Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola studied film at UCLA and while there, he made numerous short films. In the last 1960s, he started his professional career making low-budget films with Roger Corman and writing. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Patton. However, his name as a filmmaker was made in the 1970s as the co-writer and director of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, which both won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the latter being the first sequel to do so. Following their success he set about filming an ambitious version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, set during the Vietnam war. The film, entitled Apocalypse Now, was beset by numerous problems, including typhoons, drug abuse and nervous breakdowns, and was delayed so often it was nicknamed Apocalypse Whenever. The film was equally lauded and hated by critics when it finally appeared, and the cost nearly bankrupted Coppola's nascent studio American Zoetrope. The 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, directed by Fax Bahr and Eleanor Coppola, chronicles the difficulties the crew went through in finishing the film. After a lengthy layoff Coppola returned to directing, with some commercial and critical success. The Godfather Part III, the third installment in the Godfather saga, appeared in 1990.

He also wrote the screenplay for the 1974 remake of The Great Gatsby and produced George Lucas's breakthrough film, American Graffiti.

Coppola's daughter Sofia is also a filmmaker (see The Virgin Suicides).

Famous Films

• Apocalypse Now
• The Conversation
• Bram Stoker's Dracula
• The Godfather
• Jack
• Rumble Fish
• The Secret Garden

Less Well-known Films

• Tucker: The Man and His Dream, 1988, About Preston Tucker and the Tucker automobile. Francis Ford Coppola owns one of the remaining 46 Tuckers

External Links

• Bibliography at the University of California Berkeley library
• IMDb entry on Coppola

Referenced By