Francis Ford Coppola

31:17Once sound came, it just stopped the whole thing and they went back making hokey plays, old -fashioned plays. So this wonderful accident that silent movies were invented for F. Television had been invented first. Who knows? I mean, television later, when it was invented, benefited from copying what movies were like, but movies wouldn't have been like that if they had sound. So it was a great gift. And then, of course, sound came about around 1929. And, incidentally, I don't know if you know this, but my grandfather, Augustino Coppola, who was a great tool and die maker, machinist, was hired by a company in Fort Leigh to make the Vitaphone.

32:03And I have a picture of him. I'll get it for you. So my family, the Coppola family, being in that he made the machine that did the jessinger with Al Jolson. And my other grandfather, my mother's side, was importing on the movie theater and was importing silent movies for Italian immigrants. So our family is five generations in the movie business. My granddaughter, just Gia, made a movie called The Last Showgirl. She is the fifth generation of our family in the movie business. It's incredible. It's amazing. What's the relationship between painting and film? Did you see Megalopolis? I did. Okay, so you know, a megalopolis takes the position that all artists control time.

32:56And that a painter is freezing a moment of time. Or as Gertus says, architectures frozen music, or dances time and space. So we control time, artists control time. And so a painting is a movie, but frozen in one moment of time. It's a beautiful idea. The artist freezing a moment in time. And it's a powerful way to live with that understanding. The reason I wanted to talk about the conversation first was I originally saw it in film school 40 years ago and I watched it again this week, having not seen it in 40 years. And I feel like I remembered every single image from 40 years ago. And that's not typical for me.

33:44I usually remember the story, but I didn't really remember the story, but I remembered the images. Interesting. And they, yeah, again, can't explain it, but it was an interesting experience. Like, I've seen this. I remember this. I remember how he was sitting when he was playing saxophone. I remember the speaker sitting next to him. I remember what the apartment looked like when he tore it apart. It's interesting how certain images stick in our mind in almost a dream -like way. Again, I didn't remember the meanings of these images, just the power of the frame. Let me ask you a question. Did you ever see a movie I made who was a flop called Rumble Fish?

34:29I've never seen Rumble Fish, but I know a little bit about it. It's black and white, yes. Yeah, and my intention making it was, I want to make an art film for kids. And I did. And my deal always was that if the movie covers whatever the finance was, then I own it. And Rob Gullfisch didn't cover it, so I don't own it. And I was sad about it because I sort of love it. It has Mickey Rork is in it. But interestingly, when it played in Latin America, somehow for some reason I can't explain it just stuck and there was a theater in Chile somewhere that just showed it for a year, and a whole generation of South American novelists and filmmakers all were weened on rumblefish, which I didn't even know it was.

35:20In fact, one of them came back to Tulsa where it was shot and made a film called Searching for Rusty James, which was the character of that. So, you know, it turns out that my greatest dream had come true. To me, the greatest award you get is not a big check. It's not a stupid statue of this or that. It's when a young person comes who made a film, says, I became a filmmaker because I saw your film. Because I made a film, I told you, because I saw Antonio and his film, or because I saw Stanley Cooper's film, because there's Orson Wells film. That's why I did it. Have you heard of a film just came out called All Quiet on the Western Front with a director named Edward Berger?

36:09He's also, he made the film of salvation about the popes. But this is a heavyweight filmmaker. He comes, he was says he wants to meet me. And I said, gee, I love the, I know you're a film All Quiet in the Western Front That is wonderful. That's the remark book. And he said, well, I didn't know anything about movies, but when I saw Pockelum's now I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. That to me is joy. That's all I... That's because that's what it's about. It's about, you know, we're on the shoulders of the people who came before and we were passing it into the future that way. That's what the apprenticeship system is.

36:50And the fact that you could have made somebody so important, want to make films, why that's a gift.

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38:31What motivated you to go to film school? I was a theater major as I told you and I was really successful. I was not successful at anything, but in my college career, I became the big mention the film department. I had all the keys and I had a lot of clout, but I had no money and no girlfriend. And I was sort of hanging around on the campus, waiting for rehearsal that night. And there was a little building we called the little theater and it had a poster on it, that today, four o 'clock, Sir Gay Eisenstein filmed 10 days that shook the world October. So I didn't, you know, I had nothing to do. I went in there, there were about four or five people in there.

39:18And there was no, it was a silent film, but there was no music. And others, they didn't play a piano score. So I was just silent. And I saw October, 10 days that shook the world, which is a long film. And I came out and I said, I said, wow, I'm not going to be a director and go to Yale Drama School. I'm going to be a filmmaker like that. And I decided to go instead of, I was going to go to Yale to the famous Yale Drama School. And instead, I went to UCLA, because in those days, if you could show residency, college was free. Was film a small industry at that time? No, there was Hollywood. But no one had ever gone from film school to make Hollywood films.

40:00There were only a few film school. There was USC and they were considered more technical so they made documentaries and technical films. There was UCLA across and then there was NYU and CCNY. There were about five film schools in the country. And UCLA was the RD one. And so I went to UCLA and it was occupied during World War II. UCLA, there were bungalows near Sunset Boulevard that were built by the Army and had some purpose that wasn't part of the school. Then it got absorbed by the school. And that was the movie department. The students were pretty much 100 % men except for maybe just a few.

40:49I remember I was amazed when I went because one of the new students was a Swedish woman named Ingrid Thuleen, who had been a star in Bergen films and she went to UCLA to become a director. This goddess Bergen's you there. And there were two or three other girls. You know, so I was there in this du Krab. I was the only one who had come from theater. So, you know, in fairness, I noticed that movie directors who don't come from theater or who were not X actors tend to not know a lot about acting, which is interesting. And because obviously the two most important things of movies, the essential, the oxygen and hydrogen is writing and acting.

41:38I mean you can have, if you have good writing and acting, you can have terrible photography, terrible music score, terrible sound effects, terrible everything, the movie can still be good. But if you don't have good acting or writing, you can have the greatest score, you can have the greatest photography and it's not the movie can't possibly be good. So I knew that from my theater background and there were a lot of older guys who were more senior in the UCI all -in -film school and there was limited equipment, so like an editing machine for example. They would take the editing machine and lock it in their editing room.

42:16So they always had it and the new kids didn't, you know, had a scrounge to get an editing machine. So whereas theater, my experience, the theater was a group experience. You all worked together and then you went and had pizza together and you had a crush on some girl that you didn't tell her. You had a crush on. And it was the opposite in movies. Everyone was a loner. Everyone was a loner with their editing machine. And in fact, my company, American Zillotrop, was basically introducing a more theater culture to film. You know, in our company, all of them, we all were together and we would go eat together and we would help each other on each other's films, which is what my generation of filmmakers is still.

