- Calling All Indie Filmmakers! Why Wait to Start Selling Your Film? Through CreateSpace, make your film available for sale on-demand through Amazon.com and other channels in DVD and video download formats. No setup fees and no inventory needed. Learn more about selling your video content through CreateSpace.
| |||||||||||||||
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) by Francis Ford Coppola |
Francis Ford Coppola: Close Up: The Making of His Movies (Close-Up Series) by Ronald Bergan |
by Peter Cowie
|
by Eleanor Coppola
|
by Eleanor Coppola
|
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The terrible fact about Francis Ford Coppola's career is that it will always be divided evenly in half, down a line called Apocalypse Now. Before that film is prodigious promise--an Academy Award for writing Patton, two uncannily fine Godfather movies, and the Antonioni-esque smallness of The Conversation. After, there is telescoping debt, talk of reinventing the studios, and multiple, hollow exercises in style. If that's a tough assessment, it's one borne out by this thick, fair biography. The author, Michael Schumacher, who has previously published books on Allen Ginsberg and Eric Clapton, makes much of Coppola's boyhood spell of polio, from which he emerged miraculously healthy and movie-mad. He orchestrated his life thereafter with a consequent mania, as though making up for lost time. While still in film school, he sold screenplays and made Z-budget drive-in movies for Roger Corman. In two years, he wrote 12 scripts for 7 Arts, and in the mid-1960s started a family, made You're a Big Boy Now and Finian's Rainbow, pushed George Lucas to write THX1138, founded American Zoetrope, and took a job, purely for the money, directing The Godfather. The chapters on Apocalypse Now are the book's highlights, and without saying as much they explain the spent quality at the core of Coppola's films in the next two decades. After hurricanes in Manila, Marlon Brando, and the ungodly beauty of those helicopters at dawn, whose career wouldn't wing straight to twilight? --Lyall Bush
From Publishers Weekly
This is not an authorized biography, though it often reads like one because Schumacher systematically defends director and screenwriter Coppola against the critics who have panned his films as contrived, excessively violent or a triumph of style over substance. Still, he presents a brisk and astute portrait of one of the most influential directors of the past 30 years, adept at both operatic blockbusters (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) and smaller personal movies (John Grisham's The Rainmaker). The inner man remains elusive, although SchumacherAbiographer of Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs and Eric ClaptonAdelves deeply into such personal crises as Coppola's childhood polio, during which he recuperated by making home movies; his protracted affair with a young, unnamed screenwriter, which nearly wrecked his marriage; and the devastating impact of his son Gian-Carlo's tragic death in a boating accident in 1986. The book's real strength lies in its flavorful behind-the-scenes re-creation of the making of all of Coppola's movies. Cameos of Nicholas Cage, Marlon Brando, Winona Ryder, Fred Astaire and many other stars nearly steal the show. Schumacher tends to portray Coppola as an uncompromising visionary who waged a career-long battle to free himself from the Hollywood dream factory's constrictive commercial dictates. Yet the lingering question is why the relentlessly driven filmmaker abandoned his creative, auteuristic endeavors in favor of safer, more profitable work-for-hire films. In any case, Coppola fans will rejoice. 16 pages of photos. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
› Visit Amazon's Michael Schumacher Page
› Visit Amazon's Michael Schumacher Page
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
78% buy the item featured on this page: Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life |
 |
6% buy Scorsese on Scorsese: Revised Edition $11.25 |
 |
6% buy Kubrick: The Definitive Edition |
 |
5% buy Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) $17.16 |
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Look for Similar Items by Category
Look for Similar Items by Subject
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
