Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola

From Publishers Weekly
Phillips throws down the gauntlet in his prologue: other books on the Academy Award-winning American director are mere biographies or filmographies or hopelessly out of date. Phillips asserts he has proven Coppola is a "genuine cinematic artist who is also a popular entertainer." But was this ever in dispute? Phillips has undeniably researched his subject with daunting thoroughness (he even contradicts the director's memory of his own films), categorizing and analyzing every film Coppola ever made, including his brief early forays into soft porn and his stint doing slasher flicks with Roger Corman. The author, who has written on film for three decades, interviews numerous colleagues of Coppola's as well as the director and his wife, Eleanor. He is expansive on the Godfather trilogy and its importance to modern American cinema, explicates the genius of Apocalypse Now and The Conversation, delineates the genealogy of Coppola's work with George Lucas (Star Wars) and Marlon Brando, and even explains how Coppola's bout with polio when he was 10 led to his interest in filmmaking. The book has such depth of information on the director's metier and auteurship, yet Phillips writes with smugness and doesn't quote Coppola enough. The insider tone Phillips sets in his prologue continues throughout, marring (and even undermining) an otherwise superb work of scholarship. This is certainly the definitive work on the director to date and scholars (and lovers) of film will revel in the details about Coppola's best work and hoard the trivia about his worst. 39 photos.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Of the many brilliant young American directors in the 1970s, Coppola was perhaps the brightest. He received the greatest acclaim for The Godfather and its first sequel, but critics were equally impressed by the less popular The Conversation. Since his 1982 debacle One from the Heart (whose failure cost him the independent studio he had set up), he has made mostly undistinguished films. Phillips depicts Coppola's career as a struggle to exist as an "artist in an industry," showing that the auteur theory has validity even within today's Hollywood system. He valiantly attempts to make this case by giving equal time to Coppola's less-celebrated efforts, arguing effectively for the underappreciated Bram Stoker's Dracula, which he maintains reinvented the horror film much as The Godfather had the gangster film, but less successfully for "gun for hire" jobs such as the John Grisham adaptation, The Rainmaker. Phillips relies heavily on previously published resources but makes good use of a lengthy interview with Coppola. Not definitive, but worthwhile. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
The visionary force behind such popular and critically acclaimed films as Apocalypse Now and the Godfather trilogy, Francis Ford Coppola has imprinted a distinct style on each of his movies and has significantly influenced modern American cinema. In an era of inflated production budgets and complex studio systems, it is rare for a director to gain creative control over all aspects of the filmmaking process—from screenwriting to editing to the coveted "final cut"—that the auteur commands. Francis Ford Coppola is unarguably one of the few modern American exceptions. Recipient of the Director’s Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Coppola began his career at UCLA’s film school but was soon drawn to an apprenticeship under director Roger Corman, known as "king of the B movie." With Corman he gained practical experience in all aspects of the filmmaking process, particularly in how to manage a budget, a skill Coppola credits with being chosen to direct The Godfather even though Hollywood still considered him to be a young director. Working as a screenwriter (crafting scripts for The Great Gatsby and Patton, for which he won an Academy Award), Coppola rejected the standard studio practice of hiring multiple writers to work on a single project. Accordingly, he formed his own production company, American Zoetrope, where he exercised complete control over the entire creative process. After founding the company, he began his directorial work in earnest, describing each film as a continuation of the previous one, despite the differences in subject matter. Author Gene D. Phillips blends biography, studio history, and film criticism to provide the most comprehensive work available on Francis Ford Coppola. Phillips gained access to the reticent director and his colleagues and examined Coppola’s private production journals and screenplays. He reviewed rare copies of Coppola’s student films, his early excursions into soft-core pornography, and his less celebrated productions such as One from the Heart and Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Phillips also illuminates the details of the production history of the harrowing 238-day shoot of Apocalypse Now and explains how The Godfather was almost cast without the now iconic Marlon Brando. The definitive assessment of one of Hollywood’s most enduring and misunderstood mavericks, Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola argues that Coppola has centered his career around engaging films that reflect his own radically independent artistic vision.


About the Author
Gene D. Phillips, professor of English at Loyola University of Chicago, is the author and editor of a number of books, including Stanley Kubrick: Interviews and Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir.


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In the 1970s, director Francis Ford Coppola became an almost Orson Welles-like figure, the new reigning genius of the cinema, with his two classic Godfather films, The Conversation, and the decade-ending Apocalypse Now. And, like Welles, he is now considered somewhat of a genius manqu . Phillips (English, Loyola Univ. of Chicago) joins a bevy of writers who have previously analyzed Coppola's oeuvre. With the apparent close cooperation of the director, his family, and many other collaborators, he discusses each of Coppola's films in scrupulous detail. Understandably, Phillips devotes the lion's share of space to Coppola's most significant work (though his forays into soft porn and the poorly received Finian's Rainbow are also covered, for example). Phillips is sympathetic toward the director, perhaps too much at times, but his faults-including the massive ego that persuaded him he could do no wrong-are in evidence. This trait certainly contributed to Coppola's slow decline, even though he has made a few worthy films since his initial success. The author's access to knowledgeable people and his obviously painstaking research make this one of the most useful books to date about Coppola. Recommended for all cinema collections.-Roy Liebman, California State Univ., Los Angeles Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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