The Lives of Francis Ford Coppola
The director on recutting The Godfather Part III and an epic, chaotic career—which he’s not done with just yet.
The 81-year-old on The Godfather Part III and the necessity of risk
Francis ford coppola is trolling me about our resemblance. “This guy looks like I did 30 years ago,” he says when my bearded face appears for the first of our Zoom calls. Coppola, 81, might be grayer now, and he hasn’t technically made a new film in nearly a decade, but that hasn’t stopped him from releasing a steady stream of material. This month comes one of the most extensive recuts of all: a new edition of 1990’s The Godfather Part III, now called Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. It’s shorter, leaner, and certainly clearer, with a new ending that, ironically, lets Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone live. Recently, Coppola discussed the power of editing, his family, and the many dramatic arcs of his career.
Let’s talk about … well, I still can’t help but call it Godfather Part III. What prompted you to go back to it?
A third Godfather was not something I had thought necessary. But I had a very happy collaboration with Mario Puzo [the author of the book The Godfather and a coscreenwriter of the films]. He was like an uncle figure to me. He came up with that idea that we should call the film The Death of Michael Corleone and that it should be a coda or an epilogue. When I suggested that to Paramount, they said, “No, it has to be called The Godfather Part III.” And I realized that was also probably because that meant there could be a four, and a five, and … But I didn’t have the clout that I had had years earlier, when Godfather was such a success.
It was a big, complicated movie. When we were ready to shoot the daughter’s scenes, we had been stalling because Winona Ryder didn’t show up. Then she dropped out. Paramount was pushing hard to put in a name actress, but it was very important to me that it be a teenager; you should see the baby fat on the girl. Sofia had been in some little films for me, as all my children had. So I asked her to come in. She didn’t particularly want to, but she did it. When the picture came out, the press came after Sofia so much. It was just like the story: The bullets that killed the daughter were really meant for the father. I felt that I did this to her. Of course, Sofia went on to have a wonderful career of her own, but it must have hurt her terribly to be told, “You ruined your father’s picture,” when in fact she hadn’t.
The film was quite successful at the time, financially and critically.
At first, the picture had a good reaction, but then, little by little, the opinion of Godfather Part III started to erode. I was haunted by how I had missed the boat, so to speak. What was wrong with the picture? I felt the story wasn’t clear. And the story was really interesting. You probably don’t know this, but at that time, there was a guy named Charlie Bluhdorn, who was the head of Gulf and Western, and he bought Paramount, but what no one knew was that the Paramount studio was [linked to] the Vatican. The Vatican had a huge real-estate company called Immobiliare under Archbishop Marcinkus, who was somewhat corrupt or involved with some very corrupt people. [Bluhdorn owned both Paramount and part of Immobiliare.]
Charlie Bluhdorn told me all of this stuff to amuse me, I guess. And so I thought, Wouldn’t it be ironic if I used what Charlie Bluhdorn had told me about the Vatican’s involvement? The more I learned about it, the more corrupt it seemed. But I hadn’t really made that clear enough in the first cut. A lot of people didn’t know, I think, what was going on in terms of the business story. I hadn’t started the film right where it should have started, which is the deal that Michael Corleone was involved in with the Vatican.
It’s amazing how changing just a few minutes can have such a huge impact on a movie.
Movies are an illusion, and the emotion that the audience gets out of the movie doesn’t really come from the movie; it comes out of themselves. I have seen movies change from devastating to wonderful in my life. And it could be made in a day, the audience reaction. When we previewed The Godfather Part II in San Francisco, we had a terrible reaction. That night, I made 121 changes, which is unheard of, because to make an editorial change when the film already has music and everything is really hard. We went three days later and previewed it again in San Diego, and it was night and day. I mean, if you make a car, and the thing is not quite in there, it won’t go. Then you do one little stupid thing, and suddenly it goes. This is the nature of all complex constructions.
I was watching George Lucas’s documentary about you not long after I’d rewatched Hearts of Darkness, your wife’s documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now. One thing that
stood out to me in both of those films is that you seem very stressed when you’re on set.
That is accurate. Being on a movie set is like running on a track with a train coming at you faster than you can run. Because there are so many elements that have to come together, and you’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle. There are some directors—I don’t guess; I even know who they are—whose attitude is just basically, “If we don’t get it today, we’ll come back and get it tomorrow, and we’ll come back the next day. Money is no object.”
Usually, the way I put these productions together, I’m also responsible for the money. Consequently, I find that when I have all the actors there, and the light is going, and maybe things are not going well, I don’t have the ability to say, “Look, I’m just going to relax, and if it takes three days, then it takes three days,” despite the fact that it’s only budgeted for one day. I take the limits of it really to heart. The Godfather was a little bit like that. I had this minder who was always there to say, “Okay, you’ve got an hour and then that’s it. You can’t do that.” He was always shutting off the production, and it was horrible.
