Francis Ford Coppola

1970–1979: Breakthrough and acclaim

Patton (1970)

Coppola co-wrote the script for Patton starting in 1963 along with Edmund H. North. This earned him his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. However, it was not easy for Coppola to convince Franklin J. Schaffner that the opening scene would work. Coppola later revealed in an interview,

I wrote the script of Patton. And the script was very controversial when I wrote it, because they thought it was so stylized. It was supposed to be like, sort of, you know, The Longest Day. And my script of Patton was—I was sort of interested in the reincarnation. And I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I wasn't fired, but I was fired, meaning that when the script was done, they said, "Okay, thank you very much," and they went and hired another writer and that script was forgotten. And I remember very vividly this long, kind of being raked over the coals for this opening scene.

When the title role was offered to George C. Scott, he remembered having read Coppola's screenplay earlier. He stated flatly that he would accept the part only if they used Coppola's script. "Scott is the one who resurrected my version," said Coppola.

The movie opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's famous military "Pep Talk" to members of the Third Army, set against a huge American flag. Coppola and North had to tone down Patton's actual language to avoid an R rating; in the opening monologue, the word "fornicating" replaced "fucking" when criticizing The Saturday Evening Post. Over the years, this opening monologue has become an iconic scene and has spawned parodies in numerous films, political cartoons, and television shows.

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather (1972) was a turning point in Coppola's career. However, he faced several difficulties while filming. Paramount had owned the rights to Mario Puzo's novel, about an Italian-American mafia family, for several years. Coppola was not Paramount's first choice to direct; Sergio Leone was initially offered the job but declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America. Robert Evans wanted the picture to be directed by an Italian American to make it "ethnic to the core". Evans' chief assistant Peter Bart suggested Coppola, as a director of Italian ancestry who would work for a low sum and budget after the poor reception of The Rain People. Coppola initially turned down the job because he found Puzo's novel sleazy and sensationalist, describing it as "pretty cheap stuff". At the time, Coppola's studio American Zoetrope owed over $400,000 to Warner Bros. for budget overruns on THX 1138 and, when coupled with his poor financial standing, along with advice from friends and family, Coppola reversed his initial decision and took the job.

Coppola was officially announced as director of the film on September 28, 1970. He agreed to receive $125,000 and six percent of the gross rentals. Coppola later found a deeper theme for the material and decided it should be not just be a film about organized crime, but also a family saga and a metaphor for capitalism in America. The story follows the Corleone family as patriarch Vito Corleone passes the reins of power to his son Michael. There was disagreement between Paramount and Coppola on casting; Coppola wanted to cast Marlon Brando as Vito, though Paramount wanted either Ernest Borgnine or Danny Thomas. Orson Welles was also considered. At one point, Coppola was told by the then-president of Paramount that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture." After pleading with the executives, Coppola was allowed to cast Brando only if he appeared in the film for much less money than his previous films, would perform a screen test, and put up a bond saying that he would not cause a delay in the production (as he had done on previous film sets). Coppola chose Brando over Borgnine on the basis of Brando's screen test, which also won over the Paramount leadership. Coppola would later recall: The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job.

The film was a critical and commercial success, setting the box office record. Pauline Kael wrote: Coppola, a young director who has never had a big hit, may have done the movie for money, as he claims—in order to make the pictures he really wants to make, he says—but this picture was made at peak capacity. He has salvaged Puzo’s energy and lent the narrative dignity. Given the circumstances and the rush to complete the film and bring it to market, Coppola has not only done his best but pushed himself farther than he may realize. The movie is on the heroic scale of earlier pictures on broad themes, such as On the Waterfront, From Here to Eternity, and The Nun’s Story. It offers a wide, startlingly vivid view of a Mafia dynasty. The abundance is from the book; the quality of feeling is Coppola’s... The direction is tenaciously intelligent. Coppola holds on and pulls it all together. The trash novel is there underneath, but he attempts to draw the patterns out of the particulars. It’s amazing how encompassing the view seems to be—what a sense you get of a broad historical perspective, considering that the span is only from 1945 to the mid-fifties, at which time the Corleone family, already forced by competitive pressures into dealing in narcotics, is moving its base of operations to Las Vegas.

In addition to Brando, the film starred Al Pacino, James Caan, John Cazale and Robert Duvall. It featured Richard Castellano, Sterling Hayden, Diane Keaton and Coppola's sister Talia Shire. Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, which he refused to accept. The film won Best Picture and the Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola was nominated for Best Director but lost to Bob Fosse for Cabaret. For the score, Coppola commissioned Nino Rota, who had scored many Fellini films. Gordon Willis's chiaroscuro cinematography was acclaimed, as was Dean Tavoularis's period production design.

