81 Facts About Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter.

Francis Ford Coppola is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Francis Ford Coppola has acted as producer on such diverse films as The Black Stallion, The Escape Artist, Hammett, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and The Secret Garden.

Many of Francis Ford Coppola's relatives and children have become popular actors and filmmakers in their own right: his sister Talia Shire is an actress, his daughter Sofia is a director, his son Roman is a screenwriter, and his nephews Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are actors.

Francis Ford Coppola was born in Detroit, Michigan, to father Carmine Coppola, a flutist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and mother Italia Coppola.

Francis Ford Coppola was born into a family of 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 College in 1955 as a theater arts major.

Francis Ford Coppola later cast Lainie Kazan in One from the Heart and Caan in The Rain People, The Godfather, and Gardens of Stone.

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.

Francis Ford Coppola later used Morrison's song "The End" in Apocalypse Now.

At 21, Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script for The Peeper, a comedy short 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 to 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.

Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the David Benedictus 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 Francis Ford Coppola 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 to the film.

In 1969, 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 name his future studio "Zoetrope" after receiving a gift of zoetropes from Mogens Scot-Hansen, founder of a studio called Lanterna Film and owner of a famous collection of early motion picture-making equipment.

Francis Ford Coppola was at the forefront of a group of filmmakers known as "New Hollywood" that emerged in the early 1970s, with ideas that challenged conventional filmmaking.

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 the movie; Italian director 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 chronicle and a metaphor for capitalism in America.

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

Francis Ford Coppola insisted that this was purely coincidental, as the script for The Conversation was completed in the mid-1960s and the spying equipment used in the film was developed through research and use of technical advisers and not by newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in.

Francis Ford Coppola shot The Godfather Part II in parallel to The Conversation.

Francis Ford Coppola was the third director to have two nominations for Best Picture in the same year.

Francis Ford Coppola is the only one to have produced the pictures nominated.

In 2019 Francis Ford Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now once more as Apocalypse Now, claiming that version to be his favorite.

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 musical score, including the title song "Stay Gold", which was based upon a famous Robert Frost poem and performed for the movie by Stevie Wonder.

In 1984, Francis Ford Coppola directed the Robert Evans-produced The Cotton Club.

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

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

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

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

Francis Ford Coppola directed the "Life Without Zoe" segment, starring his sister Talia Shire, and co-wrote the film 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.

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.

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.

In 2006, Francis Ford Coppola revisited another of his films: Apocalypse Now.

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 it's 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.

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.

Francis Ford Coppola has continued to support Salva financially and professionally throughout the years since.

Francis Ford Coppola later tried to sue him for breach of contract.

In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola produced George Lucas' first 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.

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.