FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA BOOKS
IAN NATHAN/PALAZZO | MARK SEAL/GALLERY BOOKS
Will Francis Ford Coppola fulfil a recently reported gamble to make his longnurtured passion project, Megalopolis? After these books, you wouldn’t bet against it. In many ways, each shows how Coppola forged film landmarks from chaos, conflict, calamity. What’s a 40-ish-year delay by comparison?
Ian Nathan’s The Coppolas: A Movie Dynasty ( ) digs deep into FFC’s childhood struggles and maverick persistence, teasing out personal currents across the family business. In-the-moment prose makes brisk work of the sprawling story, which peaks with Coppola “spiralling into obsession” for Apocalypse Now, chasing awe. Yet even after production company Zoetrope fails, old hungers reawaken for the flawed but ravishing Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The work of Coppola’s extended family variably dwindles by contrast, but the main man’s influence is tangibly fleshed.
With Leave The Gun, Take The Cannoli ( ), Mark Seal unpicks the minutiae behind the making of The Godfather, with access emphasised: the opening finds Seal jumping “into bed” (sort of) with producer Bob Evans. Thereafter, a well-researched backstory finds a studio on its uppers, a washedup star, a new star nobody wanted, a delivery of “dead fish”… and a shoot that became a hell of sleepless nights, studio spies and Mafia intrusion for the mired-in-debt Coppola. The result is a wickedly pacey page-turner, stuffed like Vito’s cheeks with character and detail. And across both books, one key point resonates: that “perseverance of vision” from which Coppola forged miracles. Bring on Megalopolis. Kevin Harley