Francis Ford Coppola

After earning his theater arts degree from Hofstra in 1960, Coppola enrolled in UCLA Film School.[14][20] There he directed a short horror film called The Two Christophers, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "William Wilson," and Ayamonn the Terrible, a film about a sculptor's nightmares coming to life.[15] At UCLA, Coppola met undergraduate film major Jim Morrison. He later used Morrison's song "The End" in Apocalypse Now.[21]

In the early 1960s, Coppola was completely broke, forced to survive on $10 a week. Looking for a way to earn some extra money, he found that many colleagues from film school paid their bills filming erotic productions known as nudie-cuties or skin flicks, which showed nudity without implying any sexual act.

At 21, Coppola wrote the script for a short film called The Peeper, a comedy about a voyeur who tries to spy on a sensual photo shoot in the studio next to his apartment. The young filmmaker found an interested producer who gave him $3,000 to shoot the film. He hired Playboy Playmate Marli Renfro to play the model and his friend Karl Schanzer to play the voyeur. With The Peeper finished, the still-unknown Coppola found that the cartoonish aspects of the film alienated potential buyers, who did not find the 12-minute short exciting enough to show in adult theaters.[22]

After hearing many refusals, Coppola ended up in the office of Premier Pictures Company, a small production company that had invested in a nudie-cutie called The Wide Open Spaces, written and directed by Jerry Schafer, but the film was shelved for over a year. Both the shelved film and The Peeper featured Marli Renfro, so the producers decided to pay Coppola $500 to combine the scenes of his short film with those of Jerry Schafer's erotic western, creating a completely new film, Tonight for Sure, a softcore comedy released in 1962.[22]

Another production company, Screen Rite Pictures, hired Coppola to do a similar job: re-cut a German film titled Mit Eva fing die Sünde an, directed by Fritz Umgelter. He added some new 3-D color footage with British model June Wilkinson and some naked starlets, and earned a writer's and director's credit for the resulting new film, The Bellboy and the Playgirls. Although the filmmaker has always stated that he filmed only “15 minutes of new scenes,” the extra material represents about 50 minutes of a 93-minute feature film.[22]

Some years later, Coppola was hired as an assistant by Roger Corman and his first job for Corman was to dub and re-edit a Russian science fiction film, Nebo zovyot, which he turned into a sex-and-violence monster movie entitled Battle Beyond the Sun, released in 1962.[17] Impressed by Coppola's perseverance and dedication, Corman hired him as dialogue director on Tower of London (1962), sound man for The Young Racers (1963) and associate producer of The Terror (1963).[19]

While on location in Ireland for The Young Racers in 1963, Corman, ever alert for an opportunity to produce a decent movie on a shoestring budget, persuaded Coppola to make a low-budget horror movie with funds left over from the movie.[19] Coppola wrote a brief draft story idea in one night, incorporating elements from Hitchcock's Psycho,[23] and the result impressed Corman enough to give him the go-ahead. On a budget of $40,000 ($20,000 from Corman and $20,000 from another producer who wanted to buy the movie's English rights),[23] Coppola directed in a period of nine days Dementia 13, his first feature from his own screenplay. The film recouped its expenses and later became a cult film among horror buffs. It was on the sets of Dementia 13 that he met his future wife Eleanor Jessie Neil.

In 1965, Coppola won the annual Samuel Goldwyn Award for the best screenplay (Pilma, Pilma) written by a UCLA student.[14] This secured him a job as a scriptwriter with Seven Arts. In between, he co-wrote the scripts for This Property Is Condemned (1966) and Is Paris Burning? (1966). However, with fame still eluding him and partly out of desperation, Coppola bought the rights to the David Benedictus novel You're a Big Boy Now and fused it with a story idea of his own, resulting in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), which was his UCLA thesis project and earned Coppola his Master of Fine Arts Degree from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1967.[19][24] The film also received a theatrical release via Warner Bros and earned critical acclaim.[17] Geraldine Page was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

