The Francis Ford Coppola movie he compared to ‘The Godfather’: “It had a lot of humour”
In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola released what would become one of the greatest moments in cinema history. The Godfather, based on Mario Puzo’s novel of the same name, saw the likes of Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and James Caan come together to deliver a tale of mafia criminality and the inner workings of an Italian-American family of the highest intensity.
Interestingly, Coppola hadn’t even wanted to make The Godfather, but following the success of the film, he took on the further task of directing its 1974 sequel, which not only continued the story of Michael Corleone’s journey to the top of his family, but also charted the path his father took from Sicily to New York City.
Simply, The Godfather is a masterpiece of filmmaking and easily sits at the head of Coppola’s filmmaking achievements (although Apocalypse Now is certainly a strong competitor). Elsewhere, though, Coppola has directed countless other films that perhaps go under the radar somewhat compared to his most notable works.
In fact, he once handled a film in which he found a number of parallels with The Godfather, 1997’s The Rainmaker, based on thriller novelist John Grisham’s 1995 novel of the same name. Starring Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Mickey Rourke, Danny Glover and Teresa Wright, Coppola brought together one hell of a cast to deliver one of his last films of the 20th century.
The film tells of a young attorney who takes on a fraudulent insurance company hoping to change the justice and legal system. He represents an elderly couple who are banking on him to win a case surrounding their insurance company, which is refusing to pay out on a claim that could save their child’s life.
When speaking with Roger Ebert about the film, Coppola once admitted that he had never read a John Grisham novel before. Grisham is known for his novels, A Time to Kill, The Firm and The Chamber, amongst others, which have all also been made into movies. Coppola came across The Rainmaker in the airport and found a lot of joy in reading it.
“I got it and enjoyed it,” he told Ebert. “It had a lot of humour. In some ways it sort of reminded me of The Godfather. People like the idea that if injustice has happened, they can go to somebody and get it remedied.” Indeed, there’s much injustice in The Godfather that takes place within the Corleone family, and Coppola found much of it in Grisham’s text.
Describing the plot of the novel and the film version, Coppola continued, “In The Rainmaker, they’ve been paying premiums to an insurance company for 20 years, and then the company says, ‘Well, your policy doesn’t apply to that.’ And here’s this idealistic kid with a good heart but hardly any equipment, and he wants to see justice done.”
Coppola had actually taken on The Rainmaker because he was still in debt in the late 1990s and saw the film as a way to pay off what he owed. The film has John Grisham’s name on the title, as opposed to Coppola’s, so perhaps there was a sense of the director distancing himself from the production in order to avoid being associated with it, even if he did find within it shades of his own previous work.
