82 Facts About Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest directors of all time.

Francis Ford Coppola released the thriller The Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Francis Ford Coppola later directed films such as The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Godfather Part III, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and The Rainmaker.

Francis Ford Coppola produced American Graffiti, The Black Stallion, and The Secret Garden.

Francis Ford Coppola's father Carmine was a composer whose music featured in his son's films.

Francis Ford Coppola was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1939, to father Carmine Coppola, a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and mother Italia Coppola, a family of second-generation Italian immigrants.

Francis Ford Coppola developed an interest in theater after reading A Streetcar Named Desire at age 15.

Francis Ford Coppola trained initially for a career in music and became proficient in the tuba, eventually earning a music scholarship to the New York Military Academy.

Francis Ford Coppola entered Hofstra University in 1955 as a theater arts major.

Francis Ford Coppola later cast Kazan and Caan in his films.

Francis Ford Coppola merged the two groups into The Spectrum Players, and under his leadership, the group staged a new production each week.

Francis Ford Coppola founded the cinema workshop at Hofstra and contributed prolifically to the campus literary magazine.

Francis Ford Coppola met undergraduate film major Jim Morrison, future frontman of The Doors.

At 21, Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script for The Peeper, a short comedy film about a voyeur who tries to spy on a sensual photo shoot in the studio next to his apartment.

Francis Ford Coppola found an interested producer, who gave him $3,000 to shoot the film.

Francis Ford Coppola hired Playboy Bunny Marli Renfro to play the model and had his friend Karl Schanzer play the voyeur.

Francis Ford Coppola wrote a brief draft in one night, incorporating elements from Hitchcock's Psycho, and the result impressed Corman enough to give the go-ahead.

In 1965, Francis Ford Coppola won the annual Samuel Goldwyn Award for best screenplay written by a UCLA student for Pilma, Pilma.

Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to David Benedictus's novel You're a Big Boy Now and merged it with a story idea of his own, resulting in his UCLA thesis project You're a Big Boy Now, which earned him his Master of Fine Arts Degree from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1967.

Francis Ford Coppola took the cast to the Napa Valley for much of the outdoor shooting, but those scenes were in sharp contrast to those filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look.

Francis Ford Coppola wanted to subvert the studio system, which he felt had stifled his visions, intending to produce mainstream pictures to finance off-beat projects and give first-time directors a chance.

Francis Ford Coppola decided to name his future studio "Zoetrope" after receiving a gift of zoetropes from Mogens Scot-Hansen, founder of Lanterna Film.

However, it was not easy for Coppola to convince Franklin J Schaffner that the opening scene would work.

Francis Ford Coppola stated flatly that he would accept the part only if they used Coppola's script.

Francis Ford Coppola was not Paramount's first choice to direct; Sergio Leone was initially offered the job but declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America.

Francis Ford Coppola initially turned down the job because he found Puzo's novel sleazy and sensationalist, describing it as "pretty cheap stuff".

Francis Ford Coppola was officially announced as director of the film on September 28,1970.

Francis Ford Coppola agreed to receive $125,000 and six percent of the gross rentals.

Francis Ford Coppola later found a deeper theme for the material and decided it should be not just be a film about organized crime, but a family saga and a metaphor for capitalism in America.

Francis Ford Coppola chose Brando over Borgnine on the basis of Brando's screen test, which won over the Paramount leadership.

Francis Ford Coppola has salvaged Puzo's energy and lent the narrative dignity.

Francis Ford Coppola was nominated for Best Director but lost to Bob Fosse for Cabaret.

Francis Ford Coppola claimed that this was purely coincidental, as the script for The Conversation was completed in the mid-1960s.

Francis Ford Coppola has plunged us back into the sensuality and terror of the first film.

What's great in this film, and what will make it live for many years and speak to many audiences, is what Francis Ford Coppola achieves on the level Truffaut was discussing: the moments of agony and joy in making cinema.

Francis Ford Coppola would spend the rest of the decade working to pay off his debts.

Francis Ford Coppola credited his inspiration for making the film to a suggestion from middle school students who had read the novel.

Carmine Francis Ford Coppola wrote and edited the score, including the title song "Stay Gold", which was based on Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and performed by Stevie Wonder.

Francis Ford Coppola directed Rumble Fish, filmed at the same time as The Outsiders on-location in Tulsa, Oklahoma and based on the novel of the same name by Hinton, who co-wrote the screenplay.

In 1984, Francis Ford Coppola directed the Robert Evans-produced The Cotton Club, based on the novel by James Haskins and centered on the eponymous Harlem jazz club.