43:00You never hear someone in my generation, my colleagues say a bad thing about another director in that. There's a college ship that's really nice. who were the other young directors in your group? Well, there was a brilliant, brilliant director named Carol Ballard. He made later the film, the Black Stallion and Flyaway Home. And there was a very crazy, but in his own way, brilliant character named Dennis Jacob, there was an extreme, the only one who sort of made it a teeny bit in the movie, He was other than Carol Ballard, who over time is greatly appreciated. There was a guy named Noel Black, who was a very nice gentleman, and he's had a little bit of a career.

43:53Other than that, my generation does me, you know, kind of in a way. Tell me the story of Zoetro. What did you envision? I'm about five years older than these colleagues. So George Lucas is about five years younger than me, except for Carol Ballad, he's four years older than me. But pretty much everyone, even Marty, is about probably five years younger than me. There were about four, five years in John Millius. And what happened was, I wasn't what was called the UCLA the Goldwyn Award. And that was sort of like the Nobel Prize to UCLA, right? It was mostly novelist. I was the first screenplay ever to win it.

44:34Goldwyn Award was $2 ,000 and I was living on a dollar a day. So it was a lot of money and it was also immediately since it was a screenplay that won every agent in town. One, the rep was that me to be a screenwriter and I got a job as a screenwriter working for a company, a famous man named Ray Stark. And I had been an assistant also to Roger Korman when I was poor. I learned a lot about filmmaking from March of Corman. Anyway, one thing I'd led to another, and I was now directing a Hollywood picture. I was, you know, 25. I had two kids, and I was directing a movie called Finneon's Rainbow at Warner Bros.

45:20starring a fetist there as an older man, but he's a wonderful person. And a young woman named Petula Clark. And then in English. She's great. She was a wonderful singer and a sweet lady. And then a crazy English guy named Tommy Steele. But it was a really cheap movie. It was like less than $2 million. And I wanted to shoot it in a real Kentucky where there really were people in the tobacco business. But I had to shoot it on the old sets of Kamalad and all phony sets. I hated it. Anyway, one day I'm shooting, and in those days, the whole crew were grown up adults wearing suits and ties, even the crew, and I look on my left and there's a skinny kid watching.

46:11So, at one point I went over to him and I said, what are you looking at? He said, not much. I said, well, I said, okay, what are you doing? He said, well, I want a scholarship to observe what's going on with one of brothers, and And this is what's going, but I'm really going to go to the animation department and, you know, Hannah Barbera were there or something. So I said, well, tell you what, because I like having a young person. I was there with all these older men, you know. I said, well, why don't you come here every day and you can come and watch here and I know all you have to do is one thing.

46:49He says, what? I said, you have just come up with a great idea every day and he did. And that was George Lucas. Amazing. He was so bright, you know, and I knew it. So finally, I said to him, you know, George, I have another movie that I want to make going across the country in a small little van with the editor and everything and shoot whatever happens, incorporate it into the script, and it's called The Rain People. If you come with me and we'll do it together, then the next film I'll do will be one you want to make. So he said, great. So I made this film called The Rain People, even before the ad of Finneon Drambel was done.

47:35I mean, I had left one and I wanted it, but I wanted to get out there. And we had like two little vans and another van with the editing machine and we were in a position. We had a script, it was about a woman who leaves her husband. and she loves him, but she doesn't want to be a wife and goes on the road. And the idea is that we could make it, but if something's happening, if there's a emergency and we could go 300 miles out of land and cooperate it into it. So it was another slightly different kind of filmmaking. When I went to college, there was a football player that we all sort of loved whose name was Killer Kelly.

48:14And Killer Kelly had been so banged up that he had a metal plate in his head and he was like a child. And the college just hired him to rake leaves. And I always used to see him and my heart went out to this big man, who was like a kid. And eventually, I heard that they gave Killa Kelly $1 ,000 and basically said goodbye. So I met this young guy, I like an actor named Jimmy Khan. And I told them this story and my idea was that there's a guy he's hitchhiking and that this housewife picks him up Maybe she wants to have an affair. I don't know But she become sort of saddled with this person dependent on her and that was what the step but my idea was that we could go Anywhere we wanted to you know there was a mind disaster in Virginia We went there and incorporated that or there was a parade in and Memphis and we got, he wandered through the brick.

49:15So it was a style of filmmaking. So George and I did that, but essentially we had a whole film company. We had all the equipment, we had all the people, and we ended up doing the final scenes in Kansas, I think, of you get the town. But the town fathers of Kansas said, if you guys stay here, we'll get you a studio, And he can have it. But we realized we were a mobile phone company. And so one thing led to another, and George was from Modesto. So to him, San Francisco was the big city. And I wanted to get out of LA because I wanted that control that was on the movie business to go away. So we decided to take the whole unit.

49:57And just I had a house. And a summer house, I sold them. And we made sort of a kind of a studio of sorts with a sound and everything in San Francisco. And that was the Americans. And then George wanted to call it the Trans -America Sprocket Works. And I had visited what I bought the equipment, a Danish company called Lenterna Film. I wanted to call it, you know, American Lenterna, you know, or, you know, Magic Lenten. And eventually we went back and forth and we called it American Zodrome. And the idea was it was this group of filmmakers. And what isn't just me making the film that was George was going to make one.

50:43John Millius was going to make one a man named John Cordy. Did you ever hear of John Cordy? K -O -R -T -Y. He was an important filmmaker in San Francisco. And so that's how it happened. So when you were 25 years old and directing your film, were there many other 25 year old directors who came from film school at that time? Was that a real thing? There was one who was someone I admired immensely who was young, who had directed the Sunny and Share movie. And he was from Chicago. He didn't really come from film school, but he really impressed me. And then we were always up for the same thing, but we were good friends.

51:27His name was Billy Freedkin. And he had made a film that I thought was the highest thing you could do. He made a film that people versus Paul Crump. Did you ever hear that movie? I'm not. It was a black guy was going to be executed for murder in Chicago and was not guilty. I mean, this is the gist of it. And Billy made a film about it called The People vs Paul Crump. And it was so effective that he got pardoned or he didn't get killed. And I said, if you can make a film that saves somebody's life, my hats off the human. And that was Billy Freakkin who later made the exorcist and Sosurer and the French connection.

52:17Yeah. Did you become friends at that time? very good friend. He was, but he was much hipper than I was. You know, I was married with three kids and he was more, more adventurous and he was an incredible character. He married John Moro for a while. Wow. Typically at that time the directors would have been people who had done other jobs on the set and worked their way up and were maybe 50 or 60 years old, I imagine. Yes, but there were some directors who were who were more interesting than that. There was another company, I forget, which was basically the offspring of studio executives, so they, I mean, they had a lot of ends, but Hal Ashby was a director who had been an editor who was very advanced and he made some wonderful films.