Following the success of You're a Big Boy Now, Coppola was offered the reins of the movie version of the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow, starring Petula Clark in her first American film and veteran Fred Astaire. Producer Jack L. Warner was nonplussed by Coppola's shaggy-haired, bearded, "hippie" appearance and generally left him to his own devices. He took his cast to the Napa Valley for much of the outdoor shooting, but these scenes were in sharp contrast to those obviously filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look to the film. Dealing with outdated material at a time when the popularity of film musicals was already waning, Coppola's result was only semi-successful, although Clark received a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. The film introduced to him George Lucas, who became his lifelong friend as well as production assistant in his next film The Rain People in 1969. It was written, directed, and initially produced by Coppola himself, though as the movie advanced, he exceeded his budget and the studio had to underwrite the remainder of the movie.[17] The film won the Golden Shell at the 1969 San Sebastian Film Festival.

In 1969, Coppola took it upon himself to subvert the studio system which he felt had stifled his visions, intending to produce mainstream pictures to finance off-beat projects and give first-time directors their chance to direct. He decided he would name his future studio "Zoetrope" after receiving a gift of zoetropes from Mogens Scot-Hansen, founder of a studio called Lanterna Film and owner of a famous collection of early motion picture-making equipment. While touring Europe, Coppola was introduced to alternative filmmaking equipment and inspired by the bohemian spirit of Lanterna Film, he decided he would build a deviant studio that would conceive and implement creative, unconventional approaches to filmmaking. Upon his return home, Coppola and George Lucas searched for a mansion in Marin County to house the studio. However, in 1969, with equipment flowing in and no mansion found yet, the first home for Zoetrope Studio became a warehouse in San Francisco on Folsom Street.[25] The studio went on to become an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV. In his 1968 book The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris wrote, "[Coppola] is probably the first reasonably talented and sensibly adaptable directorial talent to emerge from a university curriculum in film-making... [He] may be heard from more decisively in the future."[26]

Coppola in 1976

Coppola was at the forefront of a group of filmmakers known as the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the early 1970s with ideas that challenged conventional film-making. The group included Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas.[17][27]

Coppola co-wrote the script for Patton in 1970 along with Edmund H. North. This earned him his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. However, it was not easy for Coppola to convince Franklin J. Schaffner that the opening scene would work. Coppola later revealed in an interview,[28]

I wrote the script of Patton. And the script was very controversial when I wrote it, because they thought it was so stylized. It was supposed to be like, sort of, you know, The Longest Day. And my script of Patton was—I was sort of interested in the reincarnation. And I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I wasn't fired, but I was fired, meaning that when the script was done, they said, "Okay, thank you very much," and they went and hired another writer and that script was forgotten. And I remember very vividly this long, kind of being raked over the coals for this opening scene.

When the title role was offered to George C. Scott, he remembered having read Coppola's screenplay earlier. He stated flatly that he would accept the part only if they used Coppola's script. "Scott is the one who resurrected my version," said Coppola.[29]

The movie opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's famous military "Pep Talk" to members of the Third Army, set against a huge American flag. Coppola and North had to tone down Patton's actual language to avoid an R rating; in the opening monolog, the word "fornicating" replaced "fucking" when criticizing The Saturday Evening Post. Over the years, this opening monologue has become an iconic scene and has spawned parodies in numerous films, political cartoons and television shows.

