Francis Ford Coppola: Part 1

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0:48That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me, I've been slightly overwhelmed. But good friends who know us both, Wes Anderson, Fisher Stevens, Greta Gerwig, assured me, actually, Ruthie, the two of you are rather alike. Do they mean being a chef is like being a director, or producing a movie is like running a restaurant, or choosing the grapes for your vineyard is like choosing the herbs for your fish?

1:36Or most of all, do they mean we both have our family involved in everything we do? I'm happy to take any of the above. Francis and I are here together after a long lunch in the River Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families, menus and friends, and much, much more. Well, thank you for the lovely comments that you've made, Ruth. So for lunch today, you had, as a starter, puntarella, which is a Roman salad which you only have certain times of year. And basically, you know, Italians have a taste for bitter. Puntarella is really a bitter salad. So it comes from a kind of winter Cecoria plant, which is divided and cut up in a certain way and served with olive oil and anchovy and capers sometimes and sometimes not.

2:30And this is the famous puntarella salad that you get in a Roman restaurant. It is a great way to start a meal, I think, if you're going to have. I love puntarella. We didn't eat it when we were kids because we ate food that was either Neapolitan from my mother's side or Lucanese Bernalda, the region in the extreme south of Italy, which is my mother's side. Well, it says here, puntarella, it says two puntarella heads. The vegetable is chicoria, and it's a winter chicoria. 12 salted anchovy fillet cut into small pieces, 4 tablespoons red wine vinegar, one garb co-peeled and finely chopped, some dried red chili, peperoncino rosso, and then 6 tablespoons of virgin olive oil.

3:19And you prepare, you slice the buds into these little thin stalks and you place in the water a bowl of ice water to crisp and they'll curl up. Combine the anchovies, garlic, and chili and cover with vinegar. Leave for 15 minutes. I had six tablespoons of olive oil, spin, dry the puntarella segments, and then put in a bowl and spoon the stuff over it, and that's your puntarella salad. So you grew up in a house that served incredible food when a lot of southern Italians came to you. From my father and grandfather. From your father and grandfather, came to the United States. I grew up in upstate New York, 100 miles north of New York City, And when we went out to an Italian restaurant, we would have veal parmesan.

4:03We would have the meatballs and spaghetti, the food of the Godfather. But even meatballs, if you know what you're doing, to really make meatballs, well, number one, you have to have three components. A meatball is one-third pork, one-third veal, and one for beef, and with a lot of breadcrumbs. But the scene in The Godfather, if we can talk about that, I watched it again, and I thought, you know what? The way he said, you know, and then throw in this and add that. So nonchalant. Yeah, when I wrote that scene, I wrote it the way I knew how to do it. And I said, well, first you brown the sausage.

4:42Did he say to fry it? And Mario said, gangsters don't say brown. Gangsters say fry. So we changed it to fry. And the secret is true. The secret of a good meat sauce is a little bit of sugar. You add like a half a tablespoon of sugar to a meat sauce. So the recipes were authentic, but we tried to give them a gangster type of vocabulary. Although I must say that the reason I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful is because it was the first gangster film that had a lot of kids running around on the scenes. Yeah, of course. You never would gangster pictures as though they didn't have kids.

5:23But, of course, an Italian wedding was all the kids sliding around. So you grew up in a family that cooked Italian food in New York. In New York. Speaking Italian, that's how we started. Did you actually speak Italian? No, no, no. I only heard some cursive, but my mother didn't want us to be... Like, Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. Yeah, it was very sick. And the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America was bullied by the one that came before. And the one who came before the Italians were the Irish. And the Irish used to beat up on the Italians. The policeman and the godfather, right?

6:01The police were all Irish and they used to pick. That's the way it works. So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you experience food other than Italian food? Or was eating always eating? If you see The Godfather, you realize that. I knew that Italians used to take out Chinese food. Every street corner in New York had a German delicatessen, a candy store, what we called a candy store, which was a soda fountain where they sold Coke, which was five cents, and they would make it to put the syrup, and it wouldn't be in a bottle, and model airplanes, and a German delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake.

6:46So there there would be a mix. There would be a German. And always a Chinese restaurant. In the neighborhoods there were a lot of Polish people and Italians because they were both Catholic and there were a lot of Italian-Polish weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went to a lot of Polish weddings and I knew what Polish food was like. They had kielbasa, whereas we had saziche. America was a wonderful mixture of cultures. And we want to keep that. We want to keep that. We want to keep that. And then, should we talk about polio? We'll talk about anything you want. You ask me a question.