In 1986, Francis Ford Coppola directed Captain EO, a 17-minute space fantasy for Disney theme parks executive produced by George Lucas and starring Michael Jackson.

Also in 1986, Francis Ford Coppola released the comedy Peggy Sue Got Married starring Kathleen Turner, Jim Carrey and Francis Ford Coppola's nephew Nicolas Cage.

Francis Ford Coppola directed Tucker: The Man and His Dream the year after that.

The film is a biopic based on the life of Preston Tucker and his attempt to produce and market the Tucker '48; Francis Ford Coppola had originally conceived the project as a musical with Brando leading.

In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola teamed up with fellow Oscar-winners Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen for the anthology film New York Stories.

Francis Ford Coppola directed the "Life Without Zoe" segment, starring Shire and co-written with his daughter Sofia.

Francis Ford Coppola felt that the first two films had told the complete Corleone saga.

Francis Ford Coppola intended Part III to be an epilogue to the first two films.

Francis Ford Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it "vindicates" its status among the trilogy and his daughter Sofia's performance.

Francis Ford Coppola cast Gary Oldman as the titular role, with Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Anthony Hopkins in supporting roles.

Francis Ford Coppola had been friends with Robin Williams for many years and had always wanted to work with him as an actor.

When Williams was offered the screenplay for Jack, he said he would only agree to do it if Francis Ford Coppola agreed to sign on as director.

The last film Francis Ford Coppola directed in the 1990s, The Rainmaker, was based on the 1995 novel of the same name by John Grisham.

However, Francis Ford Coppola's re-edited version had negative test screening and didn't get the PG-13 rating by the MPAA that the studio wanted.

Francis Ford Coppola was the jury president at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival and he took part as a special guest at the 17th Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankyla, Finland, and the 46th International Thessaloniki Film Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece.

In 2005, Francis Ford Coppola created a new cut of The Outsiders for home video.

Francis Ford Coppola included both the theatrical cut and "The Complete Novel" on all subsequent home video releases.

Todd McCarthy of Variety gave the film a B+, judging that "when Francis Ford Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods".

Richard Corliss of Time gave the film a mixed review, praising Ehrenreich's performance, but claiming Francis Ford Coppola "has made a movie in which plenty happens, but nothing rings true".

In 2015, Francis Ford Coppola found an old Betamax tape with his original cut of The Cotton Club and decided to restore it.

Francis Ford Coppola had cut about a half hour out of the film before its original release at the insistence of the film's European financial backers.

Francis Ford Coppola stated that The Godfather: Part IV was never made because Mario Puzo died before they had a chance to write the film.

Francis Ford Coppola attended alongside Robert De Niro and Al Pacino who were greeted with a standing ovation.

In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola produced George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138.

However, studio executives strongly disliked all of the scripts, including THX, and demanded that Francis Ford Coppola repay the $300,000 they had loaned him for the Zoetrope studio, as well as insisting on cutting five minutes from the film.

In 1994, Francis Ford Coppola later approached another studio, Columbia Pictures, to produce the film.

Francis Ford Coppola filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros, alleging they had wrongfully prevented Columbia Pictures from making the film.

Sagan had died a week earlier, and Francis Ford Coppola claimed that Sagan's novel Contact was based on a story the pair had developed for a television special back in 1975 titled First Contact.

Francis Ford Coppola sought at least $250,000 in compensatory damages and an injunction against production or distribution of the film.

Francis Ford Coppola purchased the former Inglenook Winery chateau in 1995, and renamed it to Rubicon Estate Winery in 2006.

In San Francisco, Coppola owns a restaurant named Cafe Zoetrope, located in the Sentinel Building where American Zoetrope is based.

For 14 years from 1994, Coppola co-owned the Rubicon restaurant in San Francisco along with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola founded Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine devoted to short stories and design.

In 2018, Francis Ford Coppola launched Sana Company LLC and released a cannabis brand known as The Grower's Series.

Francis Ford Coppola packaged The Grower's Series in a mock black tin wine bottle resembling his wine brand.

Francis Ford Coppola appeared in a commercial for Suntory Reserve in 1980 alongside Akira Kurosawa; the commercial was filmed while Kurosawa was making Kagemusha, which Francis Ford Coppola produced with George Lucas.

In 1963, Francis Ford Coppola married writer and documentary filmmaker Eleanor Jessie Neil.

Francis Ford Coppola went on to co-direct Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.

Francis Ford Coppola had one child, Gia Coppola, a filmmaker.

Eleanor Francis Ford Coppola died on April 12,2024, at the age of 87.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of ten directors to receive the Palme d'Or twice, for The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.

When you spend enough time with Francis Ford Coppola, you begin to believe you can jump off cliffs, too.