The day Francis Ford Coppola decided to release a movie without telling the studio
There was a moment in Francis Ford Coppola’s career when something went horribly wrong. It’s hard to pinpoint what changed, exactly, but there came a time when the director was no longer the same filmmaker responsible for the flawless run of movies he had in the 1970s, which included the first two entries in The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now.
By the 1980s, Coppola found himself struggling to maintain his position as one of cinema’s most celebrated directors, resulting in the huge flop One From The Heart.
After making 1979’s Apocalypse Now, which was marred with intense production issues, it’s understandable that Coppola wanted to pivot towards something much less heavy-going. It was also going to be hard to top Apocalypse Now, which has since been regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. Yet, One From The Heart was a rogue decision – a musically-charged romantic drama that took many viewers by surprise.
To raise enough money for the film, Coppola took financing into his own hands after rejecting a $2million offer from MGM. That was nowhere near enough for the scope of the filmmaker’s project, so he eventually made $26m to cover the cost of the movie, using his own production company, Zoetrope Studios. Unfortunately, the movie pushed him to the edge of bankruptcy, and the film’s negative reception surely made this feel like a painful blow.
One From the Heart is a great example of Coppola’s ambitious nature failing to translate, as has been the case with many of his subsequent films, especially the widely ridiculed Megalopolis. Perhaps Coppola needs to learn that if he is having to fork out large amounts of money to fund films himself, perhaps his ideas need a little bit of work.
Eventually, Paramount came on board to distribute the film, but Coppola’s relationship with the company quickly weakened, which wasn’t helped by the fact that he decided to screen the movie behind their backs. Talking to Time, Coppola once revealed, “As soon as things started going bad with Paramount, I decided to open the film. It’s like being rejected by your lover: it gives you an excuse to call someone else. Every day I heard that somebody else didn’t like it. So I thought, let’s have a perfect screening—a big screen, good projection… Let six thousand people see it, not six exhibitors.”
Despite his bold decision, the movie was still received overwhelmingly negatively, and even appearances from great actors like Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski (who would star alongside each other in Paris, Texas two years later) and a soundtrack by Tom Waits couldn’t save it.
“I knew that if I were going to pull this off, I’d have to do it fast. If I’d delayed a week, someone would have talked me out of it,” Coppola added.
Once Coppola screened the film himself, Paramount were not impressed, and they withdrew all their support from the movie. Thus, Coppola was left without a distributor until Columbia Pictures finally stepped in. This certainly affected the movie’s overall failure, with the movie scraping just $637,355 domestically.
