let me down. As Lucas looked on in stunned disbelief, Coppola launched an attack that has become legendary in Hollywood film circles. You should get on your knees and thank George for saving your ass, he roared. This kid has killed himself to make the movie for you, and he brought it in on time and on schedule. The least you can do is thank him for doing that. The outburst drew the attention of dozens of people still inside theater. This movie is going to be a hit, he shouted. The audience loved the movie.”

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24. “I won't be around to talk to anymore, but if I can preserve these recordings I can still speak to him. We can still have conversations. And I hope and I pray that these conversations are valuable, that they light the path in front of him.”

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25. “My son listening to these podcasts, and I try to find the lessons in these books that will help his life. And I think by him realizing like, this is what my dad read and this is what he thought was important in these books. It's almost like a blueprint I can leave for him that he can listen to long after I'm gone. And so in addition to just the knowledge that's being transferred by reading a biography to the reader, that knowledge transfer is important. But what I think makes it stick even more is this emotional roller coaster that you go on. Like when I'm reading about Francis and his father and when I'm reading about Vito and Michael, I'm thinking about my relationship with my father. And then I'm thinking about my relationship with my son. Like, these are just deep fundamentally human experiences that we can all relate to. It's just extremely, extremely powerful because I know at one point, like I will...”

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26. “He needs the money. He does not have complete control over the picture. He's got the people obviously financing the movie, telling them all their different opinions. And so all the stress boils over. He said in that interview that I watch when he's a much older man that he almost caught fired like five or six times on this movie. And it says in rage, Copra threw his hands in the air. Fuck this picture he bellowed. I've directed five fucking movies without any mean telling me how to do it. I want to make the fucking shot now, and we will, even if the fucking director of photography has to be thrown off the picture. And he storms off the set, goes to his office, they hear a huge bang, and they said maybe he shot himself. They thought he killed himself. He just wind up breaking his door into pieces and started beating up on his door. So that just gives you an idea of the stress.”

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27. “methodical work habits. The director made a practice of ordering numerous takes of individual scenes, many requiring lengthy setup times before they could be reshot. At an estimated cost of $40,000 per day, delays extracted their own high price. Coppola, although far from oblivious of his running behind schedule, continued at his own pace. Excellence, he said, took time and patience, and then on every film he's got a battle of self doubt, the anxiety, the highs and lows, and Godfather's no exception. Anxiety left him irritable and restless, so much so that less than a month into filming, he requested sleeping pills from the company physician. Nothing about the movie was predictable. A good day of shooting would more often than not be followed by a dreadful one. And a lot of the stress is because he's got to take this job.”

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28. “Who makes the best decision, he makes his entire life. As a few weeks pass, Copala began to reconsider his stance. He owned Warner Brothers $300,000 with no immediate directing or screenwriting offers on his desk. Coppola consulted his family and colleagues for their thoughts. George Lucas was perhaps most direct in his assessment of the situation. Take it, he advised Coppola. We're broke. Let me just pause there. That's another great thing I love about biographies. Imagine George Lucas being broke. At one time in his life he did not have $5 billion, $6 billion, whatever he has today. He's like, we got to do this, dude. We're broke. Copola heeded the advice. He got $150,000 salary plus 6% of the picture's net profit. And so now we get a great description of how Coppola works. He's trying to create the godfather. Filming progressed slowly, greatly due to Coppola's deliberate...”

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29. “Family suffered horrible losses, both business and personal, meaning Sonny died, they were at war with other families, people are getting arrested, all kinds of stuff. But as Fido himself is presently quick to admit, his heart is no longer in the family's day-to-day operations. He realizes that the end is coming soon. Literally, his life is old. And he dies while playing in the garden with his grandson, but only after he taught Michael everything he needs to know to elevate the family back to its former prominence. So think about how many freaking autobiographies that you and I have studied on this podcast where they don't write it till their 70, 80, 85. He dies, but only after he taught you and I everything he needs to know to elevate your family back to its prominence. And so after a few weeks of being pitched on this idea,”

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30. “but also a great man. And the way he thought about life was extremely unique. He said, this is Coppola describing Brando, who passed away a few years ago. He says he was a genius. He was an extraordinary man. He just happened to work in a different way. So this is about the character that Brando plays. So he says he had learned the laws of the street and the laws of business by acting as a benefactor to the powerless people in his neighborhood, young Vito Corleone rose in stature, gaining influence and respect that he could parlay into a lucrative business during the prohibition when he bootleg liquor and provided a protection service for the small speakeasies run by the families and the businesses around him. And there's just so many lessons in this movie and in this chapter. And so he's going to break down. There's really just lessons in the Corleone siblings if you really think about this. So one of the big lessons I took because I would watch this movie when I was like a kid.”