The film routinely ranks near the top of polls for the greatest movies ever. It was ranked third, behind Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942), on the American Film Institute's inaugural AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1997. In 2007, it had moved to second place, ahead of Casablanca and behind Kane. David Thomson writes that "The Godfather deserved all its success because it had the nerve to take its 175 minutes slowly... It has a calm faith in narrative control that had not been current in Hollywood for twenty years. It was like a film of the forties in its nostalgic decor; its command of great supporting actors; in Gordon Willis's bold exploration of a film noir in color; and in its fascination with evil."

The Conversation (1974)

The Conversation (1974) further cemented Coppola's reputation. It was influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966) and generated much interest when news leaked that it featured the same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon administration used to spy on political opponents in the Watergate scandal. Coppola claimed that this was purely coincidental, as the script for The Conversation was completed in the mid-1960s. However, audiences interpreted the film as a reaction to Watergate and its fallout. It stars Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, "the best bugger on the West Coast", hired to spy on a young couple played by Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest. It features Cazale as his partner, Stan. The movie was a critical success and won Coppola his first Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The film received three Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound. Coppola's brother-in-law David Shire wrote the score and Walter Murch edited the picture, as Coppola started work on his next project.

The Godfather Part II (1974)

The Godfather Part II is both prequel and sequel to the first film, telling parallel stories of the rise of young Vito Corleone and the fall of his son Michael. After its five-hour-long preview, George Lucas told Coppola, "You have two films. Take one away, it doesn't work." Coppola claims it was the first major motion picture to use "Part II" in its title; he was influenced by Sergei Eisenstein's two-part Ivan the Terrible. Paramount was initially opposed to his decision to name the movie The Godfather Part II. According to Coppola, the studio's objection stemmed from the belief that audiences would be reluctant to see a film with such a title, as the audience would supposedly believe that, having already seen The Godfather, there was little reason to see an addition to the original film. However, the success of The Godfather Part II began the Hollywood tradition of numbered sequels.

The movie received tremendous critical acclaim, with many deeming it superior to its predecessor. Kael wrote: Coppola has plunged us back into the sensuality and terror of the first film. And, with the relentlessness of a master, he goes farther and farther. The daring of Part II is that it enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning of the first film... The first film covered the period from 1945 to the mid-fifties. Part II, contrasting the early manhood of Vito (played by Robert De Niro) with the life of Michael, his inheritor (Al Pacino), spans almost seventy years. We saw only the middle of the story in the first film; now we have the beginning and the end. Structurally, the completed work is nothing less than the rise and decay of an American dynasty of unofficial rulers... Part II has the same mythic and operatic visual scheme as the first; once again the cinematographer is Gordon Willis. Visually the film is, however, far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it’s thematically richer, more shadowed, more full. Willis’s workmanship has developed, like Coppola’s; even the sequences in the sunlight have deep tones — elegiac yet lyrical, as in The Conformist, and always serving the narrative, as the Nino Rota score also does.

In addition to Pacino, Cazale, Duvall, Keaton and Shire reprised their roles from the first film. Newcomers included Michael V. Gazzo and Pacino's mentor Lee Strasberg. The Godfather Part II was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. De Niro won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Vito, making him and Brando the first actors to win Oscars for playing the same character. The film ranked at No. 32 on AFI's inaugural 100 Years...100 Movies list, maintaining its position ten years later. It is ranked No. 1 on TV Guide's "50 Best Movies of All Time" and at No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time". Together, the two Godfathers placed at No. 4 on Sight & Sound's 2002 list of the ten greatest films of all time. Thomson writes that "it exhibited a mastery of so many periods and locations as to be entrancing." It was one of the last major American motion pictures to be filmed in Technicolor.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Following the success of The Godfather, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II, Coppola began filming Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) set in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. It follows Willard (Martin Sheen) as he journeys upriver to find and assassinate the rogue Kurtz (Brando). The production in the Philippines was plagued by numerous problems, including typhoons, nervous breakdowns, the firing of Harvey Keitel, Sheen's heart attack, Brando arriving overweight and unprepared and extras from the Philippine military and half of the supplied helicopters leaving in the middle of scenes to fight rebels. It was delayed so often it was nicknamed Apocalypse When?

Apocalypse Now premiered at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where Coppola made grandiose claims, among them: "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." Despite such pronouncements, and complaints from critics that the film's message was confused, it shared the Palme d'Or with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum and won Oscars for Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) and Best Sound (Murch, Mark Berger, Richard Beggs and Nat Boxer.) Roger Ebert wrote:

In his book The Films of My Life, the French director François Truffaut made a curious statement. He used to believe, he says, that a successful film had to simultaneously express "an idea of the world and an idea of cinema." But now, he writes, "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse."