53:12And that's where a lot of the Korman people I knew, co, like Nicholson was always in the Korman pictures, but he became very important in Dennis Hopper, who later was in my apartment. Dennis Hopper was a handful. He was amazing. He was in Rumblefish. Tell me about Roger Cormin and that whole world. The Cormin world. The Cormin world was before all this happened. I was very poor film student, and I was living in a tiny little place. I had gone to military school for a while. In fact, the same military school that Donald Trump went to New York military academy. And I ran away. I went a wall and didn't want to stay there.

53:57And my father never forgave me for that because he had borrowed the money on one of those deals where you pay. And he still had a pay even though I wasn't there. So he said, I'm going to have nothing to do with your college. So I had about $1 .25 I had a date and live on beside this little hobo I lived in. And that meant I kind of had 25 cents for breakfast, 50 cents for lunch, and then I would eat craft macaroni and cheese dinners every night because that was it. So I was very extremely poor, but there were some fabulous faculty members. One was a woman, who was my directing teacher, who was a famous woman, really named Dorothy Arsner.

54:40Have you ever heard of her? She was the only woman director in Hollywood for in the 30s and 40s. She directed Crawford and she was a great director. She was a woman and she was my director. She was, I mean, every one of UCLA so respected her. To this day, I will not refer to her as anything but Ms. Arsner because she was so fabulous. So I noticed on the bulletin board, you know, looking for some way to make some money in that night, I was a bus boy at Kelbl's restaurant. The thing said, call this number. We're assistant of Roger Corman. Some knowledge of Russian will be helpful. So I mean, I saw October 10, the world.

55:29That was my knowledge of Russia. So I said, I called up. And they said, we'll call you back and let you know if you get an appointment. Well, I hadn't paid my phone bill. So I didn't know. I was just in horror that I would get this call, but the phone wouldn't go through. Ultimately, I did get the call and I went and it was a very bright woman. So she hired me. And the job was to take this Russian movie he had bought. The Russian movie was very idealistic. In other words, it showed the Cosmonaut seized the golden Cosmonaut of hope for the future. And Roger said, what I was told through this woman, who was my boss, to take out all of the golden hope stuff and cut in monsters that they see.

56:18And he said, he wanted a monster that looked like a great female organ. And ultimately, the male organ gets swallowed by it. So my job was to do this. So I was in every day. I couldn't speak Russian. I was doing the writing a new to loop it into English, but I would get there very early and slot myself over the movieola. So when she and Roger came in, they would see I had been there all night, which I hadn't. So ultimately, I did this particular job and it was released, this battle beyond the sun or something. So ultimately, she gave me a, you know, her thumbs up and Roger offered me to be his assistant.

57:06And he offered me, I think, $75 a week, when I complained, he said, when he had a, and this is the job, he got $40 a week. And he ran, I became his assistant, and that meant basically I had a washers car, I had a, he had a lawn with sod, I had a move to sod. And then, but finally, he was gonna make a movie We've been in price, of course. I knew who this in price was. And what he did is the company making the movie, he had them hire me. I was on this payroll of this AIP studio, but I would only work as the dialogue director. So in other words, I would run the lines with Vincent Price and these other actors who were in it.

57:49But I was a theater student, so he said, well, you can stage it if you want. And he would shoot like seven pages a day. So I mean, he just would go through it. And so I was there, I had of them with Vincent Price, reading the lines and then setting it up. And then they would shoot it, which was incredible. But at 1230, they all broke for lunch. I had to then go back and be as assistant. In other words, what he had done is he had them pay me. But he then got me being assistant for free. And so at one point he said to me, do you know anyone who knows how to do sound? And I said, of course, I know how to do sound because he was going to make a picture in Europe.

58:31And he wanted to take someone there to be the sound guy. If also if someone went on one of those trips for Roger, if the person bought a car, in those days we used to buy cars like you buy a Volkswagen in Germany was cheaper. So if you bought a car, then you agreed to take the people around on the film of the car. He'd give you $300. Well, that's what I won the gold one. I had $2 ,000. I bought an Alfa Romeo sports car and picked it up in Europe. But of course, Roger didn't like it because I could only take one person. I was hoping I'd get a girl. that we're, but instead I took one of the Israeli guys, this guy named Yoskey Gross, his name, he was a great big guy from Israel and his, he was the cousin of another Israeli guy named Monacum Golan and this Joseph Gross was wonderful.

59:27He said, I know you're happy to have me in the car, but we'll have fun. I'll tell you a few jokes, you'll love it. And he was right. And we're driving, you know, so I drove all around with Yosuke Gross. Bottom line is that everyone knew that Roger, after the company made a film, would use all the stuff paid for and make another film for himself. But he was called back to make a film called The Raven with Peter Laurie and Vincent Price. So we all knew that there was this whole unit that he would probably could sell him on making a picture. And then those days, psycho had just come out. So I just wrote one page.

1:00:13I wrote a key scene of a psycho kind of movie. Everyone wanted to get the job, but basically Roger chose mine and sent me said, okay, did you do this? I'll give you $20 ,000 to make this. I mean, not give me the budget. 20 ,000 that I make the film. And I'll send this lady with you because I'm going to put the money in two names for co -signers. And I suggest you make it in Ireland, because they all speak English. And so I take my alpha male and I go to Ireland. And I go to where there's this little studio in a place called County Wicklow. And I meet an English guy there. And he says, what are you doing?

1:00:59And I said, I'm making a movie for Roger Coleman. He says, well, what's the, oh, well, here's the one page. I haven't written the script yet. I guess I can't. But you should tell you what, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll want to buy the English rights. And he said, what do you want for them? And I said $20 ,000. So now I had $40 ,000. So when I told Roger about it, he said, well, send me the $20 ,000 back. And he knows he won the picture for free. Instead, what I did is I told the lady he had said, So we got a deposit, this check in the bank account, co -signed it, and I put the whole $40 ,000 in the bank account on the only my name, and I made the movie for $40 ,000.

1:01:40So Roger was plenty pissed off, but then when he saw it, he more or less liked it. And that was a film that he called The Menscher 13, which was technically the first real film I ever made. And you know who loves that film is? Who's the great writer who writes scary stuff? Stephen King. That was one of his favorite movies, the mention of 13. Do you remember when you first saw Psycho? Did it feel like a different movie when you saw it? Oh, I thought it was a scared hell out of me. I mean, it really were. I mean, his cock, you know, his cock never had great acting in his films, but you know, Psycho was worked like dang buses and Vertigo.

