‘It took me some time to build up my courage’
Launching a career as a featurefilm director at the age of 80 is an impressive feat. Eleanor Coppola, who wrote, directed and produced the new comedy Paris Can Wait still seems in shock.
“It took me some time to build up my courage,” she admitted.
She wasn’t short on role models, though: She was speaking from the Napa Valley home she shares with her husband of 54 years, five-timeOscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola. Two of their three children—Roman and Sofia Coppola— are also filmmakers, and Sofia has an Oscar of her own for her screenplay for Lost in Translation (2003).
It’s not as if Coppola has spent the past 50-plus years in her kitchen. She often accompanied her husband when he was on location directing such films as The Godfather (1972), The Outsiders (1983) and The Cotton Club (1984). However, she saw herself not as a colleague but as an onlooker/ child-minder/support staff.
Time passed. Her children became adults, and she won an Emmy for codirecting Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), a documentary based on footage she shot on the set of her husband’s Apocalypse Now (1979).
“That was a big turning point,” Coppola, who turned 81 on 4 May, said. “People could see me as a thinking human being. Always before, I was the wife and everyone just shook my hand politely. Now they were engaging me and speaking to me.”
That success did not immediately lead to a feature-film directing career. She focused instead on what was familiar and comfortable, making behind-the-scenes documentaries for films directed by her family members.
Then she had an idea that led to Paris Can Wait. The road-trip comedy, which stars Alec Baldwin, Diane Lane and Artaud Viard, is scheduled to open in limited release on 12 May in LA and New York.
“I was at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 with Francis,” Coppola recalled, “and I was expected to go on with him to eastern Europe, where he had some work to do. But I had a bad cold and didn’t want to fly. I decided I’d take the train to Paris, where we had a tiny apartment, and wait for him.
“Francis’ business associate was standing with us at the airport while we discussed this,” she continued, “and he said, ‘I’m driving back to Paris now. You can come with me.’ I thought, ‘It’s a seven-hour drive. I’ll be there in the evening.’
“I got in the car, and he said, ‘You must have lunch,’” Coppola went on. “We kept veering off. It was a funny mix of being annoyed and having fun. Finally I gave in, because he was such a fascinating tour guide. Francis kept phoning and asking, ‘Where are you? What’s going on?’”
When Coppola got back to California, she told a friend about her experience. Her friend said: “That’s a movie I want to see.”
Now, eight years later, Lane and Baldwin play fictionalised versions of Eleanor and Francis.
“Alec’s character is focused on and busy with his work,” Coppola said, “but he loves his wife. I had to make him a little extreme to play off the (flirtatious) French guy.”
Her nephew, Nicolas Cage, reportedly was going to play the producer until he had a scheduling conflict and Baldwin stepped in.
As for Lane, who starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983), Rumble Fish (1983), The Cotton Club (1984) and Jack (1996), originally Coppola thought she was too young to play the part. The movie’s long gestation period took care of that, though.
“During the six years it took to write the script, she became 50,” Coppola said. “I wasn’t terrified of her. I’d watched her grow up. Francis made four films with her.”
Despite her accomplishments — among other things, Coppola is the author of Notes: The Making of Apocalypse Now (Simon & Schuster, 1979) and Notes on a Life (Talese, 2008) — she tries to avoid the limelight.
“I’ve been a closet artist all these years,” Coppola said, “squeezing in projects here and here. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that I would write a feature-film script.
“My husband and my daughter, Sofia, are both Academy Awardwinning screenwriters,” she continued. “I felt comfortable making documentaries because no one else in the family was bothering with that. Then I decided, ‘What the heck?’ It evolved.”
There was plenty of angst along the way.
“The financiers are primarily men,” Coppola said, “and this was not a movie that appealed to them. Women speaking to women are lacking in our cultural dialogue. In Paris Can Wait nobody dies. There are no gunshots, no train wrecks, no cancer, no aliens, no robots. I had a really hard time raising the money. I learned that you can’t get financing until you have the cast, and you can’t get the cast until there’s a start date for the film.”
While she waited, Coppola took a directing course and an acting class, and also worked with a writing consultant.
“Even though I grumbled about how long it was taking,” she admitted, “I kept improving the script.”
Once shooting started she still had plenty to worry about.
“I was in France,” she recalled, “and I didn’t speak French. I had no American person on my team. It was a difficult time, but I learned an enormous amount from Francis during Apocalypse Now. There are always problems you can’t anticipate, but you just don’t quit.”
For instance, Coppola’s plan to film key scenes at a hotel in Cannes had to be changed.
“A Saudi Arabian prince decided to take his vacation on the French Riviera,” she said. “He brought 1,000 people, and he took all the rooms in the hotel. I couldn’t shoot anywhere else in Cannes because the security was so high.”
Luckily they found a replacement hotel 20 minutes away.
“I was tense all the time,” Coppola admitted. “We had a 28-day schedule. I’d plan 18 shots for a day and then, after lunch, they’d come to me and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to make it. Which five shots would you like to cut?’”
Why did she wait so long to write and direct a feature film?
“My husband and I were raised to think that the wife’s role is to raise the family, create a nice home, cook dinner and support the man in his career,” she explained. “In turn he would be a good provider. My husband was a very good provider.
“I wasn’t doing my part, to the standards of the day, because I had these other projects I wanted to do,” she added. “It was a constant struggle.”
The two met on the set of the lowbudget Dementia 13 (1963), where he was directing and she was working as an assistant art director. They married within a year, and quickly had two sons and a daughter. Gian-Carlo died in a boating accident in 1986, when he was 22. Roman, now 52, is a writer and producer. Sofia, who will turn 46 this month, is a filmmaker.
“Sofia is married to a musician (Thomas Mars), and they both have a creative life and two beautiful children,” Coppola said. “They understand how to make that work. I told her the real key was to get very qualified child care.”
Coppola’s creative life improved when her children left home.
“It changed the dynamics of the marriage,” she said. “I had more time available. I went on a lot of locations with Francis, and my sanity was to shoot behind the scenes. Otherwise what can you do with yourself every day?”
Her family were supportive of her directorial debut, whether it involved helping out or getting out of the way.
“In the beginning I think Francis thought I’d probably never get to make it, so he was not very encouraging,” she said. “He didn’t want me to have my heart broken. Then I wrote it and began searching for a director, but I couldn’t find a woman who had the visual aesthetic I was looking for. One day Francis said, ‘You should direct it.’ That just knocked my socks off.
“Later he stepped in at the last minute, when there was a problem with some of the financing and he knew how to twist arms,” she added. “When he saw I was being troubled with directing the French actor, who needed a lot of attention, he sent a dialogue coach, which was extremely helpful.”
Other family members offered ideas.
“My son suggested how to repair the car when it breaks down,” Coppola said. “Sofia told me, ‘Mom, just remember to change your shoes two or three times a day.’ And she sent me a pair of big shoes with a lot of support.” What will she direct next? “I don’t see a fiction film in my immediate future,” Coppola said. “I’ve just made two shorts. They’re not as daunting. I can go out and shoot them and not have to wait six years to get financing.” THE INDEPENDENT