The release of The Godfather in 1972 was a milestone in cinema. The near 3-hour-long epic, which chronicled the saga of the Corleone family, received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and fetched Coppola the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, which he shared with Mario Puzo, and Golden Globe Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay. However, Coppola faced several difficulties while filming The Godfather. He was not Paramount's first choice to direct the movie; Italian director Sergio Leone was initially offered the job but declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America.[30] Peter Bogdanovich was then approached, but he also declined the offer and made What's Up, Doc? instead; Bogdanovich has often said that he would have cast Edward G. Robinson in the lead had he accepted the film. According to Robert Evans, head of Paramount Pictures at the time, Coppola also did not initially want to direct the film because he feared it would glorify the Mafia and violence and thus reflect poorly on his Sicilian and Italian heritage. Evans specifically wanted an Italian-American to direct the film because his research had shown that previous films about the Mafia that were directed by non-Italians had fared dismally at the box office. He also wanted to, in his own words, "smell the spaghetti". When Coppola hit upon the idea of making the film a metaphor for American capitalism, however, he eagerly agreed to take the helm.[31] There was disagreement between Paramount and Coppola on the issue of casting; Coppola stuck to his plan of casting Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone, though Paramount wanted either Ernest Borgnine or Danny Thomas. At one point, Coppola was told by the then-president of Paramount that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture." After pleading with the executives, Coppola was allowed to cast Brando only if he appeared in the film for much less money than his previous films, perform a screen test, and put up a bond saying that he would not cause a delay in the production (as he had done on previous film sets).[32] Coppola chose Brando over Ernest Borgnine on the basis of Brando's screen test, which also won over the Paramount leadership. Brando later won an Academy Award for his portrayal, which he refused to accept. Coppola would later recollect:[23]

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.

After it was released, the film received widespread praise. It went on to win multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola. The film routinely features at the top in various polls for the greatest movies ever. It has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry was ranked third, behind Citizen Kane and Casablanca on the initial AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list by the American Film Institute in 1997. It was moved up to second when the list was published again in 2007.[33] Director Stanley Kubrick believed that The Godfather was possibly the greatest movie ever made and certainly the best-cast.[34]

Coppola's next film, The Conversation, further cemented his position as one of the most talented auteurs of Hollywood.[35] The movie was partly influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966)[36] and generated much interest when news leaked that the film utilized the very same surveillance and wire-tapping equipment that members of the Nixon administration used to spy on political opponents prior to the Watergate scandal. Coppola insisted that this was purely coincidental, as the script for The Conversation was completed in the mid-1960s (before the election of Richard Nixon) and the spying equipment used in the film was developed through research and use of technical advisers and not by newspaper stories about the Watergate break-in. However, the audience interpreted the film to be a reaction to both the Watergate scandal and its fallout. The movie was a critical success and Coppola won his first Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.

During the filming of The Conversation, Coppola wrote the screenplay for The Great Gatsby. However, in the commentary track to the DVD of The Godfather Coppola states, "I don't think that script was [actually] made."[37]

Coppola shot The Godfather Part II in parallel to The Conversation. It was the last major American motion picture to be filmed in Technicolor. George Lucas commented on the film after its five-hour-long preview, telling Coppola, "You have two films. Take one away, it doesn't work," referring to the movie's portrayal of two parallel storylines, one of a young Vito Corleone and the other of his son Michael. In the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the film (released in 2002), Coppola states that this film was the first major motion picture to use "Part II" in its title. Paramount was initially opposed to his decision to name the movie The Godfather Part II. According to Coppola, the studio's objection stemmed from the belief that audiences would be reluctant to see a film with such a title, as the audience would supposedly believe that, having already seen The Godfather, there was little reason to see an addition to the original story. However, the success of The Godfather Part II began the Hollywood tradition of numbered sequels. The movie was released in 1974 and went on to receive tremendous critical acclaim, with many deeming it superior to its predecessor.[38] It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and received 6 Oscars, including 3 for Coppola: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director.

The Godfather Part II is ranked as the No. 1 greatest movie of all time in TV Guide's "50 Best Movies of All Time"[39] and is ranked at No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time".[40] The film is also featured on movie critic Leonard Maltin's list of the "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century"[41] as well as Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.[42] It was also featured on Sight & Sound's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 2002, ranking at No. 4.[43]

Coppola was the third director to have two nominations for Best Picture in the same year. Victor Fleming was the first in 1939 with Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz; Alfred Hitchcock repeated the feat the next year with Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca. Since Coppola, two other directors have done the same: Herbert Ross in 1977 with The Goodbye Girl and The Turning Point and Steven Soderbergh in 2000 with Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Coppola, however, is the only one to have produced the pictures.

