Francis Ford Coppola picks his favourite Coen brothers movie: “Totally off the wall”
Francis Ford Coppola will always be one of cinema’s most fascinating figures. In the 1970s, he made what is generally perceived to be the greatest four-movie run in history: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. However, over the ensuing four decades, Coppola became almost as famous for his curiosities and mega-budgeted disasters as he did hits like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a new generation of filmmakers essentially pushed him out of the conversation.
Luckily, Coppola is a massive fan of a pair of siblings who defined this new generation – the Coen brothers – and especially loves one of their most singular movies.
One thing that can’t be taken away from Coppola, regardless of whether his films hit or miss, is that he’s never been afraid to take risks. This is the man who founded his own production company, American Zoetrope, in 1969, three years before his breakout with The Godfather. He even sold his lucrative winery business to fund the $120 million epic Megalopolis in 2024. Coppola has always pushed himself creatively, often experimenting with different genres or blending several together just to see what comes out.
Naturally, not all of these risks have paid off for Coppola, and his propensity for mixing genres in films like Twixt, Youth Without Youth, and Tetro haven’t always netted him the rapturous reviews he may have hoped for. “In America, even the critics, which is a pity, tend to genre-ise things,” Coppola groused to The Rumpus in 2012. “They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorise things.”
Coppola then pinpointed the fact that the Coen brothers’ movies are extremely genre-fluid, and that’s part of the reason he loves their work. He’s not wrong, either – the Coens have made a career of noir movies, thrillers, crime films, musicals, and westerns that are all shot through with their philosophical interests and off-kilter humour. “You don’t know what you’re going to get,” Coppola maintained about the Coens, “And very often you get something that you don’t expect, and that’s just what a genre’s not supposed to do.”
This brought Coppola to what just may be his favourite Coen brothers effort—and it speaks perfectly to his fascination with their deft ability to mix genres without the whole house of cards falling apart. “Like Burn After Reading,” he name-checked. “That movie is totally off the wall. Brad Pitt was just amazing in that film.”
Analysing Burn After Reading through Coppola’s lens reveals exactly why he would love it. The 2009 black comedy is ostensibly a spy movie, but it just so happens that everyone involved in the labyrinthine plot is a total idiot. From Brad Pitt’s comically dimwitted personal trainer to John Malkovich’s drunken ex-CIA analyst, and from Frances McDormand’s amateur blackmailer to George Clooney’s sex-obsessed US Marshal, the Coens delight in populating a “serious” espionage tale with a group of characters so arrogant, misguided, and unable to see the forest for the trees that the whole thing becomes a farce.
To Coppola, Burn After Reading was perfect cinema because he knew he was watching the vision of a unique pair of filmmakers who hadn’t sacrificed their creativity to fit into a box. “When I go to the movies, I like to come away and say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Coppola noted. “That’s my highest praise.”
