Coppola S Monster Film

In 1975, after his two Godfather epics, Francis Ford Coppola went to the Philippines to film Apocalypse Now. He scrapped much of the original script, a jingoistic narrative of U.S. Special Forces winning an unwinnable war. Harvey Keitel, originally cast in the lead role, was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, who had a heart attack. An overweight Marlon Brando, paid a huge salary, did more philosophizing than acting. It rained almost every day and a hurricane wiped out the set. The Philippine government promised the use of helicopters but diverted them at the last minute to fight communist and Muslim separatists. Coppola filmed for four years with no ending in the script. The shoot threatened to be the biggest disaster in movie history. Providing a detailed snapshot of American cinema during the Vietnam War, this book tells the story of how Apocalypse Now became one of the great films of all time.

In 1975, after his two Godfather epics, Francis Ford Coppola went to the Philippines to film Apocalypse Now. He scrapped much of the original script, a jingoistic narrative of U.S. Special Forces winning an unwinnable war. Harvey Keitel, originally cast in the lead role, was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, who had a heart attack. An overweight Marlon Brando, paid a huge salary, did more philosophizing than acting. It rained almost every day and a hurricane wiped out the set. The Philippine government promised the use of helicopters but diverted them at the last minute to fight communist and Muslim separatists. Coppola filmed for four years with no ending in the script. The shoot threatened to be the biggest disaster in movie history. Providing a detailed snapshot of American cinema during the Vietnam War, this book tells the story of how Apocalypse Now became one of the great films of all time.

This fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at a Hollywood dynasty offers an in-depth study of the films and artistry of iconic director Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter, Sofia, exploring their work and their impact on each other, both personally and professionally. The Coppolas: A Family Business examines the lives, films, and relationship of two exemplary filmmakers, Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia. It looks at their commonalities and differences, as artists and people, and at the way those qualities are reflected in their work. Much of the book is devoted to Francis and his outstanding achievements—and equally notable failures—as a screenwriter, director, producer, and presenter of landmark works of cinema. The narrative goes beyond the heyday of his involvement with Hollywood to analyze his more recent projects and the choices that led him to create small, independent films. In Sofia's case, the story is one of women's growing independence in the arts, revealing how Sofia developed her craft to become a cinematic force in her own right. In addition to its insightful commentary on their contributions to cinema past and present, the volume provides intriguing hints at what fans might anticipate in the future as both Coppolas continue to expand their artistry.

“Post/modern Dracula” explores the postmodern in Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel and the Victorian in Francis Ford Coppola’s postmodern film to demonstrate how the century that separates the two artists binds them more than it divides them. What are the postmodern elements of Stoker’s novel? Where are the Victorian traits in Coppola’s film? Is there a postmodern gloss on those Victorian traits? And can there be a Victorian directive behind postmodernism in general? The nine essays compiled in this collection address these and other relevant questions per the novel and the film at three distinct periods: (post)modern Victorianism, post/modernism, and finally postmodernism. Part I on (post)modernist issues in Stoker’s novel establishes the link between Victorian themes and postmodern praxes that begins with colonialist concerns and ends with poststructuralist signification. Part II looks at the post/modernist traits in Stoker’s Dracula, those obviously influenced by modernism but also, with the help of the novel’s plasticity vis-à-vis the media over the last century, by postmodernism. Part III examines more closely the novel’s postmodern characteristics, particularly with respect to Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Dracula defies time and promises to undermine any critical study of it that precisely tries to situate it within a given epoch, including a postmodernist one. Given its relationship to late-capitalist economy, to post-Marxist politics, and to commodity culture, and given its universal appeal to human fears and anxieties, fetishes and fantasies, lusts and desires, Stoker’s novel will forever remain post/modern—always haunting our future, as it has repeatedly done so our past. Though scholars of Dracula and Gothic literature in general will find some of the essays innovative and engaging per today’s literary criticism, the book is also intended for both an informed general reader and a novice student of the novel and of the film. As such, a few essays are highly specialized in postmodern theory, whereas others are more centered around the sociohistorical context of the novel and film and use various postmodern theories as inroads into the novel’s or the film’s study.

These interviews show how the director of The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II evolved from hotshot film maverick to elder statesman of American cinema.

In March 1980 Francis Coppola purchased the dilapidated Hollywood General Studios facility with the hope and dream of creating a radically new kind of studio, one that would revolutionize filmmaking, challenge the established studio machinery, and, most importantly, allow him to make movies as he wished. With this event at the center of Whom God Wishes to Destroy, Jon Lewis offers a behind-the-scenes view of Coppola's struggle--that of the industry's best-known auteur--against the changing realities of the New Hollywood of the 1980s. Presenting a Hollywood history steeped in the trade news, rumor, and gossip that propel the industry, Lewis unfolds a lesson about power, ownership, and the role of the auteur in the American cinema. From before the success of The Godfather to the eventual triumph of Apocalypse Now, through the critical upheaval of the 1980s with movies like Rumble Fish, Hammett, Peggy Sue Got Married, to the 1990s and the making of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein, Francis Coppola's career becomes the lens through which Lewis examines the nature of making movies and doing business in Hollywood today.