1979–1989: Hard times

Apocalypse Now marked the end of the 'golden phase' of Coppola's career. His Las Vegas-set musical fantasy One from the Heart (1982), while pioneering in its use of video-editing techniques, ended with a disastrous box-office gross of US$636,796 against a $26-million budget, and he was forced to sell the 23-acre Zoetrope Studio in 1983. He would spend the rest of the decade working to pay off his debts. Ebert wrote that the film was "a ballet of graceful and complex camera movements occupying magnificent sets, and somehow the characters get lost in the process... The storyteller of The Godfather has become a technician here. There are chilling parallels between Coppola’s obsessive control of this film and the character of Harry Caul, the wiretapper in Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), who cared only about technical results and refused to

Commercial ventures

American Zoetrope

In 1971, Coppola produced George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138. Shortly after completion of production they brought the finished film to Warner Bros., along with several other scripts for potential projects at their newly founded company, American Zoetrope. However, studio executives strongly disliked all of the scripts, including THX, and demanded that Coppola repay the $300,000 they had loaned him for the Zoetrope studio, as well as insisting on cutting five minutes from the film. The debt nearly closed Zoetrope and forced Coppola to reluctantly focus on The Godfather.

American Zoetrope produced the film Clownhouse, the director of which, Victor Salva, was convicted of child sexual abuse and child pornography offences occurring during the making of that film. In 2006, Coppola said, "You have to remember, while this was a tragedy, that the difference in age between Victor and the boy was very small -- Victor was practically a child himself." Salva was 29 at the time while the boy was 12.

Zoetrope Virtual Studio

American Zoetrope also administers the Zoetrope Virtual Studio, a complete motion picture production studio for members only. Launched in June 2000 as the culmination of more than four years of work, it brings together departments for screenwriters, directors, producers and other filmmaker artists, as well as new departments for other creative endeavors such as the short story vending machine project.

Pinocchio dispute with Warner Bros.

In the late 1980s, Coppola started considering concepts for a motion picture based upon the 19th-century Carlo Collodi novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, and in 1991, Coppola and Warner Bros. began discussing the project as well as two others, one involving the life of J. Edgar Hoover and the other based on the children's novel The Secret Garden. These discussions led to negotiations for Coppola to both produce and direct the Pinocchio project for Warner Bros. as well as The Secret Garden (which was made in 1993 and produced by American Zoetrope, but directed by Agnieszka Holland) and Hoover, which never came to fruition. A film was eventually made by Clint Eastwood in 2011 titled J. Edgar, which was distributed by Warner Bros.

However, in mid-1991, Coppola and Warner Bros. came to a disagreement over the compensation to Coppola for his directing services on Pinocchio. In 1994, Coppola later approached another studio, Columbia Pictures, to produce the film. Warner Brothers then wrote to Columbia, stating it had held the rights to Coppola's project, which led to Columbia later dropping the project. Coppola filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros, alleging they had wrongfully prevented Columbia Pictures from making the film.

The parties deferred this issue and a settlement was finally reached on July 3, 1998, when the jurors in the resultant court case awarded Coppola $20 million as compensation for losing the Pinocchio film project. On that same day, Warner Bros. stated it would appeal the decision. A week later, Coppola was awarded a further $60 million in punitive damages on top, stemming from his charges that Warner Bros. sabotaged his intended version. However, in October 1998, then-Superior Court Judge Madeleine Flier reversed the jury's $60 million award to Coppola. Warner Bros. and Coppola then appealed each other's ruling, in which Coppola sought to have his $60 million award restored. In March 2001, the California Court of Appeals decided against Coppola on both counts. In July 2001, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the appellate decision, bringing the litigation battle to a conclusive end.

Contact dispute with Carl Sagan/Warner Bros.

During the filming of Contact on December 28, 1996, Coppola filed a lawsuit against Carl Sagan and Warner Bros. Sagan had died a week earlier, and Coppola claimed that Sagan's novel Contact was based on a story the pair had developed for a television special back in 1975 titled First Contact. Under their development agreement, Coppola and Sagan were to split proceeds from the project as well as any novel Sagan would write with American Zoetrope and Children's Television Workshop Productions. The television program was never produced, but in 1985, Simon & Schuster published Sagan's Contact and Warner Bros. moved forward with development of a film adaptation. Coppola sought at least $250,000 in compensatory damages and an injunction against production or distribution of the film. Even though Sagan was shown to have violated some of the terms of the agreement, the case was dismissed in February 1998 because Coppola had waited too long to file suit.

