Francis Ford Coppola names his favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie
When Francis Ford Coppola began production on what would become his magnum opus, The Godfather, he was just 29. He had yet to trailblaze the so-called ‘New Hollywood’ era alongside Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg — a group later nicknamed the ‘movie brats’. His status within the cinematic world had just begun to bud following a string of low-budget movies, a rise which had so far peaked with 1970’s Patton, a film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, which Coppola co-wrote with Edmund H. North.
The Godfather and its 1974 follow-up starring a young Robert De Niro were, in most film buffs’ opinion, the peak of Coppola’s career. This early success, however, was tarnished for Coppola by the stress he endured creating the movies. During the first movie, he was in a constant headlock with Paramount, with whom he clashed on nearly every decision. For the follow-up, he had the enormous pressure of expectation following the unprecedented success of 1972’s first instalment.
Contrary to nearly everyone’s opinion, Coppola’s favourite movie in the Godfather trilogy was the third part, released in 1990. This isn’t the only surprising appraisal Coppola has of his own oeuvre. While Apocalypse Now or The Conversation might serve as passable contenders to the Godfather movies, Coppola’s favourite of his own movies is B’Twixt Now and Sunrise.
“Oh, my favourite film?” Coppola said, repeating a question posed to him by The Associated Press in 2022. “That’s like asking me for my favourite kid. But I actually have a film which is a new favourite, which is one that I really have made much more like the original intention, which is a film that I think absolutely nobody liked except me. For the moment, my favourite film is called B’Twixt Now and Sunrise, and it’s with Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley and Bruce Dern.”
“I just think it’s an enchanting film and very personal,” he explained. “It’s quite different than how it came out. It was released more like a horror film, but it wasn’t. The horror was a personal horror that was in there.”
Coppola released B’Twixt Now and Sunrise (often truncated to Twixt) in 2011. The movie follows the story of a down-on-his-luck horror writer who encounters a sheriff who is also an eccentric fan. The sheriff persuades the writer to see a murder victim at the local morgue, hoping it would make for a great story for his next novel.
In an interview with The New York Times, Coppola explained that the plotline “grew out of dream [he] had last year – more of a nightmare” and “seemed to have the imagery of Hawthorne or Poe.”
“But as I was having it, I realized perhaps it was a gift, as I could make it as a story, perhaps a scary film, I thought even as I was dreaming,” he continued. “But then some loud noise outside woke me up, and I wanted to go back to the dream and get an ending. But I couldn’t fall back asleep so I recorded what I remembered right there and then on my phone. I realized that it was a gothic romance setting, so in fact, I’d be able to do it all around my home base rather than have to go to a distant country.”
Sadly, Twixt was received poorly by many critics and failed to live up to expectations commercially.
In his interview with The Associated Press, Coppola revealed a few of his other movies of which he’s fond. “I like [1983’s] Rumble Fish a lot. I find Apocalypse Now ever interesting. There’s an aspect of it that’s always… And I like the new version of the old [third] Godfather film that’s now called The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. I think that’s much more what [co-writer] Mario Puzo and I wanted. So, I have some odd favourites.”
Watch the trailer for B’Twixt Now and Sunrise below.