7:23I'd be interested in the fact that as a child you had polio and spent how long in bed? I spent the whole sixth grade, so a whole year, a year and a little more than a year. And in those days, polio, you know, of course, it had also affected adults. President Franklin Roosevelt had polio. But there was an epidemic for children in 1949. And I was a Cub Scout, and I went on a Cub Scout camp out, and it was raining. And the next morning, I had the symptoms. And, you know, polio only affects you one night. In other words, the night of the fever is the night you have it. and then you get over it, but the damage is to your spinal cord.

8:07And Napolio destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord so that, I mean, literally when I woke up, I woke up in a ward with like 800 kids piled up everywhere crying on a whole row of iron lungs because the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe. So they had to be in a machine that breathed. and they were crying for their parents. It was a nightmare. And then I felt so sad for all these kids, and then I got out of bed. I tried to get out of bed. I just fell on the floor, and I realized I couldn't walk. And I was never too scared at first, but I stayed there for about a week more, and then finally they took me home.

8:52My father was very sharp. The method, they took me to this, I remember, French doctor who gave me a big speech of like I was a soldier and I was going to be a good soldier. And then he told me the prognosis, which was, he says, well, you'll be able to do everything a normal person could do but always in a wheelchair. And I was just, I hadn't realized that it was that serious. So I remember being very emotional. And we all went to have my favorite. We all went to have Chinese food and crying in the Mugu guy pen. and they took me home. My father, they pinned me in the bed so I couldn't move. That was the way they thought you should treat it.

9:36And it didn't make sense to my father. He heard about another method, which was the Sister Kinney method. Sister Kinney was an Australian nurse who had decided that rather than make the paralyzed victim immobilize so they don't damage their muscle, that instead you did therapy. You did the opposite. My father went and talked to them and got the Polio Infantile Paralysis Association to pay for a Sister Kenny therapist came. And this lady came. Her name was Miss Wilson, a wonderful lady. And she worked on me. And it was very gentle exercises, but they were. And I was in this room. I just watched television.

10:21I had puppets. I played with puppets. Well, the puppets is interesting because did that make you think about film? No, it made me think about having friends. I wanted to be with kids. There was a show on television in those days sponsored by Horn and Hard Art. Do you remember the automat? It was called The Children's Hour. And it was all these talented kids singing and dancing, and I just wanted to be part of that. When I grew up in the 50s, there was Howdy Doody. Well, Howdy Doody, I can tell you Howdy Doody stories, too. My parents took me. I was actually, they knew somebody who worked on the Howdy Doody program.

10:58And you were in the peanut gallery? And we were in the audience. I was in the peanut gallery. They were called the peanut gallery. The peanut gallery. Remember this song? It's Howdy Doody time. It's Howdy Doody time. Come on, let's go. It's time to start the show. Well, kids, let's go. God, I haven't sung that song. For a long time. But he didn't look like that. One night I said to my parents, look, it went like that. And I couldn't do that with my left arm, you know, and they were shocked. And then eventually I was able to, I never could run fast, though, after that. But I was a good wrestler.

11:38I went to the same military school that Donald Trump went to. I went to many high schools. And I went to New York Military Academy. When did you study film? I was a theater student, and I was very successful in college. I directed a lot of plays, and I was slated to go to the Yale Drama School. And then one afternoon, I saw a movie in a theater by the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, and I saw that and came out and said, Wow, I never saw anything like that. I'm going to be a film director. Was it Potemkin? No, it was October, the 10 days that shook the world, and I went to the UCLA Film School.

12:18And so California then, so that was in what? That would have been in what year? That was in 1960. Yeah, so that was the time when you went to the LA Film School. I went to UCLA. Yeah, and what was that like? Well, I was a graduate student. I was very poor. I ran away from military school, so my father was not going to help me very much. He was very angry because when I ran away from military school, he had to pay anyway for that year and he didn't never forgive me for that so when i went to ucla i had about a dollar 25 a day to live on so i had 25 cents for breakfast uh 50 cents for lunch and 50 cents of uh for dinner so i pretty much ate every night craft macaroni and cheese dinners and I just got fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter.

13:10And I was very depressed. I had no money. I had no car. I had no girlfriend. I was pretty miserable. And there was a time when I thought I would quit. And I had a wonderful directing teacher, a woman, who was the only woman director in Hollywood during the 30s. Her name was Miss Arzner, Dorothy Arzner. She was great. She was so smart. And we all, everyone who studied with Miss Arsner, we call her Miss Arsner because we respected her so much. And she was just terrific. And did she get your first film? No, what happened was I was there one night very depressed and I pretty much decided that I was going to go back to New York and get a job as a stage manager because I would get a salary.

