Citizen Koppola.
In the space of just eight years, Francis Ford Coppola wrote
and/or directed four of the greatest films of all time (the first
two Godfather films, Apocalypse Now and Patton). He also wrote an
original screenplay for and directed a low-budget film which won the
Palme d'Or at Cannes (The Conversation). The Conversation was also
nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but lost to a film directed by
some guy named Francis Ford Coppola.
FFC was in his thirties when that streak ended. Since then (going
on 31 years at press time) he's had to be content with some highly
visible failures like One from the Heart and a few minor successes
like The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Godfather III, Dracula, Peggy Sue
Got Married, and Tucker: the Man and His Dream. Those three decades
seemed like a time when he was treading water while trying to
assemble his still-unmade futuristic masterpiece Megalopolis. From
time to time rumors floated East from California that something was
moving forward on Megalopolis. One great star or another was
attached to it. A massively long script was making the rounds. The
film would run five hours. The film would cost $300 million; $500
million; whatever.
Coppola finally had to accept the fact that Megalopolis would
never be more than a pipe dream because the risk/reward ratio can't
be made acceptable to investors. But by the time he accepted that,
he had become a rich man from a variety of sources inside and
outside the world of cinema. He then came to the realization that
his wealth equaled absolute movie-making freedom through the
self-financing route. Oh, he could not finance Megalopolis or even
some Godfather sequels out of his own pocket, but he could make a
nearly limitless string of modest films like The Conversation.
Indeed, if he's willing to consider the cost of his films as a
write-off rather than an investment, he can do whatever the hell he
pleases, critics be damned, investors be damned, box office be
damned. Like the fictional Charles Foster Kane - "I think it would
be fun to run a newspaper" - he can create anything he would
actually enjoy creating.
So Coppola has turned to pet projects which he loves with the
enthusiasm and passion of a young man, and he's making the kinds of
films young men make when they have not yet learned the value of
subtlety or the difference between drama and melodrama. That kind of
fearless willingness to wear one's heart on one's sleeve, coupled
with a disdain for compromises designed to perk up the box office,
can produce some brilliant, personal films (Magnolia, e.g.) - the
sorts of films that inspire as much passion as they exude. Such
projects almost always lose money, of course, but what difference
does that make to the very rich?
Two or three years ago, FFC made Youth Without Youth from an
obscure novel by a Romanian theologian. Like a university student in
an elderly body, Coppola dared to work outside the bounds of natural
law to take on the big philosophical questions of existence, to deal
with lost youth and might-have-beens. It's not an exceptionally good
film, and yet, as
I wrote at the
time: "There is great filmmaking on display here. The problem is
that Coppola just had no idea how to manage the rambling,
internalized discourse on the many subjects Eliade had mastered in
many languages, ranging from linguistics to metaphysics to the
history of religion to the place of man in the universe. One cannot
make a film about everything, or even all the things in that last
sentence, so Coppola would have had to winnow all that down to a
comprehensible and focused movie which allowed us to understand and
empathize with the characters. It plays out just as you might expect
- as a brilliant student film, except one made by a student who just
happens to know more about filmmaking than any of his classmates or
his professors." Or anyone else.
Tetro is more of the same. It's an epic-length black and white
film, half in English and half in Spanish. It's about unbearable
family secrets in the Darth Vader mold, but played out in Buenos
Aires rather than in outer space. The context includes mental
illness facilities, experimental theater productions, opera,
classical dance, and symphonic music. It's filled with the release
of long-suppressed emotions, sweeping panoramas of Patagonia,
aesthetics, the pain of one's coming-of-age ... you name it.
It has a balletic dream sequence like the one in "Oklahoma!" in
which dancers mirror and re-enact the characters' memories and
fears. Like Coppola's previous film, it is distinctly uncommercial:
Youth Without Youth had grossed a quarter of a million dollars on 18
screens; Tetro made it to 16 screens and raised the gross to
$400,000 - on a budget of some $15 million.
Citizen Kane, like Citizen Koppola, lost money on his vanity
projects. His response: so what? Coppola could echo Kane's exact
words, adjusted only to put the cost in 2010 dollars: "You're right,
I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million
dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You
know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll
have to close this place - in 60 years." Coppola doesn't need
to stretch his fortune out for 60 years. He is 70 now. I assume he
can keep making these intense, idiosyncratic, and sometimes
overwrought films as long as he lives.
I hope he does.