How many times were you almost fired on The Godfather?
I would say maybe three times I seriously came close to getting fired.
What saved you?
In one case, it was winning the Oscar for
Patton [for Best Original Screenplay] that saved me. In another case, it was that there was a group of roughly 14 enemies within my own group, and I was going to be fired that weekend. I fired them all on Wednesday. It was only due to a preemptive attack on my part that I wasn’t fired. Another time, it was the fact that I was getting along with the actors, not the technical people, the jocks. Then, of course, the reaction to the Sollozzo scene. That was shot pretty early, maybe in the first two weeks. That was deemed to be a strong scene. So that had a lot of sway to save me.
In the 1970s, you were like a god to so many people. Do you ever miss having that kind of clout?
I don’t know that I took advantage of it or really felt I had it. I was always trying to learn as much as I could about moviemaking. I mean, why would anyone go from making a movie in the style of The Godfather, to a movie in the style of Apocalypse Now, to a movie in the style of One From the Heart? I was deliberately making decisions like that. That’s not a good thing if you want to have a career. There’s one movie I wouldn’t have made because it cost me everything: Gardens of Stone.
I wouldn’t have lost my son. [Coppola’s late son, Gian-Carlo, worked as a camera operator on Gardens of Stone before he died in a boating accident while on a break from shooting.]
Godfather III always felt like a very personal movie to me, partly for the reason that there’s the death of a child.
Oh, it’s worse that Michael doesn’t die in the new version because, as the subtitle at the end says, “a Sicilian never forgets.” He lives with the fact that he destroyed his child, for whose sake he had done everything. With a child, you’re not just losing the child; you’re losing all the things the child would have been and the children they would have had. It’s very profound. What Michael did in his life was terrible. When he does his confession with the archbishop, he is truly grieving for his sins. But he has to pay for them, and he does.
Over the years, I imagine there have been lots of attempts to capitalize on The Godfather. I’m shocked we haven’t seen a whole series recasting all the parts.
There have been many attempts to do that. As I became more influential in that mix, I always tried to discourage just the wholesale commercialization. Even by my own family. My father wrote a lot of the music in The Godfather, especially in the first one, all those tarantellas and dances … My mother wanted The Godfather Cookbook. The rush to commercialize The Godfather was embarrassing to me. There is even a Godfather’s Pizza, but that has nothing to do with anybody; someone just did it.
You know, I have very pure ideas about commercial stuff and making money in that. It’s not bad to make a lot of money, but you should do it by contributing something to the world. If you invent the cure for polio and become wealthy as a result, that’s okay. Think of all the young children you helped. Or even if you make Star Wars and you become rich, that’s okay, because you gave everyone something that they wouldn’t have had. That’s making money in a just way. An unjust way is when you’re not giving anyone anything—you’re just grinding out a new kind of soft drink or something that’s not even good for people.
Star Wars was your protégé George Lucas’s project, and he continued it for many years. It has become this giant property. What’s your take on Star Wars now?
Well, he created something that brought joy and happiness and pleasure—and even some wisdom—to so many people. Whatever benefits he got from it, he deserved and is welcome to. If I feel sadness, it is that he didn’t make the other movies he was going to make. George is truly a brilliant, talented person. Just look at American Graffiti and see all the innovation. We should’ve had more.
Have you expressed to him this notion that he should make more personal films?
Oh, yeah. He knows. I’m at the point where I can’t bring it up anymore. I do sort of think of him as a kid brother. We older people have to celebrate the success of younger people. I recognize that my daughter, Sofia, is, in a way, more successful than I am, and people are more interested in what she’s going to do next. That’s how it should be.
We critics love to psychoanalyze filmmakers, of course. And a lot of Sofia’s films often feature a younger woman dealing with a larger-than-life father figure. Is there any element of your relationship with her in those films?
Well, how could there not be? There’s only one girl in our family. My brother had all boys. My sister had all boys. And I had all boys—except for Sofia. She was the lone girl, and she was surrounded by boy cousins. She was extremely precocious. She was always saying funny things and doing interesting things. She had a sense of design and art. She was a talented painter. I would sometimes do fantastic things— take her on a trip with me and just make her a table of lunch items that were all desserts. I’m sure I spoiled her. But she only became more formidable the older she got.
Do you think your name, your career, your stature, looms over her a little?
I think anyone who has a parent who is that famous or well known … Did John Huston loom over Anjelica Huston’s career? Did Jon Voight loom over his daughter? How do you avoid that?
You have an uncanny eye for talent. You have cast either people who were at the beginning of their careers or total unknowns who went on to become huge stars—James Caan, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane,
“Movies are an illusion, and the emotion the audience gets comes out of themselves.”
