AN EXCEPTIONAL VINTAGE
At 80, Coppola becomes feature filmmaker in her own right
Eleanor Coppola is drinking from a glass of water, balm for a throat that’s spent a good part of the morning talking to journalists about her film “Paris Can Wait.”
The water is understandable. There’s a lot to discuss. The most obvious topic is her family.
Even casual culture vultures are familiar with her surname, one of the most famous and enduring in Hollywood history. Her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, is the man who brought vision to the vaunted “Godfather” franchise and the orchestrator of “Apocalypse Now,” an undisputed cinema classic that is somehow less famous than the tales of its creation — which Eleanor chronicled on film as a documentary.
Then there’s her daughter Sofia, a screenwriter and filmmaker who owns her own Oscar trophy, thanks to “Lost in Translation.” She got her talent honestly.
But we’re not sitting at the Westin in downtown Houston to talk about this matriarch’s famous family — not much, at least. She’s soothing her throat because we’re about to discuss her film “Paris Can Wait,” which opens Friday.
This is where it gets interesting.
“Paris Can Wait” is Eleanor’s first movie, which in itself is rather remarkable, considering she’s 80 years old and hadn’t had an impulse to write and direct a feature film until six years ago.
There’s an obvious but fruitful lesson here about success and dream fulfillment in the later stages of life, and Eleanor talks about the subject with ease. In fact, one of her missions with this film about a gentle drive through France and the potential of an extramarital affair was to provide such an example of perseverance to her family, and the world.
‘I could bring in aspects of myself, so it’s autobiographical.’
But, perhaps, more interesting is that after decades of what she calls being the “accessory purse that goes along with the filmmaker family,” Eleanor’s entire vantage point has been reversed.
For the first time, she was the auteur sitting in the director’s chair. She was the one plunking at a keyboard, imploring it to coax out her vision. She is the media’s focal point, barnstorming for coverage of a movie that is partially based on her own life’s experiences.
And she’s the reason her husband is in a Houston hotel, holding his wife’s purse for a change. Well, not quite. As fulfilling as that image would be, Eleanor says Francis is in his own meeting somewhere in the Bayou City, talking about their family vineyards and wine.
Not quite the perfect Hollywood ending, but it’s pretty close. Scripting life
Francis Ford Coppola has been supportive, but he didn’t want his wife to make this movie.
“My husband wasn’t very encouraging in the beginning because I think he didn’t want to have my heart broken,” Eleanor says. “He was discouraging. He was trying to protect me.”
It’s understandable — the movie industry is a tough game with little sympathy for the feelings of others. But, sitting in her presence, you can understand why there might have been additional instinct to dissuade her from the ordeal of making a film.
The Coppola matriarch is short and petite with cropped silver hair. She’s wearing a tan blazer with intermittent black stripes, and she smiles often. Her voice —soft and soothing — is almost prosaic.
There’s an enchanting allure to being in her presence as she comes off like a friendly grandmother who actually cares about how you feel and what you have to say. You almost want to please her, or at least not send her into moments of frustration or anxiety.
But here’s the thing: She doesn’t need your protection.
Eleanor Coppola knows how to take care of herself, and navigate deftly through a tumultuous world full of sand traps and tigers’ lairs. If you need proof, watch her 1991 documentary “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” which pits her in the eye of a moviemaking hurricane, or view her new film, a quasi-autobiographical tale about a married woman traveling through the countryside of France with a man who’s trying to bed her.
Eleanor acknowledges this is a screenplay inspired by her own life: Diane Lane plays a filmmaker’s wife who isn’t feeling well, so she trades a trip on a plane with her husband as he scouts locations for a drive with one of his assistants to Paris, which is where the married couple will rendezvous.
But what happens before their reunion is the story as this Frenchman guides the woman on a tour of some of the country’s best restaurants, views and museums. Each stop is filled with his explanations of terroir, historical context or appreciation of the world. Of course, it’s all laced with the romance of discovery and polite desire.
Watching “Paris Can Wait,” one finds it easy to wonder how much of the story actually happened to Eleanor and what was fictionalized.
“I don’t know if I can draw a line of where one ends and the other begins,” she says.
Which is a nice way of keeping the viewer’s curiousity intact. It’s also a sly way of saying, “That’s my private life, thank you very much.”
What she will discuss — sometimes overtly, sometimes through subtext — is that this film is not a vanity project or some “favor” granted to a famous family. It’s her baby, one born from discussions with friends.
“I never imagined I would make a fiction feature,” she says. “But I had this trip to France, and I was telling a friend about it, and she was like, ‘That’s the film I want to see.’
“I said, ‘Why not? Give it a shot. What have I got to lose?’ … It was really challenging, but I was riding that challenge of just, do this thing.”
Part of that challenge was shifting from the mode of making a documentary to crafting a feature.
“I was pretty terrified … I was much more relaxed making a documentary because when something goes wrong, it makes your documentary better,” she says. “But when things were going wrong for me (with ‘Paris Can Wait’), it wasn’t so funny. Pretty stressful.”
She weathered the stress storms well as the film plays like a refined, smart and gentle romantic drama. One of those smart choices was casting Arnaud Viard as the potential paramour. He was a virtually unknown French actor whom she noticed while watching clips of other actors.
“I feel like he’s my little discovery,” Eleanor says. “I didn’t want him to be some handsome man. The husband would never send her off with some stunning, attractive Frenchman. And I wanted him to be a guy you didn’t notice. He goes to the airport with you, and you don’t even notice him. He grows on you, and the audience.”
The growth of that might-be attraction between the travelers drives the film, but it’s colored in with rich nuances such as Lane’s character taking upclose, detail photos of the world around her.
Like the main narrative, these are often lifted from Eleanor’s own life.
“I have a lot of different passions,” says the woman also known for her artwork. “So I could bring in aspects of myself, so it’s autobiographical.”
Again, curiosity compels the question: How much of the film really is autobiography? Did that Frenchman really put the moves on you?
“Well,” she says like a friendly diplomat, “we don’t tell all our secrets.” Enduring lessons
Eleanor Coppola can come off like the calmest and most gentle person in the world, until you mention that observation to her.
That’s when her demeanor shifts to show a hint of unease and, perhaps, nervousness about this film going out into the world. It’s just a fraction of a second, but the break is heavy with the suggestion that concerns about the film weigh on her mind.
“At this point, I’m just feeling like life is a great ride, and I feel very blessed, very fortunate to have this opportunity to have it entering the world,” she says, sliding right back into her friendly, soothing mannerisms. “And I’m pretty relaxed because I’ve done everything I could. I did it as well as I could. I can’t change anything now. It’s not going to change my life. It’s not going to start my career.”
She laughs, a warm chuckle ripe with the weight of that truth.
Eleanor is 80. She’s lived a life of film and art and experience that would be the envy of many. And she has a family that, despite her new film, still wants her to be what they’ve always known her as.
“My kids, they want me to be Mom,” she says. “They weren’t expecting me to do it, but now that I’ve done it, I think they’re pleased. It’s very touching.”
It’s also a rare lesson a mother can provide her children, that life’s ambitions don’t have to be shelved simply because of your age.
“That’s a message I’m glad to send my family and other people.” So what’s next for Eleanor? “My overriding theme is to enjoy the moment. Take time to really enjoy it. Maybe we won’t all have a long French lunch every day, but I’m getting to that point where I just really enjoy having a glass of water.”
‘I never imagined I would make a fiction feature. But I had this trip to France, and I … said, “Why not? Give it a shot.” ’