The movie Francis Ford Coppola edited while it was projected
Every good director will want to go against what the audience expects. Even though it would be easy to make movies according to market expectations, it’s more exciting to think outside the box and create massive blockbusters – or deep artistic expression – that no one could have imagined before. While most directors always try to leave the best parts onscreen, Francis Ford Coppola proved how hard it could be to let some scenes go.
By the time Coppola had reached the end of the century, he had already turned into one of the most visionary filmmakers the world had ever seen. Outside of the massive influx of classic films, his take on movies like Apocalypse Now would become pivotal for where modern cinema would be going, with shots that lingered on to let the feeling settle in the pit of the viewer’s stomach.
When working on the film Twixt, though, Coppola still wanted to push the boundaries of what his audience was used to. Telling a horrific tale of witchcraft, the filmmaker had different thoughts about how the movie should go but was unsure how the audience would receive it. Rather than dwell on the constant decisions that go into the editing process, he thought the next best thing would be for the audience to decide for him.
While the picture was shown in festivals worldwide, Coppola was known for editing the movie in real-time as the audience watched it. Rather than come to the festival with the finished product, he would look in on the audience at various times during the movie and edit certain scenes together to go along with how they reacted to the film.
Even though the concept may have been innovative for the time, it didn’t help the movie’s poor critical reception. Still standing at a less than favourable rating these days, the movie suffers from a disorienting feeling outside of the edits despite some powerhouse performances from acting titans like Val Kilmer.
While the story may have been slightly shaky throughout the production, it’s made much more disorienting when there are multiple angles to see the movie from, each of which doesn’t make sense to varying degrees. Outside of the editorial nightmare, this new approach to filmmaking is a lot more forward-looking than what many people had expected out of someone of Coppola’s stature.
Despite becoming a bit lazy on the director’s part, the film seems to play out like a strange version of a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ book, with the audiences unintentionally making the story for themselves based on their reactions. It’s not like some of the biggest names in filmmaking today haven’t taken inspiration from this formula, either.
As polarising as it may have been for some, the Bandersnatch saga of Black Mirror is indebted to what Coppola experimented with here, putting control in the audience’s hands rather than having the director do all of the editing. Even though Coppola could have kept making groundbreaking dramas for the rest of his life, his way of challenging his audience evokes the same spirit of the kid who made The Godfather back in 1972.