1:02:23I mean, Vertigo, I thought was incredible when I was a kid. But the best acting in a Hitchcock film is Stranger's on a Train or the Wrong Man. Tell me about Vincent Price. He was a wonderful man. He was really just like what you imagine. A great Thessian. He was... I had seen him in a favorite film of mine and my brothers that my big brother who was an important figure in my life. Did you ever see a movie with Vincent Price called The Baron of Arizona? I'm not. Oh, it's Samuel Fuller. It's great. But I loved Vincent Price from The Baron of Arizona. So I was, you know, he was a wonderful man. He had been in a film that he was great in called Champagne for Caesar.

1:03:16I remember that I saw when I was a kid. I always remembered this character that Vincent Price played. My brother used to take me to the movies. So I loved people like Vincent Price and all the quarter films made in England, you know, Four Feathers and the Red Shoes and Black Narcissists, unbelievable film, Michael Powell films. You described making the rain people. How different was that than what other people we're doing in terms of making movies at that time. It was quite different. We were a mobile unit and we were incorporating, and I was rewriting, I was rewriting, and we were editing as we were going, the story as a tableau.

1:04:03And originally I had a part for an actor named Riptorn. You remember Riptorn? Yeah, fantastic. He was great. And he was in my film with Geraldine Page on your big, my first movie that I made. So I had made a deal with Rip Torn to be this motorcycle cop in the movie that she has a fling with sort of, it doesn't quite work out. And Rip Torn was telling me that he was a character and he wanted to buy a motorcycle and then he would do it. So then I bought him the motorcycle, but it was stolen. So he said, well, you've got to replace it. So I bought a used motorcycle and he got all upset about in the end of the last minute he bails on me.

1:04:53I have no one and I have the part so Jimmy Khan tells me about a guy who worked with an an Altman film named Robert Duval and the last minute I'm able to get Bobby Duval to be the motorcycle cop in the rain. By the way, George Lucas also shot a 16 millimeter documentary about the whole making of the of rain people call filmmaker, which you can get. Would you recommend to anyone who wanted to be a director to study theater first, learn about acting? Oh, without a doubt. Not only that, I tried to get every film school I ever visit to have first year directing students not make short films, but do one act plays.

1:05:37Because if they do one act plays, they get to see the result in front of an audience right away. If they make a short film, They get bogged down in post -production and not seeing the short film for eight months. And they don't benefit from seeing how an audience react. Also, in theater you learn about acting. And in film school you don't learn about acting. In fact, traditionally every school, every university that has a theater department and a cinema department, they don't get along. They don't work together. Even in Poland or in some other country. There's a natural disassociation, and it's cultural.

1:06:17It's that, you know, the cinema people think the theater people are phonies, you know, and so darling. Oh, it's a funny thing. I really worked hard at UCLA recently to bring the cinema and film people together, and with some degree of success. It's a great idea. I imagine even learning about cinema probably would make the theater better as well. No question. Cinema is the child of theater. I mean, and it goes back to the Greeks and perhaps before the Greeks, there's so much to learn that we, you know, that we hand down. But it's funny also you think that the cinema students would welcome having some actors for their films.

1:07:05And I know so few cases of where good actors from the UCLA Film School worked with a filmmaker, but they got married. So that was Caleb Deschanel, wonderful cinematographer from USC. And his wife, Mary Jo was in the theater department. When you moved Zoatrop to San Francisco after the rain people, tell me about setting up shop and tell me what happened next with Zoatrop. What was the vision for it and what happened? We didn't quite get what we really wanted. I had wanted, my idea was to buy with the mortgage, of course, a big white elephant mansion. Reason is that all those bedrooms and things are perfect.

1:07:51I saw a place in Denmark like that that was right on the water and it was this wonderful film company called Antirna Film. And it was all kids working together, boys and girls, you know, editing and stuff. And a big mansion is perfect. All the facilities in there and then sometimes they even had something related to a entertaining room that you could shoot in. So we were looking for old broken down mansions that we couldn't find anywhere. They wouldn't sell it to us. We had a lot of problems being vetted. And so finally there was a south of you know San Francisco at all and those they south of Marcus Street there was the south of Marcus Street area which was a little seedy and there were some warehouses and there was a record company that was there on Folsom Street and they were looking for someone to share the lease and I made a deal where we would have a place for our truck to to come in and all our equipment.

1:08:58And then we had a big area where we built the screening room and a mixing through. We could mix sound. It was this whole area. And we had offices and George liked it. But he really had bought the idea of being in the country and having it more in there. So he was never 100 % comfortable in this more. And I viewed it as a temporary thing that if we were more successful that someday we would be able to buy some sort of place. So it would like that for about a year and a half. And then basically we just went broke. Like I was offered the Godfather, I bought for myself a little house with my wife and then two children, my pregnant wife and two children.

1:09:46And George wasn't comfortable. He wanted to be somewhere. So we got to have a place in Mill Valley and George liked that. And so we had like a Mill Valley annex when he made American graffiti, of course, made money. So finally George had some money and then he ultimately he bought property in a place ironically called Lucas Valley. But he got a kick out of that. It was Lucas Valley before he bought And he built his Skywalker Ranch there, and then he started becoming really successful. I mean, more commercially than me by far. What was your involvement in American graffiti? Well, I was important.

1:10:30He couldn't get it off the ground without me. And I really liked the script. In fact, I had made the Godfather by then. And I had enough money. Merck and graffiti was gonna cost $700 ,000. And I went to the bank and I asked if I had enough my Godfather credits could I have $700 ,000. And it was my wife who said to me, you know, friends, a someday, you know, you could certainly find an answer to fill, but it should be your own film. And that and the bank said, I'll give you this $700 ,000, but I want you to wait for a few days because we had a client who financed his own movie and lost it all. So basically we got universal to put up the money and they were they required that I be involved in it and I was helpful on graffiti.

1:11:23I helped with the casting because that was you know George didn't really know all those actors and that That was done by my associate Fred Rus, and it was wonderfully cast. And he was shooting without a cinematographer at all. They were just shooting. And I went to his friend who liked him and got a caskowexler to come on Mercury. So I was there as the big brother. Were the songs written into the script? That was his idea. It was the first time that the score of a movie, yes, he had picked all those songs and I remember we got all of those songs for $140 ,000. Today you can't get one song for a hundred.

1:12:10He did many unusual things. Number one, he had that first score that was all basically rock and roll and he's the first person at the end of the movie when the movie ends. There's like four lines about the main characters that so and so went did this so and so went to the Vietnamese war That was George's all his innovation knowing had ever done it before And when when we show we showed the film Previewed to universal Universal set up some executives and they saw the preview and when it was over they said well We're very disappointed. We really think it needs a lot of work And I said to them, I said, are you kidding?

