Maclean's Interview: Francis Ford Coppola
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - 1 Comment
Godfather legend Francis Ford Coppola on Brando’s brilliance, how TV ruined movies, and why directing turned into his hobby
Famous for such classics as The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola has retreated from Hollywood to make wine—and small, self-financed art films. Coppola’s Tetro, which recently opened the Directors’ Fortnight program in Cannes, is the story of an American teenager who reunites with his estranged brother (Vincent Gallo) in Buenos Aires, steals his Gothic memoir of their showbiz family, and turns it into a sensational play. Based on Coppola’s first original screenplay in 30 years, the movie is rife with allusions to his own family. The director was interviewed on a hotel rooftop in Cannes.
Q: Many years ago, you were in Cannes to launch Apocalypse Now. You won the Palme d’Or here for The Conversation. You’ve chaired the jury. How does all that compare to showing up out of competition with a small film like Tetro?
A: I’ve been to Cannes four or five times. It’s an exciting day in the sunshine. But more and more it’s gotten to be a frenzy related to the film market, and the press has gotten like piranhas. It’s very dangerous to come here, more so in the competition. I’ve seen incredible things happen. I’ve seen previews of movies—not mine—where the same person who booed a film asked the director why the film was booed, and the only person booing was the guy who asked the question.
Q: Tetro is about a family torn by rivalry—estranged brothers who are writers, and a cruel patriarch and his brother, who are conductors. You grew up in the shadow of your older brother, who was a writer. Your father was composer, and your uncle a conductor. Is this your most personal film?
A: I think so, because I only wrote a few original screenplays—The Rain People, The Conversation, and this. Continue…
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Coppola in Cannes
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 7:37 PM - 1 Comment
A CANNES VIDEO PRESENTED BY CANON CANADA
Francis Ford Coppola holds court after premiering Teatro, the opening film of the Director’s Fortnight
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Through the looking glass in Cannes
By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 9:47 PM - 0 Comments
A scene from Alain Renais's 'Wild Grass'
Aside from inventiveness with which filmmakers portrayed brutal violence, the other prevalent trend in Cannes this year was the camera’s tendency to turn on itself. So many movies contained references to cinema, and quite a few had stories that revolved around a film within a film, or at least a show within a show—notably Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Tsai-Ming Liang’s Visage, Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It makes you wonder if world cinema is fleeing the world, and happy to lose itself in its own reflection, like the characters who plunge through the funhouse mirror of Gilliam’s Imaginarium. Quite the vicious circle. You’ve got several thousand film critics obsessively watching films that are obsessed with film. One of the French soldiers in Tarantino’s movie is a film critic. And Isabel Coixet’s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo drew a big laugh from a mass audience of critics with this line: “How can you trust a guy who spends all day in a cinema?” Precisely.
In this incestuous mix of art and life, nothing was spookier than seeing Heath Ledger’s last performance in Imaginarium. His character makes his entrance dangling from a noose. And the film contains references to dead movie stars like Valentino and James Dean finding immortality on the silver screen—allusions that now seem like morbid premonitions. But then movies lend themselves to meditations on mortality. And these days, when every auteur seems obsessed with the Death of Cinema, it was thrilling to see a film by an old man that celebrates its life—Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grass), a gem by 86-year-old French master Alain Resnais, who’s most famous for Hiroshima Mon Amour. Resnais’s movie emerged as the festival’s sleeper hit, and after catching up to it late in the week, I can see why.
