Sofia Coppola’s favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie
Artists often say choosing a favourite piece from their oeuvre is like picking a favourite child. This trend is no stranger to the filmmaking sphere, but interviewers like to probe all the same and invariably get an answer. Although Francis Ford Coppola might not dare choose a favourite of his children, two of whom are active directors, he can just about land on his favourite movie from his collection.
“Oh, my favourite film?” Coppola said, repeating a question posed to him by The Associated Press in 2022. “That’s like asking me for my favourite kid. But I actually have a film which is a new favourite, which is one that I really have made much more like the original intention, which is a film that I think absolutely nobody liked except me. For the moment, my favourite film is called B’Twixt Now and Sunrise, and it’s with Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley and Bruce Dern.”
“I just think it’s an enchanting film and very personal,” he explained. “It’s quite different than how it came out. It was released more like a horror film, but it wasn’t. The horror was a personal horror that was in there.”
Coppola released B’Twixt Now and Sunrise (often truncated to Twixt) in 2011. The movie follows the story of a down-on-his-luck horror writer who encounters a sheriff who is also an eccentric fan. The sheriff persuades the writer to see a murder victim at the local morgue, hoping it would make for a great story for his next novel.
In an interview with The New York Times, Coppola explained that the plotline “grew out of dream [he] had last year – more of a nightmare” and “seemed to have the imagery of Hawthorne or Poe.”
“But as I was having it, I realised perhaps it was a gift, as I could make it as a story, perhaps a scary film, I thought even as I was dreaming,” he continued. “But then some loud noise outside woke me up, and I wanted to go back to the dream and get an ending. But I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I recorded what I remembered right there and then on my phone. I realised that it was a gothic romance setting, so in fact, I’d be able to do it all around my home base rather than have to go to a distant country.”
Continuing in his conversation with The Associated Press, Coppola considered the rest of his filmography. “I like [1983’s] Rumble Fish a lot. I find Apocalypse Now ever-interesting. There’s an aspect of it that’s always… And I like the new version of the old [third] Godfather film that’s now called The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. I think that’s much more what [co-writer] Mario Puzo and I wanted. So, I have some odd favourites.”
In a 2010 feature with Rotten Tomatoes, Coppola’s daughter, Sofia Coppola, the director behind Lost in Translation, picked out her five favourite movies of all time. Among her selections was her father’s movie, Rumble Fish: an esoteric choice but clearly popular in the Coppola household.
“I love that it’s an art film about teenagers,” she commented. “I just love the way that it’s shot — I love those old lenses, those Zeiss lenses; they have a softer feel. [Coppola and her DP, Harris Savvides, used the lenses from Rumble Fish to shoot Somewhere.] Roman [Coppola, her brother] and I are just sentimental about the film.”
Based on the novel by S.E. Hinton, the 1983 movie Rumble Fish follows the story of Rusty James, a troubled young man portrayed by Matt Dillon, struggling in the shadow of his older brother, a former gang leader, in the oppressive setting of urban Tulsa.
Watch the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish below.