1:12:52I said, they loved it. I said, you ought to get on your knees and thank this young man for saving your job. Because if you don't want to, I'll buy the film for you right now. Because I did have the ability to do it, even though my wife is, I wish I had. Oh no, I don't. Because my philosophy is you win a few. You lose a few, it all comes out the same. That movie really impacted that music as well. Like the whole revival of 50s music really began with that movie. And to this day, you can hear a radio station that plays music from the 50s. Right. That was not the case before that movie. Well, there was a great line that he had, that George wrote, which is Rock the Roll, went downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.

1:13:42Tell me about John Millius. He was extraordinary. He was, you know, the USC guys all had speculated. Walter Merch was sound. Cleo Desionnell was photography. George was everything. And John Millius was their writer. And he was this flamboyant guy who just, it just tumbled out of him, you know, he was, and you know what happened to him. You don't know what happened to him. Um, tragically about eight years ago, he was, he was on a, um, a blood thinner. His girlfriend said, oh, that blood thinner stuff is nonsense. I think you should just drink certain kind of milk product. I was, she interfered and she stopped.

1:14:29You know, from thinking he had a stroke. And now he can't speak anymore. And then he has, fortunately, as a, uh, I mean, he, it's heartbreak. He has to write on a slate, but he's got a young lady who really takes care of him and loves him. And his hand works, I know. But he just can't, you know, it's a stroke. Did he write the original script for Apocalypse Now? Totally. Totally. It's mostly a script. I didn't even, what I did is I had a copy of Heart of Doctors with me. And I came between the script. I would use my underlying copy of the horror darkness to do it. In fact, like the Dennis Hopper character in the movie, he wasn't in the script at all, but when I saw how wire Dennis Hopper was, there was a character in horror darkness called The Russian, who's sort of like the sayer of Kurtz, you know, the prophet or whatever.

1:15:29And I invented that character with Dennis Hopper right during the movie, and that became a, remember the Dennis Hopper party in Apocalypse? Yeah, of course. That didn't exist. That was out of the book. And, but even like the music that people think of my family, a classical musician, was my idea to play Wagner through the attack. That was John Millius' idea. There's a story that you shot for several weeks and then took a break and went back to San Francisco go and then rethought the film during that break. Is that what happened? Not exactly. What happened is when we were casting some of the people I like were unavailable and my best bet was Harvey Kitell, who's a great actor, but Harvey Kitell is in a school of acting that is very active.

1:16:22You know, sort of the narrow does it to, but In other words, he's not a reflective guy looking. It's a guy being active. So when we actually started shooting, I felt it was wrong. I haven't done this many times. And that's the worst thing you could do is to change an actor that you've started. But I really felt it was wrong. And now weeks had gone by. I mean, with my neck, the debt was all mine. And those days, interest was 21%. So I was, you know, scared and I felt I had to make that decision. And nothing against Harvey Kaitel, he's a wonderful actor, but it felt it was that type of in your face that he's good at that this wasn't going to be that.

1:17:09So I, Marty Sheen had tried out for it, but he wasn't available. But by the time this happened, you know, I went back and met people and Marty Sheen was available, and I made the decision. And so, then when I did have Martin Sheen, who had a nice face and was someone that could be, someone just watching, then I felt I needed something early in the picture to show what a complex human being he was. And so I invented that scene where he looks at himself in the mirror and smashes, and he's totally, obviously, a weird guy. So, throughout the movie, when you see him looking at the jungle and stuff, you know that this is a person.

1:17:53That's not just a regular simple person.

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1:19:37How often do things happen or come up during the process of making something where you realize there's an opportunity to do something that wasn't planned that's actually better than what was planned? Well, you know, obviously there are many, many film directors, film artists, political. And therefore, there are many, many different methods. I mean, Hitchcock's method was one that was very controlled. He would, he was a brilliant artist. He could make storyboards as it were. He could design the film and then, and then do it just like he designed it. So with every filmmaker, there's the potential of another way to do things, according to him.

1:20:21My style is sort of like, To me, making a film is like asking a question and the answer is the film. In other words, I don't know the answer. And sometimes, obviously I knew how to make a gangster picture because I made a few of them. But when I made Apocalypse No, I had no idea how to make it. And if you don't know how to make a movie and you admit it and listen to the movie, the movie will tell you how to make it. it will do it for you. And that's what I have found in many of my projects to be. And in a way, I deliberately create situations that cause accidents, sometimes big accidents. I don't mean the accidents that endanger life because I never would do that.

1:21:12But in other words, I create accidents or do things and then make use of what happens and so that the film has, in its, this excitement of it, you in an example, like in the Godfather, Marlon is in the beginning of the movie, for a scene. At one point I saw a cat, it was not a movie cat, it was not an idea that was in the, you know, just a cat, a studio cat, it was a cat. On the third or fourth take, I just picked it up and put it in his hand. And he didn't say, what do you want me to do with this? or I didn't say, I just put the cat in his hand. And that's the take in the movie. So I'd like the actors to know that whatever happens, might be something we want.

1:22:01It's just my style. I mean, I don't care. I mean, Martin once said something I thought was so interesting. He said to me about acting, he said, you can't care or they'll see it on your face. So in a way, as a director, I don't care If I lose all the money I have, I didn't do this to make money. I did this to do something more beautiful and making money. And of course I have to feed my kids and all that like everybody else, but that's not my high priority. So I'll take chances in movies and sometimes those chances give beautiful results. Sometimes they don't. Yeah. you know enough to know it's out of your control and you'll set the stage for something wonderful to happen.

1:22:50Right, but it sort of is your control because you're not protecting yourself. I mean, you're doing it without a net. And you know, the stakes are high in something. I mean, not with human life, but I have never killed any animal or creature in my life for any reason. I'm trying to get to the point where I'll brush away Mosquitoes, that's the hardest one. But like in the horse's head, or the caribou being killed, and I had nothing to do with that. I just said, if it's gonna happen, can I photograph it? Tell me about directing Brando. Well Brando is very easy to direct, because the first thing he does is he sits down and it puts his hand like that.

1:23:39And he's asking basically where the frame is and then he'll proceed to act with whatever in that space and he'll just do it and you can say things to him like make it more angry, make it less angry, make it funny. And he doesn't like to have acting talk. He just, you know, make it louder, made it softer. And basically I always worked with Brando through props is though whatever I know that whatever I put in front of him he's going to use. But he doesn't panic, in other words, if like, here I am now, let's say I heard a buffalo would run behind me. He would, and that happened. He'd say, oh, look at the buffalo.

1:24:21You know, he wouldn't say, well, I better get out of here. He uses anything and everything when they're shooting. I never heard that idea before that he would want to know where the frame was and that that he was aware of the framing and wanted to make everything work within the frame, I would think of him the method as being more free and emotional, and he would go where he goes, and the camera would have to follow him because he would be free. But he knew what he was doing. Like for example, in Apocalypse Now, the problem was, I mean, I'm saying wonderful things about Brando, but the truth is he was like a big kid in terms of like if he said, look, I don't want you to eat that ice cream.