Following the success of The Godfather, The Conversation, and The Godfather Part II, Coppola began filming Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness set in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Coppola himself briefly appears as a TV news director. The production of the film was plagued by numerous problems, including typhoons, nervous breakdowns, the firing of Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen's heart attack, and extras from the Philippine military and half of the supplied helicopters leaving in the middle of scenes to fight rebels. It was delayed so often it was nicknamed Apocalypse When?[44] The 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, directed by Eleanor Coppola (Francis's wife), Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper, chronicles the difficulties the crew went through making Apocalypse Now and features behind-the-scenes footage filmed by Eleanor. After filming Apocalypse Now, Coppola famously stated,[45] "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."

The film was overwhelmingly lauded by critics when it finally appeared in 1979 and was selected for the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or along with The Tin Drum, directed by Volker Schlöndorff. When the film screened at Cannes, he quipped,[44] "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." Apocalypse Now's reputation has grown in time and it is now regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era and is frequently cited as one of the greatest movies ever made.[17][46][47][48] Roger Ebert considered it to be the finest film on the Vietnam War and included it in his list for the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest movies ever made.[49][50]

In 2001, Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now as Apocalypse Now Redux, restoring several sequences lost from the original 1979 cut of the film, thereby expanding its length to 200 minutes.

In 2019, Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now once more as Apocalypse Now (Final Cut), claiming that version to be his favorite.

Apocalypse Now marked the end of the golden phase of Coppola's career.[17] His musical fantasy One from the Heart, although pioneering the use of video-editing techniques that are standard practice in the film industry today, ended with a disastrous box-office gross of US$636,796 against a US$26 million budget,[51] far from enough to recoup the costs incurred in the production of the movie, and he was forced to sell his 23-acre Zoetrope Studio in 1983.[19] He would spend the rest of the decade working to pay off his debts. Zoetrope Studios finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990, after which its name was changed to American Zoetrope.[17]

Following One from the Heart's failure, Coppola co-directed Hammett along with Wim Wenders in the same year. Although Coppola was not credited for his effort, according to one source, "by the time the final version was released in 1982, only 30 percent of Wenders' footage remained and the rest was completely reshot by Coppola, whose mere 'executive producer' credit is just a technicality".[52]

In 1983, he directed The Outsiders, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Coppola credited his inspiration for making the film to a suggestion from middle school students who had read the novel. The Outsiders is notable for being the breakout film for a number of young actors who would go on to become major stars. These included major roles for Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell. Also in the cast were Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, and Tom Cruise. Matt Dillon and several others also starred in Coppola's related film, Rumble Fish, which was also based on a S. E. Hinton novel and filmed at the same time as The Outsiders on-location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Carmine Coppola wrote and edited the musical score, including the title song "Stay Gold," which was based upon a famous Robert Frost poem and performed for the movie by Stevie Wonder. The film was a moderate box-office success, drawing a revenue of $25 million[53] against a budget of $10 million.

Rumble Fish was based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Shot in black-and-white as an homage to German expressionist films, Rumble Fish centers on the relationship between a revered former gang leader (Mickey Rourke) and his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon). The film bombed at the box office, earning a meager $2.5 million against a budget of $10 million and once again aggravated Coppola's financial troubles.[54]

In 1984 Coppola directed the Robert Evans-produced The Cotton Club. The film was nominated for several awards, including Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture (Drama) and the Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Art-Direction. However, the film failed miserably at the box-office, recouping only $25.9 million of the $47.9 million privately invested by brothers Fred and Ed Doumani.[35]

The same year he directed an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre entitled Rip Van Winkle, where Harry Dean Stanton played the lead role.[55]

In 1986, Coppola directed Captain EO, a 17-minute space fantasy for Disney theme parks executive produced by George Lucas, starring singer Michael Jackson.[56]

