Review by Booklist Review
Of all that has been written about Francis Ford Coppola, this book most accurately captures the film director's chaotic life. His career has been punctuated by episodes of transcendent joy and numbing depression, by spectacular successes (the launching of his company, American Zoetrope; the instant box-office success of The Godfather, a film he made because he needed the money) and crushing disappointments (American Zoetrope's collapse; the failure of what's arguably his most visionary film, One from the Heart). Coppola is a perfectionist, a dreamer, a taker of spectacular risks, a man who appears incapable of stopping until he's made the movie he set out to make--even, as in the case of Apocalypse Now (whose filming Wasson covers in some detail), when he isn't sure what the movie is about. Wasson has written a string of successful books about the entertainment business, including Fosse (2013), Improv Nation (2017), and The Big Goodbye (2020), but this one, based on a mixture of previously published sources and original interviews with filmmakers, including Coppola himself, might be his best so far. Rich in detail, it's full of surprises and revelations, and impeccably researched and documented. For fans of books about moviemaking in general, and Francis Ford Coppola in particular, this is required reading.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Film historian Wasson (The Big Goodbye) explores director Francis Ford Coppola's artistic process in this enthralling chronicle of his production company, Zoetrope. Founded by Coppola in the late 1960s, Zoetrope was envisioned as a "creative playground" for filmmakers tired of compromising with big Hollywood studios, a principle the director stuck to even as it became financially untenable. Wasson focuses his account on the personal and professional risks Coppola took to make Apocalypse Now (1979) and One from the Heart (1982). The stresses of filming the former--during which Coppola and his wife, who captured the making of the movie for a documentary, endured typhoons and ballooning costs while shooting in the Philippines--nearly ended his marriage. After a key funder pulled out from One from the Heart, Coppola had to put up as collateral $8 million worth of his assets for loans to complete the movie; its box office failure spelled doom for Zoetrope. Wasson's immersive prose vividly recreates the circumstances of each shoot ("Coppola returned home to... a house illuminated only by candles, tore off his wet shirt, and sat down at the living room table to imagine, on paper, page after terrible, incredible, terrible page, the next day's scene"), offering a complex portrait of an artist whose unwillingness to compromise cost him dearly. Movie buffs won't want to miss this. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Prolific entertainment writer Wasson (The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood) presents a stream-of-consciousness view of Francis Ford Coppola, his production company American Zoetrope, and his vision of filmmaking. This richly detailed biography is based on unprecedented access to Coppola's archives and hundreds of interviews conducted with both the director/screenwriter and his coworkers. This book focuses on the ardors of making the 1979 Apocalypse Now, the trouble-plagued Vietnam War--set film based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The biography (the title was derived from a Dante quote relating hell and heaven) is an episodic, impressionistic, nonlinear challenge, even for those in the movie industry. It contains insights about the battles of an unfavored, albeit talented second son who was also a polio and bullying survivor. Readers seeking a straightforward narrative, rather than vignettes on Coppola and his entertainment-excelling family (actress sister Talia Shire; director daughter Sofia; actor nephew Nicolas Cage; and composer father Carmine) and those he met in Hollywood might consider looking elsewhere. VERDICT This demanding book might appeal more to screenwriters and producers than to serendipitous consumers of film culture.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A vivid biography of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939) and his production company, American Zoetrope. "As no other filmmaker does," writes veteran film biographer Wasson, "Coppola lives in his stories, changing them as they change him, riding round an endless loop of experience and creation"--until, usually reluctantly, letting go of them, only to watch some crash and burn. "Artistic perfection has never been integral to Coppola's colossal experiment," writes the author. "Learning and growing have been. Living is. Dying is. The adventure is." Part of the pain in the failures is that, like his successes, Coppola's films cost a fortune, and money flows freely through his fingers. Indeed, the author devotes significant attention to the finer points of financing, with one elusive film, Megalopolis, yet unmade, projected in 2001 to cost at least $100 million. It's not that Coppola's films haven't made money: Apocalypse Now, the tortured tale of whose making forms the heart (of darkness) of this book, turned a profit after it threatened to drag all involved into bankruptcy, and The Godfather and American Graffiti sent generations of film executives' kids to college. Throughout, Wasson shows the studio system as a source of constant hindrance, imposing conditions that sometimes work out and sometimes don't. Coppola's one-man-band perfectionism is another enemy. "They had to move quicker," writes Wasson of one shoot. "But if Coppola the producer said that to Coppola the director, the latter would tell him to take it up with Coppola the writer." Not to mention Coppola the businessman, with a wine business bringing in about $100 million per year, enough to keep his beloved, legendary American Zoetrope studio afloat "not as an alternative to Hollywood, but a complement"--though still not enough to make Megalopolis a reality, at least not yet. A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