1:25:10He would eat the ice cream. So when he came for a poccolumns now, he knew that he was supposed to, he was got green -brake colonel and he couldn't be a fat green -brake colonel, but he came way overweight. But then he knew that and I'm account of many steps of this, but basically what that meant is that that's what made us shoot him in the dark with just a beam of light. But he had just that beam of light, but boy did he use it. He poked his head in it, he poked his head out of it. In other words, whatever he was going to use, he used it creatively. It's also that's a great example of problem solving because you wanted the military guy to be in shape when he showed up and he wasn't.

1:26:02So you shoot him in the dark and it's iconic because of the fact that you were working around something that you wouldn't have chosen. Right. Right. In other words, when I first realized that he was so big, I said, why don't we go the other way to him? I said, why doesn't he be? He got big and we show him with a man going one hand and a native girl and the other. He said, no, no, no, no. In other words, he was shy about being over what he didn't want to know. My original thing is if it's raining and you can't shoot, figure out how to do the scene in the rain. If he's fat and he's a green braid guy, say he's a green braid guy who got fat and see a meeting all the time and he's given into his senses.

1:26:50You could have done it that way, but people who are overweight be it Marlon Brando or Orson Wells, no one who's fat likes to be fat and they're shy and embarrassed by it. And Brando is no exception. How recent was the Vietnam War to apocalypse now, the filming? It was going on, I think. Really? Oh yeah, I mean, it was right. It was near the end there, but it was still going on. Wow. You know, the US, the guy who was the defense sector of fence was, what the hell was his name? He had been it twice, but they totally said no help, no helicopters, nothing in America. But we want nothing to do with Apocalypse Faire.

1:27:35So I found the helicopters and stuff in the Philippines. Rumsford. Secretary Rumsford, he was not a good guy. I don't know. Would you describe yourself as confident or insecure? Well, I'm insecure. I mean, I don't know of any artist who's totally conno, because you know that you're walking on a ledge that you could fall off at any time. Would you say you're hard on yourself? All I know is this. Right now there was in a human being, guys who did terrible things to me, that I haven't forgiven in my totally because I say, well, they had their reasons there. I wasn't on their mind, but the person that's hardest to forgive is yourself.

1:28:28Do you think of yourself as a perfectionist?

1:28:35I don't think of myself as a perfectionist, but I think I am a perfectionist. I have a counter right over there I'm looking at it, and it's just there's nothing on it but a coffee machine and the thing. And someone's always putting some, the thing abays the little over there because there's not a lot of room here. And I like it the way it is, and I don't even want this beautiful thing of base love there. I want it the way I want it. Yeah. How different is the finished movie of Patton than your script? It's very similar to my script. In fact, I would love someday for someone to take the movie because I shared the credit with someone else, which I don't mind.

1:29:17It's just like that script. I want you to walk me through making a movie. What happens when you make a movie? How much is intentional? Who brings what? How does it change? Okay, well, the first thing is you're getting pregnant with the movie. So, like, I am right now. And I'm taking American writer that I just am a great admirer of. I just think she's the greatest deseedess Wharton. I mean, there are many American writers I admire. but many of them are women, but E. D. Worton, and she wrote a not so great book, one of the ones that is less than her master, which means a house of birth and age of innocence and Ethan from all these, but she has a scruely little book called Grimpses of the Moon.

1:30:10And there's something about it fascinates me, but years ago I I directed when I was just doing the Godfather. Everyone was offering me chances to like direct an opera, direct a play. I mean, I was getting all these possible things, and I figured, well, I'll do it, you know, I'll learn something. So I directed a play called Private Life is by Noel Coward, wonderful play. And I mean, I came to love it because I directed it, but it's really a beautiful play. And I did it in a very crazy way. In other words, do you know private life's at all? No power play? Well, it's very funny. And it's about some two honeymooning couples looking over the French river.

1:30:56And it's always done with them leaning on the balance, looking at the sea with the audience being where the sea is because there's always really funny, no power lines. And what I wanted is I wanted to do it around the other way where you're looking at it and the other way so you're seeing them against the gorgeous view. Movie, do you reckon? Yeah. So I did it that way and then there's a lot of music coming in record players and stuff. So instead of them doing that, I had a pianist on the apron of the stage doing it live. And I did this, I did this play this way and it was very successful. It was very well received and I loved it and I loved Noel Coward.

1:31:39So somehow I decided I'm going to do this Edith Wharton adaptation of this movie I'm going to make as if I'm doing no coward. I mean, no connection. The only connection between no coward and Edith Wharton is me. So now I'm making it and I wrote a script and the ending of the Edith Wharton novel is very weak. That's what people why it's not one of our biggest ones, but It is weak, but I came up with a way that's not weak. And so I'm sort of just now here, it's exactly what I'm doing. I have a script which has filled with no -coward songs and a sort of a style that is not unlike the private lives that I, it's as though no -coward adapted a Edith Wharton book and is now making it in this movie in England, which is why I'm here, you know, because I'm now actually in pre -production on that movie.

1:32:42So now I'm deciding what style I'm going to make. So I don't have any money because I invested all the money I borrowed to make Megalopolis is basically it is gone, you know. I mean, I think it will come back over 15, 20 years, but I don't have it now, so I don't have any money. So I don't, I have to do it very cheap, which I'm doing. And I'm starting to have people come over in this house where you see which I borrowed from some person who I knew in Tulsa and I'm sort of just working with nothing But I'm starting to actually make the movie already and I can see how it could work and I feel it does work It's beautiful and these no -covered songs which are 70 years old are so beautiful when even I mean people don't realize what he did.

1:33:36I mean he those guys like Cole Porter and Noel Coward and Rodgers and Hart and you know Jerome Kern. I mean these this music is endlessly wonderful so I'm seeing something that has no reason to exist except I love it. Yeah what was it about the book that fascinated you? It's, the premise is so absurd and wonderful. The premise, if I may tell you, is that, you know, in previous, marriage was always about business and affairs of state and, you know, I mean, this idea, you meet someone you fall in love and you get married, that's very unusual. It wasn't like that, you know. And in the 30s and in the 20s, The marriageable group was so specific, just in other words, you couldn't be part of it because you couldn't get past the butler in certain crowds.

1:34:33In other words, you had to have a certain education. There was a way that it had to be a certain group. And in this story, in Grimziz of the Moon, it's about this American group of these marriageable people. And because America had divorce, And many European countries didn't. What the Americans would do, they would go see people in England, and in Beiruts and France, and equally wealthy people and stuff. They'd be married, but they'd have affairs. And then if they had an affair with someone who was wealthier than their husband or their wife, they would get to the force, and then they would marry upwards.