14:00And she said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm Miss Arsner. I'm just miserable. I'm going to go back. I've decided I'm going to quit, and I'm going to get a job as a stage manager. And she looked at me, and she said, you know, I've been around, and I know. You'll make it. I know. And she left. And because she told me that, and we looked up to her so much. You look her up. She was a great woman. Miss Ardha said, you'll make it. I've been around, and I know. I stayed. and ultimately I stayed at UCLA and I won this gold winner prize which was a writing award and it was$2 ,000 and that was a big turning point for my life.

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16:03Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little... to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. There were two schools that were competing. There was USC, which was considered more of a technically oriented school, and there was more UCLA, which was more sort of artsy-fartsy kind of directors who wanted to be the new Fellini and the new this and that.

16:56So there was a competition between USC and UCLA, and I emerged as a star of UCLA because I won the Goldwood Prize, and then I made as a thesis a feature film, which was unheard of, A commercial film, as my thesis film, was a movie in New York called You're a Big Boy Now. And I got married. I had two kids. And, you know, I always thought that being married with kids was good for me because instead of, you know, going out, having fun, screwing around, I was concerned with supporting my family. I had a wife and two kids. I loved my kids. Gio was my first. Giancarlo and Sofia. And Roman. and Sophia was born during the Godfather.

17:43So what happened was I got a job to direct Fred Astaire at a big musical called Finian's Rainbow. And as I was directing this, I was a young guy with a crew of adults all wearing suits and ties. I noticed there was a skinny kid watching what was going on. And I went over to him and I said, Hi, what are you doing? What are you looking at? He said, nothing much. I said, well, you know, what are you doing here? He says, well, I'm a USC student, and I won a scholarship to observe. I came over to look at the Warner Brothers' animation department, but I heard there was a UCLA student directing this movie, so I thought I'd watch.

18:24I said, oh, great. What's your name? He said, George Lucas. And I said, well, you want to come every day and watch the film? He said, sure. I said, well, on one condition, you can. He says, what's that? I said, well, you've got to come up with a brilliant idea every day. And he said, I'll do that. And he did. And so I met this wonderful kid who, of course, became a... What year would that have been? Well, that would be Finian's Rainbow. So I had a little boy like about two. So that must have been about 1965 at the worst. And that made a marriage between UCLA because then not only did I meet George, but I met all of the USC guys and they met all the UCLA guys.

19:09so that we began to, then we went off and made a film. I said, if you come off and help me with this film, I'll sponsor your first film. And we made a film called The Rain People, where we actually rode across the country in a bus and editing, and then he made a film called THXL38. And we founded, that's when it became American Zoetra. We founded a company, and we decided to put it in San Francisco. Why San Francisco away from Los Angeles, the studios? Yeah, but by being in San Francisco with no money, it determined that we, as we always knew, picture and sound equally contribute to a movie being good.

19:52But sound is much cheaper. So we made a big investment in sound. And that really changed because there was a company in San Francisco called Dolby that was very nice and liked us. and always helped us, but they benefited because they saw everything we were doing. And we changed movies, both in terms of the sound, and then when George made Star Wars, he decided that if we could shoot in a digital format, they wouldn't have to convert from film to digital for effects and back to film. So we really, because of our poverty, we changed the face of cinema around the world through Dolby. Do you remember, have memories of food at that time?

20:39Of food? Well, I... Was Lucas, did he like good food, Lucas? I was a good army cook. I could cook for 50 people. Yeah. And I always used to cook for everyone, but I... Everyone on the set? Yeah, I could cook dinner for 50, 60 people with no trouble at all. I have done it. Yeah. I once went to the... I went to teach in Cuba. I was invited along with Terry Malick and some people who go to Cuba and go at the Cuban Film School. And I said to them, I said, I'd like to cook for the students. And they said, well, what do you want to cook? I said, well, I don't know. Do you have tomatoes? They said, sure.

21:16I said, do you have basil, whatever that was called? They had basil. I said, do you have any pasta? No, we don't have pasta. Well, do you have potatoes? They said, yeah, and flour. So I made gnocchi. And they said, but you can't just make it for the students. We're a socialist country. You have to make it for everybody. So I said, well, how many people would have to eat? They said 500. So we cooked gnocchi for 500 people. But we did it. That's a lot. We did it. That's a lot. And it was great. And they had the right potatoes? Because for gnocchi, you need those very dry potatoes. I got whatever potatoes they gave me.

21:54There was no selection in Cuba. And then the next year I went. They said, are you going to cook again? I said, yes, this time I brought pasta. we had a pasta company. So I cooked at Cuba maybe three, four times. With all of you in Spielberg and Lucas, and who was part of that other Scorsese? Did you all have meals together? Was eating out? Of all of them, the only one who were my kind of Italian was Marty. It was his parent, his mother. He wrote a very good cookbook, which you can still get. It's hard. This is Catherine Scorsese. One thing, moving ahead to The Godfather, is that we all know the scene.

