What I learned from reading Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher.
In celebration of 100 years of american filmmaking, the American Film Institute announced a list of the 100 greatest movies ever made.
Francis Ford Coppola was involved in five of the films on the list.
The Coppola entries spoke volumes about the filmmaker's career.
Each of the movies had been made in the 1970s, at a time when Coppola was young and hungry and at the pinnacle of his abilities and powers.
For one glorious decade, Coppola exacted an influence on moviemaking virtually unapproached by any other filmmaker.
Coppola would be the first to concede that none of his movies in the 1980s and 1990s deserve to be on the list, not by a long shot.
But one cannot help but wonder what happened to Francis Ford Coppola.
Did he expend all of his artistic energy during the seventies?
Was he overrated as a filmmaker?
Was the failure of his company, along with his highly publicized financial problems, the driving force behind his decision to abandon his risky yet decisively creative endeavors in favor of safer and more profitable work?
Did his son's death give him occasion to reconsider his life as a filmmaker and, in fact, guide him toward a change in priorities?
Did he simply lose interest in putting himself on the line in film after film?
Did he grow complacent once he had rebuilt his empire?
That is an excerpt from the end of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Francis Ford Coppola, a filmmaker's life.
And it was written by Michael Schumacher.
And the fact that these questions appear at the very end of the book gives you an indication that there are not going to be any easy answers to this.
This was an absolute fantastic book.
It's a giant book, almost 500 pages.
I spent over 25 hours trying to really fundamentally understand who Francis Ford Coppola was as a person and any kind of lessons that we can draw from his career.
And one of the main lessons that I loved is that he was a very messy person.