1:35:18And so was this part. Well, there are two people in this crowd who are penniless. They lost all their money, their family lost all their money in the stock crash or whether they have all the elegance, they have all the intelligence, they have everything, but they don't have any money. And so, but they're allowed to be in the crowd because they'll help out in a way and they're accepted. And they have this crazy idea that she has the idea that why don't they just get married? And he said, well, we live on. He said, well, we'll get all these wedding gifts from our friends, and they'll let us go stay at all their houses in Venice and places and stuff.

1:36:00And then after the money runs out, then we'll help each other make a better match, which is what we're doing now. So basically, they do it. And the movie is, of course, about the inevitable fact Now the money's running out, but they love each other. And but they've made this arrangement, and it's heartbreaking to them, you know, but of course it won't tell you, but it's very beautiful. I think what happens in the story. Are all of your movies autobiographical? I think so. You know, I'm starting to think worse. I'm starting, you know, there's two ways of viewing life. You're doing it, I'm sure.

1:36:42When you're young, you view it from left to right. You're a young person looking out at what the future's gonna be for yourself. But then there's a point, as you get older, where you switch and you're looking right to left, then you're looking at that young person who you know is becoming you. There's philosophers that, right, I think there are rights about this. So I'm at the point where I'm now looking at life from the point of view where I am now 85 and thinking about this kid who is so insecure and his mother probably didn't love him and all this stuff from this point of view. And then it occurs to me something even more strange, which is, what if I really am a solopsist?

1:37:31What if I'm all that exists? You know, we all learn about that, you know, Colonel Barclay and Salopsism and stuff is what if all the people like my wife Why lost I love so much what if she was just a chip of my consciousness and so I I tell you why Rick I feel that because when I made the Godfather I had no power. I was young I was like Michael Corleone when I made Black Lives now, I was in a, I was in Hawk for $21 million. The interest was 21%. I had to be like Kurtz. And then I made a film called Gardens of Stone about a man who creates this young soldier and then he's killed and I lost my son.

1:38:19I said, wait a second. What's going on here? Do I have to live every movie I make to add? Now I make a film about a man who loses son and in the first week I lose my son. I didn't, it wasn't. I wasn't even so I think this is something where is going on? Maybe I am a solopsist, movie director, and I'm just making all of this stuff. So I put into Google, I think I'm a solopsist. What should I read? And the answer came up, read Andy Kaufman's novel, Antkind. Jimmy or Van Kind, you know who Charlie Charlie Coffman. He wrote a novel called 700 Page novel called Anth Kind. It's incredible. It's hilarious.

1:39:09So now I'm convinced that my life, the only way I can explain my life is that it's something Charlie Coffman wrote. It's the only sense I can make out of it because of mind like that. Because otherwise, how did all this, how can I be living? Am I really a filmmaker making my life? Yeah, nothing makes sense, really. It's really, you know, and it's good reason why it doesn't make sense. Because our brain is so hardwired for our survival that we don't really even see the world as it is. And there is that's why, you know, there isn't the creator, there's the creator and the destroyer. That this idea of duality, we have because it's helpful to our survival, but it isn't what the world really is.

1:39:59I don't think. Can you imagine by the limitation of not having money for this next film that you're making, that that could actually be a positive thing? Sure. Yeah, because I'm now making decisions. I mean, I did stuff in the last few days in this crazy house that Not even my house I borrowed that was so beautiful and every time they said well Let's bring this because you don't have that. I said no, we don't have any money Well, let's do this. I don't we can't we don't have money, but we did everything we did without any money and it was beautiful Yeah, so I wouldn't have had it if I had money.

1:40:37How does new technology change filmmaking? Well, that's an interesting point because I always make a point with my younger apprentices that I want them to learn how it was when it was filmed before it was digital. Just the same reason I teach people who are going to always drive automatic transmission, what it is to drive a sticks, just so they understand it. And the reason you need to understand how filmmaking was when it was filmed is because so many of the techniques and traditions evolved for good reasons which are no longer necessary. So it's very hard for them to understand cinema making if they're born in a digital age.

1:41:24I have apprentices now, the filmmakers of the future. I've won from India, won from China. I mean they're fantastic. And then you saw Michael Opholios. Remember how the guy, what's his name? Caesar has all these apprentices. Those were my apprentices. They're really filmmakers all of them. And they were the only ones that could, I told everything that could criticize and have ideas. And they're brilliant. When did you start having apprentices? It's a great idea, by the way. Well, I mean, George Lucas was not my apprentice, but I treated young people like that. Like that, yes. But I tell you right now, Rick, the way to save this wreck of a world is to include the young people, start giving them responsibility because they're, you know, that right now they'll say, oh, those kids all they care about is, is minecraft and TikTok and stuff.

1:42:19That's because that's all they're allowed to do. You know, I would involve them earlier. I would like give 14 -year -olds the right to vote, but four votes would be one vote. And then 16 year olds, two votes would be one vote. In other words, I would get them in because they are capable of coming up with solutions that we're not capable of coming up with. I don't think. You know, all the great physicists who really did the incredible work in quantum physics, they were 18, 19 years old. Just like girl gymnasts can only do that stuff at 14. Physicists can only do what they're doing at 18 and even Einstein really was, you know, he worked for a while in the patent office, but he was, these young minds we have were wasting.

1:43:13When you were offered to do God father too was it obvious that you wanted to do it? I didn't want to do it. I first I didn't accept. I said that I would. I said I want nothing to do with it except I would write it with Mario and I would choose a director when we had a concept and suggest them. And so then after while I told him okay I have the idea I have the thing and I have three conditions and they said well who's the director you want. And I said, well, he's his Marty Scorsese. He wasn't in those days. So famous. And they said, absolutely not. I said, well, then forget it. So finally, Charlie Bootron got on the phone and said, well, Francis, you've got to give you anything you want.

1:43:58He said, that's what it sounded like. I said, OK. Number one, I want total control. I don't want to have to talk to Bob Evans or anyone. If I want to say, I'm starting, I'll start. All agreed to is the limit of the budget. The second thing was, oh, I want to call it the Godfather Part Two. I don't want to give it, you know, son of the Godfather, anything like that. And number three, I said, I want a million dollars, which I never had. And so they came back and they said, oh, we can give you the million dollars. You have total control. But everyone says that calling Godfather Two is a mistake because people will think it's the second half of the movie they already saw.

