On This Day
Birthday of Francis Ford Coppola
April 7th 1939
10:30 7 April 2024
American director, producer and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola was born on this day in 1939. Coppola made his feature-length debut with the low-budget horror film 'Dementia 13' (1963). He went on to direct the comedy 'You're a Big Boy Now' (1966), the musical fantasy 'Finian's Rainbow' (1968) and the road drama 'The Rain People' (1969).
It was after co-writing (with Edmund H. North) the Academy Award winning screenplay for 'Patton' (1970) that he was hired to direct 'The Godfather' (1972). It was a troubled shoot with the director later recalling "The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job.". The movie turned out to be a cinematic masterpiece and a milestone in the history of Hollywood, putting Coppola at the forefront of the 'New Hollywood' movement.
He cemented his position further with his follow up film 'The Conversation' (1974) starring Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert facing a moral dilemma. 'The Godfather Part II' (1974) continued the epic crime saga, becoming an even bigger hit at the box office and is regarded as one of the greatest sequels of all time.
The Vietnam War epic 'Apocalypse Now' (1979) was another production fraught with difficulties, with the director stating "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little, we went insane". Despite this, the film opened to overwhelmingly good reviews and remains probably the most powerful movie about the Vietnam conflict ever made.
Other notable directing credits include 'One From the Heart' (1981), 'The Outsiders' (1983), 'Rumble Fish' (1983), 'The Cotton Club' (1984), 'Peggy Sue Got Married' (1986), 'Gardens of Stone' (1987), 'Tucker: The Man and His Dream' (1988), 'The Godfather Part III' (1990), 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992), 'Jack' (1996), 'The Rainmaker' (1997), 'Youth Without Youth' (2007), 'Tetro' (2009), 'Twixt' (2011) and 'Distant Vision' (2016).
Coppola's long-delayed science fiction epic 'Megalopolis' is scheduled for release later this year, with one early report describing it as "crackling with ideas that fuse the past with the future, with an epic and highly visual fable that plays perfectly on an IMAX screen".
A recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or and a BAFTA, Francis Ford Coppola is undoubtedly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Happy Birthday Francis.