In 1986 Coppola released the comedy Peggy Sue Got Married starring Kathleen Turner, Coppola's nephew Nicolas Cage, and Jim Carrey. Much like The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married centered around teenage youth. The film earned Coppola positive feedback and provided Kathleen Turner her first and only Oscar nomination. It was the first box-office success for Coppola since The Outsiders[57] and the film ranked number 17 on Entertainment Weekly's list of "50 Best High School Movies".[58]

The following year, Coppola re-teamed with James Caan for Gardens of Stone, but the film was overshadowed by the death of Coppola's eldest son Gian-Carlo Coppola during the film's production. The movie was not a critical success and performed poorly at the box office, earning only $5.6 million against a budget of $13 million.[59]

Coppola directed Tucker: The Man and His Dream the following year. A biopic based on the life of Preston Tucker and his attempt to produce and market the Tucker '48, Coppola had originally conceived the project as a musical with Marlon Brando after the release of The Godfather Part II. Ultimately it was Jeff Bridges who played the role of Preston Tucker. Budgeted at $24 million, the film received positive reviews and earned three nominations at the 62nd Academy Awards, although its $19.65 million box office was a disappointment. Two awards came its way: Martin Landau won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and Dean Tavoularis took BAFTA's honors for Best Production Design.

In 1989, Coppola teamed up with fellow Oscar-winning directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen for an anthology film called New York Stories. Coppola directed the Life Without Zoë segment, starring his sister Talia Shire and also co-wrote the film with his daughter Sofia Coppola. Life Without Zoë was mostly panned by critics and was generally considered the segment that brought the film's overall quality down.[60][61] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote a particularly scathing review, stating that "It's impossible to know what Francis Coppola's Life Without Zoë is. Co-written with his daughter Sofia, the film is a mystifying embarrassment; it's by far the director's worst work yet."[62]

Coppola at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival

In 1990, he released the third and final chapter of The Godfather series: The Godfather Part III. Coppola felt that the first two films had told the complete Corleone saga. Coppola intended Part III to be an epilogue to the first two films.[63] In his audio commentary for Part II, he stated that only a dire financial situation caused by the failure of One from the Heart (1982) compelled him to take up Paramount's long-standing offer to make a third installment.[64] Coppola and Puzo preferred the title The Death of Michael Corleone, but Paramount Pictures found that unacceptable.[63] While not as critically acclaimed as the first two films,[65][66][67] it was still a box office success, earning $136 million against a budget of $54 million.[68] Some reviewers criticized the casting of Coppola's daughter Sofia, who had stepped into the leading role of Mary Corleone which had been abandoned by Winona Ryder just as filming began.[65] Despite this, The Godfather Part III went on to gather 7 Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. The film failed to win any of these awards, the only film in the trilogy to do so.

In September 2020, for the film's 30th anniversary, it was announced that a new cut of the film titled Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone would have a limited theatrical release in December 2020 followed by digital and Blu-ray.[69] Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it "vindicates" its status among the trilogy and his daughter Sofia's performance.[70][71]

In 1992, Coppola directed and produced Bram Stoker's Dracula. Adapted from Bram Stoker's novel, it was intended to be more faithful to the book than previous film adaptations.[72] Coppola cast Gary Oldman in the film's title role, with Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Anthony Hopkins in supporting roles. The movie became a box-office hit, grossing $82,522,790 domestically, making it the 15th highest-grossing film of the year.[73] It fared even better overseas grossing $133,339,902 for a total worldwide gross of $215,862,692 against a budget of $40 million,[74] making it the 9th highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.[75] The film won Academy Awards for Costume Design, Makeup and Sound Editing.

