Francis Ford Coppola’s most hypocritical hatred of Hollywood: “Movies should be fresh”
There was a time when Francis Ford Coppola reigned over Hollywood. He earned his first Academy Award for co-writing the film Patton in 1970, and several years later, he found widespread acclaim as the director of The Godfather, changing cinema with his epic tale of family, gangsters, success, and greed.
The movie’s influence over popular culture cannot be understated; Coppola truly defined an era as the American film industry moved away from classical studio-bound movies to grittier tales that simply felt more real. In 1974, he released two more incredibly successful movies – The Conversation, starring Gene Hackman, and The Godfather Part II. Coppola was on fire, having the kind of career run that one can only dream of, and he ended the decade with yet another huge success, Apocalypse Now.
Despite the fact that Coppola won several Oscars and had the privilege of calling several of his creations some of the best films ever made, according to popular consensus, the filmmaker hasn’t seemed to keep this winning streak up. The 1980s was a mixed decade for the director, with One From the Heart failing to find any glimpse of acclaim, while titles like Rumble Fish and The Outsiders fared much better.
Yet, in the decades that have followed, Coppola has caused controversy with several piles of steaming hot rubbish, to put it plainly. From Jack, starring Robin Williams, to the disaster that was Megalopolis, Coppola seems to have lost his spark. The thing is, Coppola might have once had true talent, but as the industry has changed, he simply hasn’t been able to keep up.
It doesn’t help that the filmmaker seems to have some rather contradictory opinions on Hollywood. In an interview with The Rumpus, Coppola said something rather shocking: “I don’t feel that books should become movies.” You read that right, the man who has adapted over 10 novels into movies really said that he thinks “movies should be written fresh and new.”
While Coppola has conceived of several original ideas for his movies, like The Conversation and Twixt, he has, more often than not, used a book as his source material. Even his most famous work of all, The Godfather, was adapted from the novel by Mario Puzo, while Apocalypse Now was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness.
“They should also never make remakes. With all the money and effort you should at least try to give something to the world that’s uniquely for cinema and not adapted from a book,” Coppola added. While his point about remakes is certainly valid (although there are instances when remakes have paid off), it is baffling that he could make such a statement about book adaptations.
“Also, the short story does much better in translation to film than a novel. It’s already in the right shape and size. A movie is like writing a haiku. You have to be so pared down. Everything has to be so loaded and economic,” he continued. Clearly, Coppola’s previous successes have clouded his judgement. The stories he has adapted have all been novel-length, not short stories. If these contradictory statements aren’t proof that Coppola is ready to step away from filmmaking, we don’t know what is.
