The real reason Francis Ford Coppola made ‘Jack’: “If people hate the movie, they hate the movie”
There was a time when Francis Ford Coppola was the apple of Hollywood’s eye.
No one had as successful a decade as he did in the 1970s, which began with an Oscar win for his Patton screenplay, and then came his incredible run of directorial features that defined the era: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now. He was peerless in making a masterful critical and commercial hit and was truly at the top of his game.
However, things started to change for the director when his next film, 1982’s One From The Heart, left him in financial ruin, and critics weren’t keen, either. He fared better with the likes of Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, but then came The Godfather Part III, which was his lowest-performing entry into the trilogy.
Of course, maintaining a flawless filmography is practically impossible, and it was inevitable that Coppola would make a few movies that wouldn’t be as heralded as The Godfather. Yet, nothing could prepare critics for his 1996 endeavour, Jack, where it seemed like his directing skills had been taken from him and replaced by some second-rate director running out of ideas.
The film was a failure, and it still stands as one of his worst movies. Robin Williams played the titular character, a boy who has a medical condition that makes him age way faster than normal, so, at ten years old, he appears to be a 40-year-old man, which naturally proves to be difficult for him. He comes to terms with his mortality in the process, and the movie ends on a sugary high, with a suddenly elderly-looking Jack giving a speech about making the most of your life; it’s awful.
“People feel the worst film I made was Jack. But to this day, when I get cheques from old movies I’ve made, Jack is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that,” Coppola once told Esquire.
Sure, the movie might have allowed Coppola to keep scraping in some cash, but that doesn’t make it any less atrocious. Jack was such a different tone for the director that you can’t help but wonder what possessed him to make it in the first place.
Well, it turns out there’s a pretty simple answer, as he explained in the same interview, “If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams”. The actor was everywhere during this period, following roles in the likes of Mrs Doubtfire, Jumanji, and Hook, and it seems like Coppola wanted a piece of him for himself.
It’s an odd pairing, you must admit; Williams was a beloved comedic figure, but one who was miles off the kinds of stars Coppola was working with in the ‘70s, like Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, and Robert de Niro. Clearly, the director is better when he sticks to gritty dramas and crime films, because this attempt at a heartwarming comedy somehow made the popular Williams a laughing stock.
