Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...also Hammett, German Director Wim Wenders' moody detective drama, and Escape Artist, Caleb Deschanel's saga of a runaway boy-have yet to be seen. The Chase Manhattan Bank, which had lent millions to Coppola, cut off the funding. Staff salaries were met with the help of Paramount Pictures, which bought one of Zoetrope's scripts and offered Coppola a low-interest loan. Paramount also secured the distribution rights to One from the Heart...
...large part of me." It is also a huge part of the film's budget: Dean Tavoularis' dazzling sets cost more than $6 million to build. The film went $11 million over the original budget, shooting was suspended as Coppola wooed other investors-and in August, Paramount showed a very rough cut to a group of disappointed exhibitors. Coppola the lion tamer felt caged; it was time to crack the whip and see who jumped...
...soon as things started going bad with Paramount I decided to open the film," explained Coppola last week, sitting in his luxurious San Francisco penthouse office. "It's like being rejected by your lover; it gives you an excuse to call someone else. Every day I heard that somebody new didn't like it. So I thought let's have a perfect screening-a big screen, good projection, a 1.33 ratio [the pre-CinemaScope screen shape, 1.33 times as wide as it is high] so the heads don't get chopped off. Let 6,000 people...
There is some dispute over who owns One From the Heart. According to one source, Coppola may have sold the film to Paramount without having bought it back from MGM, its previous distributor. Lawyers from Paramount and Zoetrope are also haggling over the contract. Did Paramount renege by not paying Zoetrope $1.6 million in "completion money"? Did Coppola lose his claim by going too far over the shooting schedule? The maestro maintained that these details do not matter: "There is no battle as far as I'm concerned. I'm just trying to give people the excitement...
...Coppola's audacity- as brilliant film maker and profligate showman-that raises both hopes and hackles in the industry. Last week Paramount executives were grunting "No comments" through clenched teeth-perhaps because, as Zoetrope President Robert Spiotta suggests, "they're more disturbed by not being told than by Francis' marketing strategy." One Paramount insider did allow that "we might well have backed the idea-if Francis had come to us with it." But surprise is all in a flanking maneuver. Besides, as one screen writer friend of Coppola's says: "Francis is a genius at manipulating...