Francis Ford Coppola

American film director (1939 - )

• || At The Bottom

• 1966 -- 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.

• || At The Top

• 1975 -- Francis Ford Coppola sounded a bit sheepish as he accepted his 1975 Academy Award for The Godfather, Part II, which had just been awarded Best Picture of the year.  "We tried to make a film that would be a really good film," said Coppola, "and -- well, thank you very much."  Earlier in the evening, Coppola had accepted the Oscar for Best Director (also for The Godfather, Part II).  He added these honors to those he'd received over the past five years, including Best Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather (1973) and Best Screenplay for Patton (1971).  In addition to his Oscar wins, several other films written or directed by Coppola had been nominated for Academy Awards, including The Conversation (1975) and American Graffiti (1974).  In the space of a few years, Coppola had emerged as one of the great directing talents in American cinema.  His films during that decade -- especially the Godfather saga and Apocalypse Now (1980) -- were among the most memorable of their era.  In addition to his storied career as a director, Coppola has also successfully developed numerous other business ventures, including a winery in Sonoma County, California, as well as several restaurants and resorts in the US and abroad.

• || The Comeback

• The turning point in Coppola's career came with The Rain People, a 1969 film written and directed by Coppola and based on a screenplay he'd written nearly a decade before while he was at UCLA.  After his contract with Seven Arts expired, the young filmmaker began working on his own.  He remembered the years of stifled creativity, and he wanted to make sure that nothing interfered with his vision.  In a trick of self-promotional deception, he received a contract for the film from Warner's after spreading a rumor that he was working on a "secret project" in New York.  Hearing the rumors, and worried that another studio might offer the talented young filmmaker the money and authority he wanted, Warner's offered Coppola a deal that gave him total control over the project -- the writing, directing, and editing would adhere to his vision.  Coppola also sunk a lot of his own money into the production, buying equipment that he would later use to found his own mini-studio.  As he explained at the time, "If you're not willing to risk some money when you're young, you're certainly not ever going to risk anything in the years that follow." The Rain People was not an enormous critical success, but it was a solid film that allowed Coppola to showcase his talents as a writer and director -- something he'd never been given an opportunity to do while he was under contract with Seven Arts.  By working independently, taking risks and finding a way to create films on his own terms, Coppola took charge of his own career and fulfilled the promise he'd shown as a younger man.