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31. “Novel called The Godfather. Coppola read a portion of the book and hated it, and when Paramount called with his offer, he did what any broke and down on his luck director would have done if offered a high visibility, high paying project. He turned it down. So now we get into my favorite part of the book to read about because the Godfather wanted to, or two of my favorite movies of all time. And I should tell you the way the book is structured. So we go over his early life. But once we get into this part of the book, from here for the next 350 pages, every chapter is a movie. And you think of every chapter, and some chapters, like I read 100 pages on Apocalypse Now, and just how crazy that movie was to make. But the way I would think about this book is like every chapter, because I think of these movies are little independent companies. And what's interesting is you see the formation of the idea, the beginning of the movie, figuring out what the script is, what the product is, who you're going to hire to help.”

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32. “And demanded repayment of its loan. To Coppola, he was now nearly a half a million dollars in debt, and he had no work ahead. His studio was sinking before his eyes. Copola is thirty-one years old at this point in the story.”

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33. “Offing either side. Let me tell you, I'll read this and you'll understand what I mean. It was all a big bluff. Coppola approached the actors as if he had already had big studio financing behind him. And then he approached the studio as if he had already set up the production and was prepared to go forward with or without the studio's help. Somehow, it worked, as Coppola boasted afterward. If there's one thing I've found out is don't ask just go ahead and force the issue. That way you get a momentum going with everybody wanting to jump on the bandwagon. And he also did something smart here. He's like, I'm willing to take a bad deal just to get my foot in the door. Copala would receive only $8,000 for writing and directing the picture. He would also receive 10% of the film's profits, an offer that was ridiculously weak by today's standards, but it represented a breakthrough at the time. No one had ever offered someone as young and inexperienced as Coppola.”

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34. “And so he's really young. He's in his, we're now in his late 20s, mid to late 20s, and he's trying to figure out, okay, well, how can I actually write, not only write scripts, but then be able to direct what I wrote and not have it be controlled or rewritten by somebody else? And he's like, well, I need money. Like if I have my own money, then I can actually have a say in what that gives me control. And we see something that he does this entire life. I would consider him like almost like a, I wouldn't say like a degenerate gambler, but he's definitely a gambler. He goes all in multiple times, and that's why he winds up having negative net worth many times throughout his life. So he winds up gambling all his money on hopes of making enough money to fund his own movie, though. And so he says, hoping to come up with some quick cash, he invested his entire savings in a company that produced something that's called, it's like a jukebox that showed short movies on a tiny built-in screen. That investment winds up being a massive mistake, miserable failure, and he lost every single penny that he had. So again.”

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35. “And Francis says, The secret of all my getting things off the ground is that I've always taken big chances with personal investments while the other guys my age were all pleading, Corman, please let me make a film. I simply sat down and wrote the script Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed. That is a line that Jay-Z said to Kanye West this same thing happened. So you have other people say, Corman, let me just make a movie. Okay, well, how is he going to respond? There's a million people that want to make movies. That's a terrible approach. What is the approach Coppola did? Hey, Coppola, or excuse me, hey, Corman, you already have, we already have, we already we're on location, we have extra time, we already have the actors, and guess what? I have a script. Let's do this. If somebody came to you with those two propositions, which one are you choosing? It is a no-brainer in that documentary. Kanye was having a hard time. He was signed to Jay-Z's record label.”

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36. “To want to work harder for Corman, and he does something that he does his entire career. I'm going to tell you a quote I took notes on that interview when he was 83. I'll get there in one second. But as an example of that, Corman asked Coppola if he knew anyone who could work on the film Sound. An undaunted by the fact that he knew virtually nothing about sound recording, Coppola volunteered for the job. That is a main theme in the life and Copala's approach to work. Say yes first and learn later. Say yes first, learn later. He does that over and over and over again when he's 83 years old. He says my peculiar approach to cinema is I like to learn by not knowing how the hell to do it. I'm forced to discover how to do it. That is a genius idea from 83-year-old Francis Ford Coppola. Force yourself to learn. And so this is how he gets into”