Coppola's next project was Jack, which was released on August 9, 1996. It starred Robin Williams as Jack Powell, a ten-year-old boy whose cells are growing at four times the normal rate, so at the age of ten he looks like a 40-year-old man. With Diane Lane, Brian Kerwin, and Bill Cosby, Jack also featured Jennifer Lopez, Fran Drescher and Michael McKean in supporting roles. Although a moderate box-office success, grossing $58 million domestically on an estimated $45 million budget,[76] it was panned by critics, many of whom disliked the film's abrupt contrast between actual comedy and tragic melodrama.[77] It was also unfavorably compared with the 1988 film Big, in which Tom Hanks also played a child in a grown man's body.[78] Most critics felt that the screenplay was poorly written and not funny and the dramatic material was unconvincing and unbelievable.[79] Other critics felt that Coppola was too talented to be making this type of film.[80] Although ridiculed for making the film, Coppola has defended it, saying he is not ashamed of the final cut of the movie. He had been friends with Robin Williams for many years and had always wanted to work with him as an actor.[81] When Williams was offered the screenplay for Jack, he said he would only agree to do it if Coppola agreed to sign on as director.

The last film Coppola directed in the 1990s, The Rainmaker was based on the 1995 novel of the same name by John Grisham. An ensemble courtroom drama, the film was well received by critics, earning an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[82] Roger Ebert gave The Rainmaker three stars out of four, remarking, "I have enjoyed several of the movies based on Grisham novels... but I've usually seen the storyteller's craft rather than the novelist's art being reflected. By keeping all of the little people in focus, Coppola shows the variety of a young lawyer's life, where every client is necessary and most of them need a lot more than a lawyer."[83] James Berardinelli also gave the film three stars out of four, saying that "the intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise" and that the film "stands above any other filmed Grisham adaptation".[84] Grisham said of the film, "To me it's the best adaptation of any of [my books]... I love the movie. It's so well done."[85] The film grossed about $45 million domestically.[86] This would be more than the estimated production budget of $40 million, but a disappointment compared with previous films adapted from Grisham novels.

In the late 1980s, Coppola started considering concepts for a motion picture based upon the 19th-century novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, and in 1991 Coppola and Warner Bros. began discussing the project as well as two others involving the life of J. Edgar Hoover and the children's novel The Secret Garden. These discussions led to negotiations for Coppola to both produce and direct the Pinocchio project for Warner as well as The Secret Garden (which was made in 1993 and produced by American Zoetrope, but directed by Agnieszka Holland) and Hoover, which never came to fruition. (A film was eventually made by Clint Eastwood in 2011 titled J. Edgar, which was distributed by Warner.)

But, in mid-1991, Coppola and Warner came to disagreement over the compensation to be paid to Coppola for his directing services on Pinocchio.[87] The parties deferred this issue and finally a settlement was reached in 1998, when the jurors in the resultant court case awarded Coppola $20 million as compensation for losing the Pinocchio film project. However, they also awarded him a further $60 million in punitive damages on top, stemming from his charges that Warner Bros. sabotaged his intended version. This is the largest civil financial verdict ever against a Hollywood studio.

During the filming of Contact on December 28, 1996, Coppola filed a lawsuit against Carl Sagan and Warner Bros. Sagan had died a week earlier[88][89] and Coppola claimed that Sagan's novel Contact was based on a story the pair had developed for a television special back in 1975 titled First Contact.[88] Under their development agreement, Coppola and Sagan were to split proceeds from the project as well as any novel Sagan would write with American Zoetrope and Children's Television Workshop Productions. The television program was never produced, but in 1985, Simon & Schuster published Sagan's Contact and Warner Bros. moved forward with development of a film adaptation. Coppola sought at least $250,000 in compensatory damages and an injunction against production or distribution of the film.[88] Even though Sagan was shown to have violated some of the terms of the agreement, the case was dismissed in February 1998 because Coppola had waited too long to file suit.[90]

