Sam Wason in Francis Ford Coppola’s book “The Road to Heaven”

on the shelf

The Road to Heaven: The Francis Ford Coppola Story

Written by Sam Wasson
Harper: 400 pages, $33

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Utopia is in the eye of the beholder. to Sir Thomas More, who coined the word for his book of the same name in 1516, meant an imaginary island community carved into a satirical image of perfection. For many back-to-nature communities, this meant embracing agricultural life and deciding to leave industrial society behind. And for Francis Ford Coppolathe topic Sam Wasson“His new book”the way to heaven“Utopia meant changing the rules of how films were made: multitasking, breaking free from studio constraints, and constantly reinventing with an eye to the future.

And for a while, it actually worked. As Wasson wrote, Coppola’s career was “a massive, lifelong project of experimental self-creation that few filmmakers can afford—both emotionally and financially—and no one else has.” While he was producing his impressive collection of 1970s films – “The Godfather“(1972)”Conversation(1974) and The Godfather Part II (1974) – was also creating a kind of mass filmmaking fantasy, with ideas and technical innovations (and ideas for technical innovations) flowing in faster than anyone could record (including, at times). Coppola himself).

He dreamed of what he called “electronic cinema”, in which a film could be edited as quickly as it was shot, with the director calling up the shots from a mobile production facility. He welcomed aspiring filmmakers off the streets of San Francisco and into his home American Zoetrope Headquarters, a hive of chaos and creativity. Everything will fall apart after his famous failure in his musical.One from the heart(1981). But even this production, undertaken after Coppola had established his Zoetrope studio in Hollywood, was described by many involved as a whirlwind of collaborative excitement, the likes of which could never be replicated.

Francis Ford Coppola’s transgressions and failures are inseparable from his utopian dreams and the masterpieces he created in service of those dreams, as depicted by Sam Wasson in his book The Road to Heaven.

In a recent video interview from his home in Los Angeles, Wasson, whose previous books include the “Chinatown” study “The Big Goodbye,” and his mentor Janine Basinger“Hollywood: Oral history“, recalls how he pitched the project to Coppola: “This is the closest Icarus comes to the sun. No one else came close. So instead of framing this story as a story about failure, which is the way I think Hollywood views it, let’s frame it as a success story with an asterisk.

While growing up in Los Angeles, Wason heard stories about Coppola’s grand zoetrope experiment. “It sounded like a fairy tale,” he says. In fact, you can find all kinds of visitors and participants wandering around Zoetrope’s Hollywood store: Gene Kelly (help with musical numbers), David Lynch And Jean-Luc Godard (Working on personal projects that did not come to fruition), Warren Beatty (Only there for parties) and George Burns (whose old office was on the same lot).

As the smoke of Burns’ cigar mingled with the scent of Coppola’s bowl, “One from the Heart.” Production designer Dean Tavoularis An army of construction workers were hard at work building the film’s dream-like sets in Las Vegas and for the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro He sat down and bathed in his ornate lighting design. Coppola’s little daughter, Sofiahe had a free run of the toss.

“The Road to Heaven” puts you there and shows you How did Coppola get close to the sun? He grew up in New York, spent a year in bed with polio, and became a dreamer. He came out of his shell as a theater student at Hofstra University, studied film at UCLA, and became friends with a quiet young man named George Lucas (He produced Lucas’s first two films) and became determined to work outside what he saw as the superficial and ineffective Hollywood system. He gambled everything to make it happen.”Apocalypse now“In the Philippines, he won; Then he bet everything to make “One From the Heart” in Hollywood and lost. Deep in debt, he oversaw the dissolution of Zoetrope as he knew it.

He spent most of his later career as a director for hire, although he was still able to extract gems (“Rumble Fish”, “”Bram Stoker’s DraculaMore recently, Coppola has thrown himself into the modern indie scene he helped create, with “Youth without youth(2007)Tetro“(2009) and”Twixt(2011). And he’s still dreaming: He’s spent $140 million of his own money on a long-term project.Major cities“, an epic about an urban designer played by… Adam Drivernow in post-production yet another Alleged chaos practical.

Wasson captures the extremes of highs and lows with a mixture of precision and imagination, often bringing an appropriately gonzo tone to the story. He imagined the book as a kind of autobiography of a dream, fueled, he says, by questions: “How long do we have to sustain utopia before we can call it a success? If it lasts a second, does that mean it’s not a success? Perhaps Francis only lasted a second “But no one can beat that record. And I also wanted to ask, ‘What’s the studio now? Paramount is right down the street from me. They make five or 10 movies a year, and they’re sitting on all that real estate. They’re just banks.’

Coppola’s portrait of “The Road to Heaven” can be ugly; Wasson never looks away from his subject’s warts. He frequently cheated on his wife, Eleanor (whose book is in the first person about the making of “Apocalypse Now”).NotesAnd the subsequent documentary,Hearts of Darkness“, are masterpieces in their own right. He is often shown as the world’s most chaotic president. He has endured grief far beyond the film’s failure, losing his eldest son and creative friend Gio in 1986. Boating accident.

Sam Wason’s latest book is The Road to Heaven: The Francis Ford Coppola Story. (Harper, Gary Copeland)

Wasson credits Coppola with sharing his notes, conducting countless interviews, reading drafts, and insisting that the author tell the whole story. “It’s not always fun, but in the end it’s impressive,” Wasson says. “Human errors are all ours, but none of us, or very few of us, claim that kind of talent or ambition.”

When Wason visited Coppola recently on the set of Megalopolis, he found a man at peace. “He would sit there and say, ‘There’s no rush. There’s no rush.’ That’s a beautiful thing to see. For all that he’s given to the world and all that he’s suffered, as a man who built an empire and lost it, at the age of 84, he can sit there and be exactly where he is.” He wants to be.

Vognar is a freelance writer based in Houston.