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37. “I just happened to be able to make beats so well that other people will buy them, and then I'm going to use that as a way to break into the industry. You can think about Coppola as doing the same thing. In fact, the first Oscar he ever wins is for the screen play that he wrote for the movie Patton. And so we get an indication into his motivations here. He writes screenplay. They love it. They want to buy it. He says the investors like to script and we're willing to buy it. But unfortunately, for Coppola, they did not want to hire him to direct the picture, which Coppola overmarked was the only thing I was interested in. I'm only writing scripts so I can direct Kanye's only making beats so he can rap on them. It's the exact same idea. Another good idea from Coppola. He seizes opportunities that other people in his film school think are beneath them, which is really funny, considering when you're in film school, you haven't yet achieved anything. And so he's going to wind up working for what they call a B-movie director.”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “And so he does something really smart. He finds a different, like a parallel way to break through because he's like, I want to be a director. I want to have complete control. I want to write my movie. I want to direct my movie. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. It's very similar to Luke's perspective. But the way he gets in, he figures out to seize an opportunity. He starts writing scripts. This is when I got to this point. It reminded me because I've told you that I watched the first, I highly recommend watching the first two episodes of the new Kanye documentary on Netflix. It's called Genius Genius, something like that. And what was interesting about that was that Kanye broke in, like his main goal is like, I want to be a rapper. But he used a different way to break in. And he's like, I'll just make beats. He started making beats. But everybody, so he winds up breaking into an industry doing that, selling beats, becoming famous for selling beats, but no one understood his true motivation. He's like, I only make beats so I can rap on them.”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “And so Francis had this desire to prove himself, to prove he can be successful, to right the wrongs of what happened with his father. And luckily enough, he is applying that to something he loves. He talks about this time in his life. He said, I had an overwhelming urge to make films. All I lacked was the opportunity.”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “A strict policy of allowing no one to shoot a film on its premises, undeterred, Coppola contacted a cemetery official and after explaining that he was a student making a modest, non-commercial film, he was given permission to shoot in the cemetery. He then contacted Chapman Company, which is a builder of the biggest and best camera crane in existence. So I'm going to interrupt myself really. This is the story of resourcefulness, relentless resourcefulness. He does not have a lot of money, does not have the equipment he needs, he finds a way. He then contacted the Chapman Company. They build the biggest and best camera crane in existence. After running through the film school spiel with one of the company's officials, he promised to provide Chapman with a high-quality photograph of one of its cranes posted next to Michelangelo's David in exchange for a brief loan of the crane. They say yes. He shocked groundskeepers by turning up not with the expected small amateur film crew, but with a 60-man crew.”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “What kind of father says something like that to his son? So we go to Coppola in college, says he was bright and energetic, rather pretentious, and occasionally arrogant, friendly, eager to learn, and above all else, not at all afraid of asserting himself. These are traits that he maintained, he had his personality traits, he still has them to this day for his entire life. Movies remained his real love. He started a club, he's in college at Hofstra, called the Hofstra Cinema Workshop, and he set up screenings of classic films. The films of Sergei Eisenstein had made all the difference in his decision to pursue a career as a filmmaker, and this is what Coppola says on finding Sergei's work. On Monday, I was in the theater. On Tuesday, I knew”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Do work to do the music, like the score of some of his movies. And one of those movies was Godfather 2. And so the note I left myself on this page is don't be like this. This is Francis talking about this time. After I'd spent a lifetime with a frustrated and often unemployed man who hated anybody who was successful to see him get an Oscar, it added 20 years to his lifetime. And so think about Kobla's view of his father from his perspective. He grew up with somebody that never got to achieve what he thought like his level of talent, like he deserved in life, then that caused him to over the years become more and more bitter, to hate other people that were successful, and then the only way that his father was actually able to attain his dreams was being hired by his son. And my own guess, based on reading this book, is the fact that his father was never able to achieve.”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Studying on the podcast. Once we get to George Lucas, I want to jump right into the relationship that he had growing up with his father. I just watched an interview with Francis Ford Coppola. He's 83 in the interview. This book is over 20 years old, so it was published when he's around 60 years old. But when he's 83, he made a very interesting comment in this interview that I wrote down. And this is a quote from the interview. He said, you can always understand the sun by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. So that's where I want to start. His father's name is Carmine. We'll go right into it. Carmine harbored ambivalent feelings about success, similar to the ones that his son would confront many years later as a filmmaker. As a hired musician, Carmine could carve out a decent living, but he would never develop into the kind of artist that he aspired to be. If he abandoned the safe route to pursue”

    2022-04-21 · Founders · #242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source