In August 1999, Coppola was brought in by MGM to supervise another re-editing of the film Supernova, costing $1 million at his American Zoetrope facility in Northern California. This work included digitally placing Angela Bassett's and James Spader's faces on the bodies of (a computer-tinted) Robin Tunney and Peter Facinelli so that their characters could enjoy a love scene.[91] But even Coppola's re-edited version had negative test screening and didn't get the PG-13 rating by the MPAA that the studio wanted. Creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos, whose special effects were mostly cut out from the film, said that Walter Hill wanted the film to be much more grotesque, strange and disturbing while MGM wanted to make it more of a hip, sexy film in space and they didn't want a full-blown makeup effects film. "I hope that my experience in the film industry has helped improve the picture and rectified some of the problems that losing a director caused," said Coppola.[91] By October 1999, MGM decided to sell the film.[92] The film was eventually released on January 17, 2000, almost two years later than planned.[93]

After a 10-year hiatus, Coppola returned to directing with Youth Without Youth in 2007, based on the novella of the same name by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. The film was poorly reviewed, currently holding a 30% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[94] It was made for about $19 million and was given a limited release, only managing $2,624,759 at the box-office.[95] As a result, Coppola announced his plans to produce his own films in order to avoid the marketing input that goes into most films that results in trying to make films appeal to too wide an audience.

In 2009, Coppola released Tetro. It was "set in Argentina, with the reunion of two brothers. The story follows the rivalries born out of creative differences passed down through generations of an artistic Italian immigrant family."[96] The film received generally positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, the film has an average metascore of 63% based on 19 reviews.[97] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 70% of critics gave positive reviews based on 105 reviews with an average score of 6.3/10.[98] Overall, the Rotten Tomatoes consensus was: "A complex meditation on family dynamics, Tetro's arresting visuals and emotional core compensate for its uneven narrative."[98] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars, praising the film for being "boldly operatic, involving family drama, secrets, generations at war, melodrama, romance and violence," Ebert also praised Vincent Gallo's performance and claimed that Alden Ehrenreich is "the new Leonardo DiCaprio".[99] Todd McCarthy of Variety gave the film a B+ judging that "when Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods".[100] Richard Corliss of TIME gave the film a mixed review, praising Ehrenreich's performance, but claiming Coppola "has made a movie in which plenty happens, but nothing rings true".[101] It has made $2,636,774 worldwide,[102] against a budget of $5,000,000.

Twixt, starring Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Joanne Whalley, and Bruce Dern and narrated by Tom Waits, was released to film festivals in late 2011[103] and was released theatrically in early 2012. It received critical acclaim in France[104] but mostly negative reviews elsewhere.[105]

In 2015, Coppola stated "...That's why I ended my career: I decided I didn't want to make what you could call 'factory movies' anymore. I would rather just experiment with the form, and see what I could do, and [make things] that came out of my own. And little by little, the commercial film industry went into the superhero business, and everything was on such a scale. The budgets were so big, because they wanted to make the big series of films where they could make two or three parts. I felt I was no longer interested enough to put in the extraordinary effort a film takes [nowadays]."[106]

Distant Vision is a semi-autobiographical unfinished live broadcast project wrought in real-time. Proof of concepts were tested before limited audiences at Oklahoma City Community College in June 2015 and UCLA School of Theater in July 2016.[107]

In April 2019, Coppola announced that he plans to direct Megalopolis, which he had been developing for many years prior.[108] Speaking to Deadline he said "[...] I plan this year to begin my longstanding ambition to make a major work utilizing all I have learned during my long career, beginning at age 16 doing theater, and that will be an epic on a grand scale, which I've titled Megalopolis".[109] He had planned to direct this movie, a story about the aftermath and reconstruction of New York City after a mega-disaster, but after the city was hit by the real-life disaster of the September 11 attacks, the project was seen as being too sensitive.[110]

In 1971, Coppola produced George Lucas' first film, THX 1138. Shortly after completion of production they brought the finished film to Warner Bros., along with several other scripts for potential projects at their newly founded company, American Zoetrope. However, studio executives strongly disliked all the scripts, including THX and demanded that Coppola repay the $300,000 they had loaned him for the Zoetrope studio, as well as insisting on cutting five minutes from the film. The debt nearly closed Zoetrope and forced Coppola to reluctantly focus on The Godfather.[111]

His company American Zoetrope also administers the Zoetrope Virtual Studio, a complete motion picture production studio for members only. Launched in June 2000, the culmination of more than four years work, it brings together departments for screenwriters, directors, producers and other filmmaker artists, plus new departments for other creative endeavors. Filmmaker members can workshop a wide range of film arts, including music, graphics, design and film and video.