Tom Cruise, Laurence Fishburne—or in some cases, like Marlon Brando’s, resurrected their careers. What do you look for when you’re casting?
Say you go to a party and meet several dozen people. There’s always someone the next day that you’re still thinking about, who stuck with you. Obviously, when you’re young, it might be a woman. Or it just might be some old guy who said something. But something sticks, and you don’t know why. That’s how I cast. Also, I have this extraordinary colleague named Fred Roos, who was very meticulous in searching out new talent.
It was funny watching The Outsiders again and seeing young Tom Cruise. Somehow, in that cast, he was the least good-looking one at that age.
I really like Tom Cruise. And he was a trade-off. Fred Roos was not as hot for Tom Cruise as I was. I said that, okay, Rob Lowe could be in the picture and play the bigger part, Sodapop, if Tom Cruise could play the part he played. I personally championed Tom Cruise. And I must say, Tom Cruise was all business. He would do anything to have his part be a little better. He would do dangerous falls. He would chip his teeth. He was a hundred percent invested in doing whatever … I don’t think he cared for me very much because maybe he thought I was a jerk or something. I did a lot of funny things on that picture. I treated all of the greasers, the poor kids, so they had terrible accommodations, and they were picked up by crappy cars, and they didn’t get the same per diem, and all the ones who were playing the rich kids were in nice hotels. I just wanted them to really have that difference, and I always try to make the cast have an experience that’s useful to what they’re doing in their characters.
You say Tom Cruise didn’t like you. Did he ever say anything or—
He never said “I don’t like you.” But in the end, he wanted to leave the picture early because he had gotten the job to do Risky Business, which really made him a star, and I held him to stay there for the whole thing. I just don’t think he liked me. Not everyone likes me. Tom Cruise actually wrote a very beautiful and warm thank-you letter after the film.
Did you stay in touch with Brando after Apocalypse Now?
Somewhat, yeah. He had a love-hate relationship with me. I’ve known a lot of great people in my life. I got to meet Akira Kurosawa. I got to meet Jean Renoir, Orson Welles. I met Marcel Duchamp. But if I were to say who were the geniuses that I met, No. 1, I would say Marlon Brando. He had the most extraordinary thought process of anyone I’ve ever met. He could talk to you about termites for two hours.
Do you remember your last conversation with him?
It had to do with this movie he did called Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp [which Coppola produced]. I remember I was with him, and he said, “You know, we’ve both been through a lot,” implying that I had lost a son and he had lost a child. He loved his children. Brando loved children and loved innocent creatures. I remember I went to him when Sofia was born, and I used her as the baby in Godfather. Sofia, probably, was like 3 weeks old, and I said, “Marlon, you’ve been so good. I have this award I want to give you.” He took the baby in his hands so gently and with such assurance. He lit up like it was the most beautiful thing. But getting back to that scene after Don Juan DeMarco, he said we went through some tough patches. I think he was very sensitive that it was construed that I had blamed him for coming to Apocalypse very overweight. I think he was sensitive to press reporting. Though it was true; he said he would come thin, and he came even fatter than he was, and I didn’t know what kind of uniform to put on him. I think he took umbrage that I had criticized him. He acknowledged that we had some tough passages between us. But I totally admired him.
Did you see the viral video of Chris Cuomo at a bar where somebody called him Fredo? He went ballistic on this guy, screaming that Fredo was an ethnic slur.
I heard about it. I had the great privilege of meeting Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo. I was writing this utopian film that I’m still trying to do. And I asked him, “What could America be one day?” He told me, and I was very inspired by it.
Did you ever meet Donald Trump?
Oh, yes. I went to the same military school he did, the New York Military Academy. In the old days, when I knew him, whenever he saw me, he would always go like that [holds up his index finger], meaning The Godfather was No. 1. He was pretty insulated. I was interested in him because he owned those 76 acres in New York, and he had this project called Television City. My piece Megalopolis is about a utopia being built in New York City by a character who is a combination of Robert Moses and Walter Gropius. It’s a confection. In a way, Donald Trump was a man who would do daring things, which appealed to me. I went to see him once, and he was kind enough to meet with me. I admired his audacity and his ability to have a dream project. But I guess a dream project can go wrong if it is started for the wrong reasons. Obviously, today, he has behaved more like someone in 1934 in Germany than he has a dream builder.
You’ve been working on Megalopolis for a long time.
Yeah. The kind of film you could get off the ground these days is not one that involves risk. I was once asked by Kirk Kerkorian, who’s passed away now, “How is it you can make a film that gets tremendous creative acceptance as a great movie and also makes a lot of money?” And I said one word: “Risk.” Risk is a part of art.