Coppola values amateur art, modern technology

By Howard Ho
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]

  Photo courtesy of Talbert Communications

Before his critical and financial success with films such as
“The Godfather” and “Patton,”
Coppola studied filmmaking at UCLA.

Francis Ford Coppola needs no cliched introduction about how
he’s the godfather of modern filmmaking. But less well known
is his affiliation with UCLA, where he graduated with a
master’s in filmmaking.

That’s right, the director of “The Godfather,”
“Apocalypse Now,” and “Bram Stoker’s
Dracula” was a Bruin and helped to create UCLA’s
reputation for experimental, avant-garde films. The marriage of
academia and art was somewhat whimsical for Coppola, who originally
wanted to study theater at Yale.

“A haphazard opportunity to see “˜Ten Days That Shook
the World’ changed that. (For me) the cart that was theater
broke, and the driver fell into cinema. I changed my mind and went
to the UCLA film school instead,” Coppola said in an e-mail
interview.

According to Michael Schumacher’s biography,
Coppola’s older brother had already gone to UCLA when young,
and Coppola decided to do the same. It was 1960, a time when film
schools were beginning to become strongholds of future talent.
George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma
all matured through universities around this time.

Coppola’s UCLA stint included several student films, such
as “The Two Christophers” and “Aymonn the
Terrible.” Discontented with merely taking classes and
talking about film theory, Coppola was intent on making as many
films as possible and using his UCLA colleagues as his production
crew for his directorial projects.

To this day, Coppola maintains a proactive stance toward
filmmaking. Hoping to free filmmaking from the big studios, Coppola
founded production company American Zoetrope for independent
voices.

“I like art best when it’s an amateur form, as in
the past when doctors were composers, and stock brokers poets. I
love that William Carlos Williams wrote his poetry on the back of
prescription pads. I like that it’s done for love and not for
money,” Coppola said.

Important to Coppola’s personal and filmmaking evolution
was when he met Roger Corman, the B-movie master, through UCLA
professor Dorothy Arzner in 1961 and later worked for Roger Corman
productions on his first full-length film, “Dementia
13.” During the shoot, he met UCLA art graduate Eleanor Neil,
who he later married.

Coppola withdrew from his UCLA education after winning the
prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Award for his screenplay, “Pilma,
Pilma,” a reworking of “The Two Christophers.”
The award led to job offers from the major studios. Coppola ended
up working on scripts for Seven Arts Productions, where he directed
“You’re a Big Boy Now” in 1966. He submitted the
film as his graduate thesis, and it earned him his degree.

His meteoric rise, including his Oscar win for the screenplay to
“Patton,” continued with producing Lucas’
classics “American Graffiti” and “THX 1138″
with American Zoetrope. Coppola’s power would then be
solidified in 1972 when “The Godfather” was a major
critical and financial success.

An icon of the film world today, Coppola nostalgically remembers
his early days at UCLA.

“I feel much wiser now, though perhaps that’s a
negative in that it makes one less likely to plunge into areas as
wildly as youth tends to. Also, not being as financially destitute
could mean that I have less of the “˜what do I have to
lose’ attitude and that might make a difference,”
Coppola said.

Now Coppola thinks about the future of filmmaking and all the
tools that he didn’t have growing up. He cites computer
programs Final Cut Pro and HD24 digital sound as major advances in
allowing anyone to make a professional-quality film. In addition,
his recent release of “The Godfather” trilogy on DVD
with deleted scenes and commentary allow for a greater degree of
interaction between filmmaker and filmgoer.

“Movies have always been the marriage of art and
technology, so the grand advances happening today continue to make
the cinema more adventurous and even promiscuous ““ and for
less money each day. This is wonderful,” Coppola said.

Coppola would certainly be pleased if he were a student today to
find that the film and television department now includes digital
media as well. As Coppola himself says about the demise of film and
the rise of digital media, “Film is dead. Long live
cinema.”

Hard at work on his science-fiction epic,
“Megalopolis,” Coppola maintains his independent
spirit, even with such big-budget fare. At age 63, Coppola
continues to push the limits of what he can do and urges young
filmmakers to find their own smaller paths.

“Certainly, “˜Megalopolis,’ is ambitious and
probably above my means in many ways, which in the past never
deterred me,” said Coppola.

“I would tell (young filmmakers) to avoid big conglomerate
Hollywood, where the “˜M’ stands for money and not
movies. … Weave your work on whatever level you can afford, with
stills and little audio recordings first if necessary,”
Coppola added.