Uptown Theater

George Altamura, a real estate developer, announced in 2003 that he had partnered with several people, including Coppola, in a project to restore the Uptown Theater in downtown Napa, California, in order to create a live entertainment venue.

Francis Ford Coppola Presents

Coppola is the owner of Francis Ford Coppola Presents, a lifestyle brand under which he markets goods from companies he owns or controls. It includes films and videos, resorts, cafes, a literary magazine, a line of pastas and pasta sauces called Mammarella Foods, and a winery.

Wineries

Francis Ford Coppola Winery

The Francis Ford Coppola Winery between Healdsburg and Geyserville, California, located on the former Chateau Souverain Winery, where he has opened a family-friendly facility, is influenced by the idea of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, with swimming pools, bocce courts, and a restaurant named Rustic. The winery displays several of Coppola's Oscars along with memorabilia from his movies, including Vito Corleone's desk from The Godfather and a restored 1948 Tucker Sedan as used in Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

In August 2021, Coppola sold Francis Ford Coppola Winery and Virginia Dare Winery to Delicato Family Wines.

Inglenook Winery

Coppola, with his family, expanded his business ventures to include winemaking in California's Napa Valley, when in 1975, he purchased the former home and adjoining vineyard of Gustave Niebaum in Rutherford, California using proceeds from The Godfather. His winery produced its first vintage in 1977 with the help of his father, wife, and children stomping the grapes barefoot. Every year, the family has a harvest party to continue the tradition.

After purchasing the property, he produced wine under the Niebaum-Coppola label. He purchased the former Inglenook Winery chateau in 1995, and renamed it to Rubicon Estate Winery in 2006. On April 11, 2011, Coppola acquired the Inglenook trademark paying more, he said, for the trademark than he did for the entire estate and announced that the estate would once again be known by its historic original name, Inglenook. Its grapes are entirely organically grown.

Domaine Lumineux

In October 2018, Coppola and family purchased the Vista Hills winery in Dayton, Oregon, and in 2019 renamed it to Domaine de Broglie, which is now Domaine Lumineux after relocating to Newberg, Oregon in 2024.

Resorts

Included in the Francis Ford Coppola Presents lifestyle brand are several hotels and resorts, part of Coppola's Hideaway company. The Blancaneaux Lodge in Belize, which from the early 1980s was a family retreat until it was opened to the public in 1993 as a 20-room luxury resort and The Turtle Inn, in Placencia, Belize, (both of which have won several prestigious awards including "Travel + Leisure's World's Best: Best Resort in Central & South America"); La Lancha in Lago Petén Itzá, Guatemala; Jardín Escondido in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Palazzo Margherita in Bernalda, Italy; and the All-Movie Hotel in Peachtree City, Georgia, US.

Cafe and restaurant

In San Francisco, Coppola owns a restaurant named Cafe Zoetrope, located in the Sentinel Building where American Zoetrope is based. It serves traditional Italian cuisine and wine from his personal estate vineyard. For 14 years from 1994, Coppola co-owned the Rubicon restaurant in San Francisco along with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Rubicon closed in August 2008.

Literary publications

Coppola bought into the San Francisco-based magazine City of San Francisco in 1973, with the intent of publishing a "service magazine" that informed readers about sights and activities in selected cities. The magazine was unsuccessful, and he lost $1.5 million on this venture.

In 1997, Coppola co-founded with Adrienne Brodeur, the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story which was devoted to short stories and design. The magazine publishes fiction by emerging writers alongside more recognizable names, such as Woody Allen, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Mary Gaitskill, and Edward Albee; as well as essays, including ones from Mario Vargas Llosa, David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Each issue is designed, in its entirety, by a prominent artist, one usually working outside his / her expected field. Previous guest designers include Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Marjane Satrapi, Guillermo del Toro, David Bowie, David Byrne, and Dennis Hopper. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of All-Story.

Cannabis brand

In 2018, Coppola launched Sana Company LLC and released a cannabis brand known as The Grower's Series. The collection was created in partnership with the Humboldt Brothers, a Humboldt County cannabis farm. Coppola debuted the brand in San Francisco, California in October 2018 at the private cannabis dining club series known as Thursday Infused, organized by The Herb Somm, Jamie Evans. Coppola packaged The Grower's Series in a mock black tin wine bottle resembling his wine brand. The Grower's Series showcases three cannabis strains: a sativa, indica and hybrid.

Whisky advertisement

Coppola appeared in a commercial for Suntory Reserve in 1980 alongside Akira Kurosawa; the commercial was filmed while Kurosawa was making Kagemusha, which Coppola produced with George Lucas.