Word: coppolas
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APOCALYPSE NOW Directed by Francis Coppola Written by John Milius and Francis Coppola...
...film long ago became his obsession, and less than a month before its official premiere, Francis Coppola has only now stopped agonizing over how it will all turn out. After three years, $30 million, a typhoon named Olga and a shared Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm for Best Picture, Director Coppola still struggled to find an ending for his Viet Nam epic, Apocalypse Now. Should Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) hack Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) to death and then emerge from the colonel's hideout? Or should Willard kill Kurtz, sail down the river and then order...
When the ending of a film is altered late in production, the change-Coppola notwithstanding-is usually made in the hope of raising box office receipts. Alterations often come after a preview audience has seen the movie and filled out questionnaires, which are studied by Hollywood executives with the same kind of eager dread White House aides must feel when they pore over the latest Gallup. Even the best and most independent directors find audience reaction helpful: Stanley Kubrick first filmed a wild custard-pie fight between the Americans and the Soviets as a final scene for Dr. Strangelove...
...ends well as long as the picture does well at the box office. Epstein, for one, boasts that he would rewrite Shakespeare: "I think the worst ending in the world is Hamlet. There is too much blood. There should have been a few less corpses." It looks as if Coppola has been won over to that less-is-more outlook...
...salad and .45-cal. shells sprawled the body of short, balding Carmine Galante, 69, shot in the left eye and chest, his teeth still clenching his familiar black cigar. Galante was one of the Mafia's most powerful and feared bosses. Killed with him were a bodyguard, Leonardo Coppola, 40, and Turano, reputedly an adviser to Galante's crime family. The restaurant owner's son John, 17, was wounded. The execution had been carefully set up in advance. While the gunmen blazed away, Caesar Bonventra, 28, a Galante recruit who a Mafia insider said...