Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Coppola's lofty reputation rests entirely on the remarkable films he made in the 1970s:The Godfatherand its sequel, the less-heralded masterpieceThe Conversation,andApocalypse Now.The 10 interviews collected here, drawn from mainstream newspapers and magazines, film journals, and other sources, date from 1968, when Coppola's first studio picture,Finian's Rainbow, was near release, to 1997, when he was working on a pedestrian adaptation of a John Grisham novel. Even the most recent interviews concentrate on his early masterworks and give short shrift to his subsequent output, largely uninspired gun-for-hire efforts. A candid, unguarded conversationalist, Coppola always expresses his ambivalence about the Hollywood studio system that both enabled and devastated his career. The centerpiece here is Lillian Ross' lengthyNew Yorkerarticle centered on the daring 1982 musicalOne from the Heart,a notorious flop that derailed Coppola's career, eventually costing him his independent studio. The early comparisons documented here to fellow wunderkind Orson Welles are prescient; Coppola is a similarly sad case of thwarted talent and largely unrealized potential.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.