“It was insane”: Francis Ford Coppola on his Roger Corman apprenticeship
B-movie producers don’t tend to be remembered among the most influential figures in cinema history, but it’s an honour Roger Corman fully merited, with Francis Ford Coppola just one of the many future icons on either side of the camera who got their start under his watch.
Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, and Ron Howard are only some of the names to have been given their big breaks under the legendary producer and filmmaker, and they all went on to enjoy careers that spanned decades, gave rise to countless iconic titles, and racked up billions upon billions of dollars at the box office.
Coppola made his feature-length directorial debut on the Corman-backed horror flick Dementia 13, which came together under circumstances that were entirely reflective of his mentor’s approach to his life’s work. The future helmer of The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, among others, was initially hired as an assistant until Corman discovered he had some money left over.
Using the rest of the budget remaining from motorcycle film The Young Racers, Coppola wrote the first draft of his feature-length bow over the course of a single evening, and ended up with $40,000 in production costs to take his first steps into the world of filmmaking over a nine-day shoot that also introduced him to future wife Eleanor for the first time.
All in all, it was a rousing success both personally and professionally, but that was just a part of Coppola’s bizarre apprenticeship, which he acquired in the first place by responding to an advert. “I answered the ad and ended up getting the job, which was to take two Russian movies Roger had bought and dub them into English, or since I couldn’t speak Russian, to make up stories for both of them,” he explained to the Directors Guild of America. “Of course, Roger wanted to make them into films he could release. It was insane, but it was a wonderful apprenticeship.”
Coppola’s jobs included “rehearsing the actors and even pre-staging some scenes” on various Corman sets, with sound design soon added to his workload. “At one point, Roger told me he was going to make a film in Europe and asked me if I knew a young guy who knew how to record sound,” he said. “So I just got the book about the recording machine and read it and said, ‘I can do it, Roger.'”
Learning on the job, when Corman had to fly back to the United States, Coppola remained in Ireland to shoot Dementia 13 without any supervision from the guy who was technically still his boss at the time. The rookie was “astonished that it would even pass muster as a movie” given his inexperience, but being allowed complete creative control the first time out ended up serving him very well in the long run.
