Skip to content

Tag: francis ford coppola

Dennis Hopper: 2% Brilliance, 98% Horseshit

“I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing, and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It’s not been a bad life.”–Dennis Hopper


Peter L. Winkler discusses his book Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel,  and the life  and work of the actor with John Wisniewski at the Los Angeles Review of Books:

Hopper was an aesthete, and his interest in films was for their visual values, not their narrative. I recently discovered a podcast with writer Ann Louise Bardach, who Hopper had commissioned to rewrite the screenplay for the film Backtrack (1990) (a.k.a.Catchfire), which he directed and starred in, and which costarred Jodie Foster as a Jenny Holzer­–like artist on the run from the mob. Bardach said that Hopper took her to Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico to scout locations for the film where Foster’s character would hide out, and he would point out artistic landmarks like Georgia O’Keeffe’s former home or Mabel Dodge Luhan’s home, which Hopper once owned, and insist she incorporate them in the screenplay. That’s what he really cared about.

Los Angeles Review of Books

Comments closed

Something for the Weekend

Less Shit Please — A great article on British political cartoonists by Helen Lewis for The New Statesman:

[Martin] Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. “There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,” he says. “It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, ‘Oh God, no.’ [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.” What happened? “He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.”

Holding On — An interview with Francis Ford Coppola at The Rumpus:

when I wanted to do Apocalypse Now, no one would do it. I couldn’t believe it. I was so disgruntled that I had played by their rules and won, yet they still didn’t want to make it. So I just went on myself, and took all the money and property I had, went to the bank, and made Apocalypse Nowmyself. When it came out it was very dicey. People didn’t know what to make of it; it got bad reviews. My films have always gotten a lot of bad reviews. I was very scared that I was going to be wiped out because the Chase Manhattan Bank had all my stuff. I decided I would make a movie that would be very commercial. Every time I’ve tried to do something commercial it’s always failed. So I made One From The Heart.

And what happened was that Apocalypse Now, little by little, started to be a big success and thought of as a classic, a great movie. But by then I was already making One From The Heart and that was a big flop and I lost everything. So from age forty to age fifty I just had to pay the Chase Manhattan Bank all that money, and I just barely ended up holding onto everything. So ironically, the thing I did to solve the problem ended up causing a problem.

Coming or Going? — Tim Parks on the unevenness of globalization for the NYRB Blog:

To what community does a writer belong today? The whole world, might seem to be the obvious answer in an era of globalization. Alas, it’s not that simple… I am known in England mainly for light, though hopefully thoughtful non-fiction; in Italy for polemical newspaper articles and a controversial book about soccer; in Germany, Holland, and France, for what I consider my “serious” novels Europa, Destiny, Cleaver; in the USA for literary criticism; and in a smattering of other countries, but also in various academic communities, for my translations and writing on translation. Occasionally I receive emails that ask, “But are you also the Tim Parks who…?,” Frequently readers get my nationality wrong. They don’t seem to know where I’m coming from or headed to.

And finally…

A new excerpt from Linotype: The Film, which will finally be released in mid-October apparently…

Comments closed

Francis Ford Coppola at TIFF

You know, what was top of my mind when I was making [“The Conversation”] was I wanted to make the film as beautiful as “Blow-Up.” You know, I had seen “Blow-Up” by Michelangelo Antonioni and I said boy, that’s the kind of film I – those were the kind of films I want to make. I – something that’s unique and it occupies its own kind of thing, and I made “The Conversation.” I sat down to write that after being so enthusiastic about seeing “Blow-Up.” And throughout my career, I have seen great films that have just filled me with pleasure and said, I want to make a film like that. And I think that’s OK for young people to do, you know, because it’s impossible. You set out to imitate something you thought was beautiful but in the end you can’t. You’re going to end up with what you have to say, you know?

Broadcast by NPR’s Fresh Air, director Francis Ford Coppola discusses his career with Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival, and answers questions from the festival audience:

NPR FRESH AIR: Francis Ford Coppola Reflects On His Career mp3

You can read the transcript of the interview here.

AND if you’ve never seen Coppola’s 1974 film The Conversation, you really should make time to watch it…

Comments closed