Francis Ford Coppola

  b. 1939 | American film director

At The Bottom

— 1966

The promising screenwriter had apparently joined the swollen ranks of Hollywood failures.

As a film student at UCLA, Francis Ford Coppola had been known as a promising screenwriter. After winning the Samuel Goldwyn Award — a prize awarded by the Goldwyn Foundation to the best screenplays produced by students in the University of California system — Coppola was hired by Roger Corman, the king of 1960s low-budget schlock films.  During the years he spent with Corman’s production company, Coppola served as screenwriter, production assistant, second unit director, and even did sound work on occasion — anything to keep himself productive. From there, Coppola moved on to work as a contract writer for Seven Arts, a production company owned by Warner.  His three years with Seven Arts were severely disappointing.  Though he made a good salary, his screenplays were ignored and he was not given the opportunity to direct films of his own.  He worked on more than a dozen screenplays for Seven Arts, but few of them ever entered production.  The ones that did make it to screen were complete flops.  By 1966, Coppola was badly in debt and, for good measure, had blown all his savings — $20,000 — on a stock market gamble gone awry. “I was broke,” Coppola remembered.  “I’d lost all my money.  I owed the bank $10,000.  And I had two kids and a wife to support. . . .  I was very depressed.” The promising screenwriter had apparently joined the swollen ranks of Hollywood failures.