Word: coppolas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...late '90s, Coppola says, "I just wanted to find a place for myself. I didn't want to be a director who was hired: 'Here's a script, we've got Robin Williams.'" After he lost a lengthy rights battle with Warner Bros. over a Pinocchio project, Coppola says he realized, "I don't have that much time. The time has come to do the dream project, the ultimate one that I write myself that's about something really ambitious, that contributes new ideas to the language of cinema." While the Godfather movies are fan favorites, he prefers the films...
...friend who sent Coppola encouraging notes on his Megalopolis script was Wendy Doniger, the first girl he had ever kissed and the one who gave him On the Road when they were students at Great Neck High School in Long Island, New York, in the '50s. (Coppola has optioned the book.) He flew his private plane to Chicago to pick up Doniger, now a University of Chicago professor of Hinduism and comparative mythology, and bring her back to Napa to discuss her ideas with him and his wife Eleanor. Over the house wine and Coppola's cooking, they talked about...
...Hoping to help him with some of the themes he was struggling with on Megalopolis, Doniger gave Coppola some of Eliade's works, including Youth Without Youth. The book, meant to be inspirational, became Coppola's lightning bolt. "I realized, well, I can just go to Romania and make this movie and not tell anyone. I optioned the script on the sly, didn't tell my wife. I was so wounded for those five, six years that it felt good to have a secret project. It's like if you had $1 million cash in your purse that...
...Within his family's company, Francis Ford Coppola Presents Ltd., Coppola can make any movie he wants if he spends less than $17 million. Youth, thanks to financial incentives for movies made in Europe and some scrappy filmmaking, fits into that category. Coppola set up a production office at a friend's Bucharest pharmaceutical company, auditioning actors and cinematographers amid stores of cough syrup and vitamins. He hired a 28-year-old director of photography who had just gotten out of film school to shoot in less expensive high-definition digital video. With the help of old friend George Lucas...
...film got its first airing at the Rome Film Festival, where the reaction suggested that Coppola is going to have a tough time making young men's pictures again. Rookie directors can experiment quietly; every movie Coppola makes is an international event. "I'm not supposed to call this a small movie or an experimental movie," he says, because he knows it might turn off fans. It probably didn't help that he was quoted in the November GQ as saying he felt Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson have lost the passion for good roles. Coppola told...