22:42Of course, we know the scene we were just talking about of cooking the sauce or getting the cannoli. But for me, it's about citrus as well. Citrus? Yeah, because, you know, the two scenes that I thought... That was an accident. I always had someone bring an orange. Yeah. But the orange became a symbol. I was going to talk about the two scenes, one of them which was in the market when he's choosing the oranges. Yeah, and then he's shot, right, when Brando is shot. That was right across the street. That's a premonition that he's going to be, he realizes he's going to be killed. There was this orange motif that was not true.

23:18It's just that I had always said, you know, well, bring an orange as a gift from Florida or something. It's very Sicilian, though, isn't it? I didn't know that. It became a symbol, but I didn't know that. And what about the scene at the very end when he's playing with his child? That scene they cut out of the script because they felt... Can you describe that scene? That's the scene where... Yeah, well, let me tell you the circumstance of it. That scene was cut out of the script because they figured if we just cut to the graveyard, you'll know he died. So why did you have to see him die? But I wanted to shoot him dying in the tomato patch.

23:51So when I was shooting the wedding, I had got this little tomato patch developed. In fact, we had to bring the tomatoes, fly them in at great expense from Chicago because we had no tomatoes. And during lunch, I was over there trying to get the shot of him with his grandson. And the minder that they had on me said, you can't do this. This scene's been cut. I said, well, let me just get it. I can get one shot, and I'm going to go to lunch. I said, and I did the one shot, and then I went to lunch. and the kid didn't want to do it. So Brandon said, let me do something I do for my grandkids. And he cut, he, on his own, I didn't know what he was going to do.

24:34Is that true? He cut the orange and he did it and he did it like a monster and the kid cried. So it became memorable and it got put in the picture and then I shot the rest of it of him running around. So that was a scene that they had tried to cut out that because of Brando's ingenuity, it ended in. They're running around and playing a game, and the child actually thinks that him falling down and dying is part of the game, doesn't he? He doesn't realize that it's time. But it was kind of the movie. It's luck that Brando did that, because they were there, were standing there wanting me to cut. When Brando did his first day, everyone saw his first day and they said oh this stuff is too dark and he's mumbling and we hate it one of the people who was sort of on my side you know said to me you know for instance they're going to fire you this weekend because they never fire a director in the middle of the week they always fire the director on the weekend so the new director has time to come in and get everything organized so he said they're going to fire you this weekend so knowing that i just that that day that I heard that, I fired the 15 people that were in on the cabal that were going to fire me.

25:54And no one knew that I even had the authority to do that. I just did it because I wanted to reshoot the shot of Brando that they didn't like. And when I said I want to do it, they said, no, don't do it. That's when he said they're going to fire you. So I fired everyone. I went up and I reshot the scene. What was the scene? What was it? It was the first scene where he comes in and sits has the meeting with Sollozzo in the olive oil factory. So they thought it was too dark and Brando was mumbly. So I reshot it. So then everyone had to wait and see in the weekend. And everyone was saying, can he do that?

26:33Maybe he can't. And is he fired? I didn't know. I thought they were going to fire me anyway. But they waited. And then they decided that the reshoot was much better. and so they said they weren't going to fire me and the head of the company brought me to the Palm Steakhouse and bought me and my father dinner and said that they were going to stay with me. I'm always interested in meetings that take place in restaurants. So they took you to a restaurant. They took me to the Palm Restaurant, which I think Charlie Boudon owned part of, and my father too, and they said they weren't going to fire me.

27:07But the truth of the matter is that in the movie, it's the first scene. In other words, they didn't know what they were talking about. The Godfather was dark. That was its style. That scene where he's just talking. And Brando won an Oscar for The Godfather. He always mumbled. He told me he mumbled deliberately because it was easier to add to what lines later he wanted to because his mouth didn't let him do it. Michael Caine said to me that almost every movie that was offered to him or that he thought of from being offered a part in was done in a restaurant. So I'm really interested in restaurants and work and restaurants, how people go to restaurants and how they use restaurants.

27:48People do, I always say, very private things in a very public space. They'll fire people in a restaurant. Oh, there were a bunch of famous restaurants, show business restaurants. Sardi's. What were they? Sardi's in New York. Elaine's in New York. Elaine was a lady much like you. Did you know Elaine? No, I never met her. She conducted a sort of... Salon. Yeah, it's more like a salon. But in Hollywood, would people take you to a restaurant? I used to write with Mario Puzo, and I would go with him because he loved to gamble. I would go with him to the Peppermill Casino in Reno, and we would work in the Peppermill because in a gambling casino, you can order ham and eggs at 3 in the morning or anything else, and then you can go.