To point out that Coppola won five Oscars by the time he was 36 is to understate what was going on at this time better to just say that for a while he saw something like the face of God, and leave it at that. After winning an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1970's Patton, Coppola went on to make, consecutively, The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). But Coppola, for a time, played by other rules entirely. Anyone who has worked on a film will tell you that luck plays a role, that it's a collaborative medium, that art and commerce and dead-eyed executives and feckless actors all come together to make something beyond the director's control, sometimes for better, often for worse. “That's a joke.”Ĭoppola likes to describe himself as a “second-rate film director,” paraphrasing the composer Richard Strauss: “But I'm a first-rate second-rate film director.” In reality, of course, Coppola has directed more than one of the greatest movies ever made. “Ironically, I did what I wanted to do and I also made a lot of money.” A brief pause. “You are meeting a guy who basically can tell you quite honestly my motive in doing what I did in my life was never to make a lot of money.” He grinned. “That's what you're having trouble with, really,” he said. He has already told me that I'm too impressed with what he owns, what he's had and lost and gained again. a photo of Coppola's daughter, Sofia, embracing Coppola's old friend George Lucas.Ĭoppola, who is 82, moves between these various buildings in a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf that he drives at alarming speed, or on foot, bent over at the waist as if walking into a powerful wind. There is, in almost every corner of this place, something beautiful: a first edition of Leaves of Grass a painting by Akira Kurosawa or Robert De Niro Sr. There are roaming gangs of wild turkeys among the trees and creeping vines and an outdoor fountain designed by Dean Tavoularis, the set designer of The Godfather.
There is a two-story guest barn on a mossy edge of the property, where his children often stay, and an old Victorian house built by a sea captain, where the Coppolas raised their family and where they still entertain, though they have since built themselves another house to live in. There is a carriage house that holds a film-editing suite and Coppola's personal film archive-shooting scripts for The Cotton Club and Jack and The Outsiders the written score for Bram Stoker's Dracula research material for The Godfather Part III. There is a grand old château here, where the wine used to be made, and a state-of-the-art facility where wine is made now.
His primary residence is in the Napa Valley, on the grounds of a once-great vineyard, Inglenook, that Coppola has spent the past 47 years making great again. Loosely held splendor: In the ensuing five decades, Coppola has filed for bankruptcy at least once and has been expelled from Hollywood more than once. Francis Ford Coppola lives-as he has in one way or another since directing 1972's The Godfather-in splendor.
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