Francis Ford Coppola

THE PUBLISHING SENSATION OF THE YEAR FOR EVERY FILM FAN The never-before-published edition of Francis Ford Coppola’s notes and annotations on The Godfather novel by Mario Puzo reveals the story behind one of the world’s most iconic films. The most important unpublished work on one of the greatest films of all time, The Godfather, written before filming, by the man who wrote and directed it—Francis Ford Coppola, then only thirty-two years old—reveals the intense creative process that went into making this seminal film. With his meticulous notes and impressions of Mario Puzo’s novel, the notebook was referred to by Coppola daily on set while he directed the movie. The Godfather Notebook pulls back the curtain on the legendary filmmaker and the film that launched his illustrious career. Complete with an introduction by Francis Ford Coppola and exclusive photographs from on and off the set, this is a unique, beautiful, and faithful reproduction of Coppola’s original notebook. This publication will change the way the world views the iconic film—and the process of filmmaking at large. A must-have book of the season. Nothing like it has ever been published before

Beginning with his birth in 1939 to Italian-American parents, through his early years as a maverick director and screenwriter, right up to his legal victory over Warner Bros in 1998, this book explores Coppola's professional development into one of the finest directors of his generation.

From a master of cinema comes this “gold mine of a book . . . a rocket ride to the potential future” of filmmaking (Walter Murch). Celebrated as an “exhilarating account” of a revolutionary new medium (Booklist), Francis Ford Coppola’s indispensable guide to live cinema is a boon for moviegoers, film students, and teachers alike. As digital movie-making, like live sports, can now be performed by one director—or by a collaborative team online— it is only a matter of time before cinema auteurs will create “live” movies to be broadcast instantly in faraway theaters. “Peppered with brilliant personal observations” (Wendy Doniger), Live Cinema and Its Techniques offers a behind-the-scenes look at a consummate career: from Coppola’s formative boyhood obsession with live 1950s television shows and later attempts to imitate the spontaneity of live performance on set, the book usefully includes a guide to presenting state-of-the-art techniques on everything from rehearsals to equipment. A testament to Coppola’s prodigious enthusiasm for reinvigorating the form, Live Cinema is an indispensable guide that “reenergizes . . . the search for a new way of storytelling” (William Friedkin).

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.

This critical biography by the acclaimed film historian is “certainly the definitive work on the director” behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now (Publishers Weekly). Gene Phillips blends biography, studio history, and film criticism to complete the most comprehensive work on Coppola ever written. The force behind such popular and critically acclaimed films as Rumble Fish and the Godfather trilogy, Coppola has imprinted his distinct style on each of his movies and on the landscape of American popular culture. In Godfather, Phillips argues that Coppola has repeatedly bucked the Hollywood "factory system" in an attempt to create distinct films that reflect his own artistic vision—often to the detriment of his career and finances. Phillips conducted interviews with the director and his colleagues and examined Coppola's production journals and screenplays. Phillips also reviewed rare copies of Coppola's student films, his early excursions into soft-core pornography, and his less celebrated productions such as One from the Heart and Tucker: The Man and His Dream. The result is the definitive assessment of one of Hollywood's most enduring and misunderstood mavericks.

Francis Ford Coppola's career has spanned five decades, from low budget films he produced in the early 1960s to more personal films of recent years. Because of the tremendous popular success of The Godfather and the tremendous critical success of its sequel, Coppola is considered to be one of the best directors of all time. The entries in this encyclopedia focus on all aspects of Coppola's work—from his early days with producer Roger Corman to his films as the director of the 1970s. This extensive reference contains material on all of the films Coppola has played a role in, from screenwriter to producer to director, including such classics as Patton, The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. Each entry is followed by a bibliography of published sources, both in print and online, making The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia the most comprehensive reference on this director's body of work.

Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, Jeff Menne argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, Menne reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1970) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, Menne illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family--and how his studio American Zoetrope came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.

The Godfather trilogy is among the most significant works of Hollywood cinema of the last quarter century. They provide a richly complex look at a whole segment of American life and culture spanning almost the whole century. In six essays, written especially for this volume, The Godfather trilogy is re-examined from a variety of perspectives. Providing analyses on the form and significance of Coppola's achievement, they demonstrate how the filmmaker revised the conventions of the American crime film in the Viet Nam era, his treatment of the capitalism of the criminal underworld and its inherent violence, the power struggles within Hollywood over the film, and the contribution of opera to the epic force and cinematic style of Coppola's vision of an American criminal dynasty. The Godfather articulates the themes, styles, mythologies, performances, and underlying cultural values that have made the film a modern classic.