Filmmaker
Francis Ford Coppola
Notes from Evan Smith
"One might be tempted at a time like this to say something about going to the mattresses, or keeping friends close and enemies closer, or making offers that can’t be refused -- about how the next half-hour isn’t personal, it’s business. One might even be tempted to do a bad impression of Brando as Don Corleone. But as much as that might be a lifelong dream of some people, it would be too easy — too obvious. And, anyway, it might get this week’s guest, Francis Ford Coppola, a little hot and bothered, for as he is quick to say and, no doubt, even quicker to think to himself, there’s more to his extraordinary career than those three Godfather movies, however exquisitely executed they were and culturally transformational they remain a generation later. True enough, while 68-year-old Coppola hasn’t exactly been prolific of late — his most recent film, Youth Without Youth, shot in Romania and starring, among others, the great British actor Tim Roth, is his first in a decade — he is, of course, a five-time Academy Award-winner with extraordinary, and extraordinarily diverse, notches in his belt as a writer, director, and producer. The selective, subjective high points of his filmography include Patton, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, and Tucker. He is also, as he would equally quickly point out, more than a mere filmmaker. He’s a vintnter of some repute, the publisher of a ten-year-old literary magazine, Zoetrope All-Story, and, maybe most impressive and interesting of all, a peerless family man — the undisputed leader of a dynastic clan that includes his sister, the actress Talia Shire, his daughter, the director Sofia Coppola, and his nephews, the actors Nicholas Cage and Jason Schwartzman. A more iconic figure Hollywood has rarely known; surely he is one of the few genuine legends to grace our little show with his presence." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 12.27.07
