Lyrics:

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About "Francis Ford Coppola ":

Francis Ford Coppola was born in a family of artists which nourished his young talents. At eight years old he contracted polio, which never was quite threatening to his future ability to walk (despite my lyric to the contrary) but it did succeed in giving him a lot of spare time in quarantine to work on home movies.

When Coppola began his career it was with the infamous producer Roger Corman, who gave a big break to a lot of directors that would rise to prominence in the 1970s by letting them direct relatively low budget exploitation pictures. From this experience Coppola began to receive studio jobs which culminated in his receiving the job to direct The Godfather. The film was a somewhat troubled shoot but turned out an immense financial and critical success.

Francis Ford Coppola was probably the most successful film director in the 1970s primarily because of The Godfather and its sequel in conjunction with the success of the Gene Hackman starrer The Conversation which was made in between those two films. All three won a significant number of Oscars. It was a streak few have matched.

It was in the wake of these that Coppola decided to direct one of his dream projects: Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Ironically enough George Lucas was additionally going to direct the movie earlier in the 1970s but it did not happen. There was some friction between the two after Coppola decided to direct it himself, cooling the friendship and business partnership that had developed between the two.

During the Apocalypse Now shoot in the Philippines (not Vietnam as in the song, Philippines had too many syllables) Coppola faced untold problems. His star Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack. Marlon Brando showed up for his pivotal role of Col. Kurtz grossly overweight when he should have been emaciated in appearance, forcing Coppola to shoot him mostly in the shadows. A tsunami destroyed large elaborate sets built for the production which had to be rebuilt at great cost, which was all out of Coppola’s pocket, as he had elected to finance the project out of his own personal fortune. $20 million dollars was spent before all was said and done and in the three years between its announcement and the eventual release there were as many jokes made about it as any troubled production today: “Apocalypse When?”

Finally at the Cannes Film Festival a work-in-progress print was screened and it was heralded as a masterpiece. It ended up winning the Palme D’Or, the prestigious top prize at the festival. Critical reception in the States was mixed but the movie still made $100 million dollars, a decent sum today but an astronomical sum then, particularly for such a bleak film. Since then it has regained its initial critical luster.

After this success Coppola never made a film of such weight or importance again. His musical One From The Heart which was also personally financed was a financial disaster in 1981. Together with Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate they marked the death of the New Hollywood era that had begun in the 1970s, which had seen studios grant a level of creative control on a widespread basis not seen since. After this Coppola’s greatest success was a comedy starring his nephew Nicholas Cage called Peggy Sue Got Married which did moderate business.

Coppola purchased the vineyards in which he makes his own wine in the late 1970s back around the time of the shooting of Apocalypse Now. You can find his wine for sale today. It is has also been a moderate success. His films since then have been competently made, but largely forgettable. This would not seem a crime if not for the greatness of his earlier work. Only Coppola knows what really happened.

ERF