Coppola, with his family, expanded his business ventures to include winemaking in California's Napa Valley, when in 1975 he purchased the former home and adjoining vineyard of Gustave Niebaum in Rutherford, California using proceeds from the first movie in the Godfather trilogy.[112] His winery produced its first vintage in 1977 with the help of his father, wife and children stomping the grapes barefoot and every year the family has a harvest party to continue the tradition.[113]

After purchasing the property, he produced wine under the Niebaum-Coppola label. When he purchased the former Inglenook Winery chateau in 1995,[114] he renamed the winery Rubicon Estate Winery in 2006. On April 11, 2011, Coppola acquired the Inglenook trademark[115] paying more, he said, for the trademark than he did for the entire estate[116] and announced that the estate would once again be known by its historic original name, Inglenook. Its grapes are now entirely organically grown.

George Altamura, a real estate developer announced in 2003 that he had partnered with several people, including Coppola, in a project to restore the Uptown Theater in downtown Napa, California in order to create a live entertainment venue.[117]

Coppola is also the owner of Francis Ford Coppola Presents, a lifestyle brand under which he markets goods from companies he owns or controls. It includes films and videos, resorts, cafes, a literary magazine, a line of pastas and pasta sauces called Mammarella Foods and a winery.[118][119][120]

The Francis Ford Coppola Winery near Geyserville, California,[121] located on the former Chateau Souverain Winery,[122] where he has opened a family-friendly facility, is influenced by the idea of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen,[123] with swimming pools, bocce courts and a restaurant. The winery displays several of Coppola's Oscars along with memorabilia from his movies, including Vito Corleone's desk from The Godfather and a restored 1948 Tucker Sedan as used in Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

In October 2018, Coppola and family purchased the Vista Hills winery in Dayton, Oregon, and in 2019 renamed it Domaine de Broglie.

Palazzo Margherita in Bernalda, owned by Coppola

Included in the Francis Ford Coppola Presents lifestyle brand are several hotels and resorts around the world. The Blancaneaux Lodge in Belize, which from the early 1980s was a family retreat until it was opened to the public in 1993 as a 20-room luxury resort[124] and The Turtle Inn, in Placencia, Belize,[125] (both of which have won several prestigious awards including "Travel + Leisure's World's Best: Best Resort in Central & South America"); La Lancha in Lago Petén Itzá, Guatemala;[126] Jardín Escondido in Buenos Aires, Argentina[127] and Palazzo Margherita in Bernalda, Italy.[128]

In San Francisco, Coppola owns a restaurant named Cafe Zoetrope, located in the Sentinel Building where American Zoetrope is based.[129] It serves traditional Italian cuisine and wine from his personal estate vineyard. For 14 years from 1994, Coppola co-owned the Rubicon restaurant in San Francisco along with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Rubicon closed in August 2008.[130]

Coppola bought out the San Francisco-based magazine City in the 1970s, with the intent of publishing a "service magazine" that informed readers about sights and activities in selected cities.[131] The magazine was unsuccessful, and he lost $1.5 million on this venture.[132]

In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine devoted to short stories and design. The magazine publishes fiction by emerging writers alongside more recognizable names, such as Woody Allen, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Mary Gaitskill, and Edward Albee; as well as essays, including ones from Mario Vargas Llosa, David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Each issue is designed, in its entirety, by a prominent artist, one usually working outside his / her expected field. Previous guest designers include Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Marjane Satrapi, Guillermo del Toro, David Bowie, David Byrne, and Dennis Hopper. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of All-Story.