1:44:38I said, then forget it. Now, I'm the guy who started this Spider -Man 6. I'm so ashamed. Rocky 5. Yeah, I should be shocked. What's incredible about it, though, is that looking at the history of cinema, sequels, and series tend to not be as good as the original. But in the case of Godfather 2, some people argue it's better than the Godfather. That's a very unusual situation. You know, it was a flock, I don't know. What was it? What? I tell you one thing, we had a preview of Godfather Part 2 in San Francisco that the audience hated it. And they said the acting is terrible. And I went to bed that night under the bed so worried.

1:45:34And then it came to me. It said the problem is that, you know, Godfather too was one between the past and the future back and forth. And it was always planned to go like every 10 minutes. It's too fast. I should double it. I should make a goal every 20 minutes because the audience can't get Yangtadirat. So the editors stayed up all night for three days and made 120 picture cuts to do that. And then we took the picture to send the ego and the reaction was the opposite. They loved it. And then we took it to New York and they loved it. Then the rest was successful. So, you know, movies are an illusion.

1:46:17And if you don't have the right, if they don't accept the illusion, like for years, they didn't accept the apocalypse. Now, gradually, And then finally, Paklephthal got terrible reviews, didn't get any Oscar nominations, the people said, one important critic, I think his name was Frank Rich, said it was the worst film ever made in Hollywood. But little by little got used to it. So I mean, when you go out on a ledge, you have to accept that everyone's not going to like it and it may take time. I mean, the French Academy said what a good painting was, but poor guys like all the, you know, Matisse and everyone, you know, you could give it away in those days.

1:47:02Now, of course, those are the paintings people want. They don't want the French Academy paintings. Yeah. Did you ever get notes from a studio executive that were helpful at any point in your life? Yeah, yeah. There were, yes. You know, you have to read through them and say, oh, that was even Evans who I was a totally antagonist, who was his idea to have a John Marley play, the Hollywood guy, and who was the the the police captain, Mr. Lee Hayden. That was that was Bob Evans' idea. Tell me about your relationship with Evans. And Godfather, he assigned a guy as his guide of mind to me named Jack Ballard.

1:47:49He was this production guy with a bald head and he was horrible. He was on my case every day saying you're late, you have a meal, you can't do this. Then at one point they told me that they were going to bring in an action director because was there was no action in the movie. And I had to, basically I took my kid and my sister Talley who was in the movie and we went the weekend and made that scene where she breaks all of Crockery and stuff just to not have them bring in. They were always either firing me or replacing me. Once I was told on a Tuesday, the first day Brando came in, everyone said that they hated Brando's first day's work.

1:48:37And I said, well, look at I said, you know, he's the first day. I mean, he's, you know, it's an actor. He give them a few days and say, Hey, what I can go back. It's Tuesday. I can go right back in there and reshoot the scene. And they say, no, no, don't do that. And then one of the producers who was a friend of mine said, you know, the reason they will let you go in is because they're going to fire you this Friday. And, And you know, they never fire a director in the middle of the week. They always fire him on Friday, so the new director has the weekend to come in on Monday. So they said they got a fire on me Friday.

1:49:14Who was they going to bring? They want your editor to be, who had directed a picture. And I had, I loved this editor guy, I still do. He was gone, of course. And he had made a picture and he asked me, would you hire my producers and different people on his crew to be your assistant director, which I did. But they were conspiring all the time to get me fired and get him made. And so they said, OK, they're going to fire this weekend. I knew that this editor, Aaron Mavakian, would never, he was my friend. I know he wouldn't have done that. He was worried about me. But I don't think he, I'm sure he would not do that.

1:49:57So basically I fired them all on the on the Tuesday that I told you this and then I took brand when I went back up there and I shot the scene again. So now they had to wait to see whether the scene was any better or not. You know? So just check everyone up. Everyone was I'm sure they can he do that? Can he fire everyone? Well, he did, you know, I didn't have the right to fire everyone. I just did it and said, okay, now we're going up and doing it. I just took that chance. So of course then they saw the footage and they said all the new stuff with Brando is much better we think it's very good but it was in the movie as the old one.

1:50:39When you finished the movie before it screened what were your thoughts about the movie did you know it was gonna be a big hit? No no I was sure it was a flop because the last minute Evans hated the music and he He ordered me to take the music out. And I said to him, I'm not going to take the music out. You can fire me and get a new director and have the new director put the music you want in. But I'm not going to take the music out. I love the music. So for about four days, Walter Merch was there with me because he was working with me. For four days, we were in a stalemate where I wouldn't change.

1:51:19I mean, they could have just changed the music. and they didn't want to fire me a week before the picture came out. So no one had ever seen the pay, no audience had ever seen the picture. It was always paramount in Evans and the inside guy saying the picture isn't working. It's too long, it's too short. It was driving me crazy. So finally, I say to him, the barber said, I said, pay what? This is what I'll do. Let's show it to a controlled group of people who should never happen and see if they like the music or not. And he said to me, who gets to decide whether they like the music or not? And I said, you do.

1:52:01Wow. Because you knew. No, I didn't know. I knew I loved you. No, but you knew that you wanted to get a real reaction. And if there was a real reaction, everybody would know the real reaction. Yeah, I didn't know. I loved the music, but he was very hated the music and wanted Johnny Green through it. So I think the problem was he had promised Johnny Green and I had this Italian guy, you know, great Italian. So anyway, they all came in about 300 people to a paramount screening room and it was the first time an audience saw the movie other than the, you know, the executive and when it was over, it was incredible.

1:52:45And we said, what'd you think of the music? And he said, the whole movie is great. What do you mean, the man? They weren't even talking about the music. They were talking about the picture. We've never seen anything like it was wonderful. And they said, the music is great, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, it's incredible. And so finally, Evans conceded and he just had some music changes of like when there's some some old source music when they fly into Las Vegas. And at that point I then knew that I had, but another guy had seen the picture that is like a big brother to me. Jimmy here of a guy named Robert Towne.

1:53:24He was Chinatown. You know, I always have this big brother figure in my life because I had a great big brother. And Bob Patown was someone I looked up and he's the first person who said, France, the film is great. And he says, Brando is great. He said, only needs one thing. And I said, what's that, Bob? He said, it needs a scene between Brando and Al Pacino. And I said, well, would you write it? He said, yes. And he did. And he wrote the scene. And when I went to the Oscar, I said, Bob, Bob Town wrote the scene and did a lot of other great things. But yeah, He was the only one who was encouraging.

1:54:02Everyone else thought it was a big flop. Even when I went, when it was opening, I had no idea what was gonna happen. I had no money. And so I accepted a job to rewrite the great Gatsby film that they were doing with Redford because I had three kids. And I was writing this and I was horrified because the great Gatsby novel doesn't have a lot of dialogue in it. So I meant I had to make it up. And I had only a week to do it. So I'm calling my wife and she's in New York. And she says, Francis, the Godfather is going to open. They said it's going to be in five theaters because it's getting such good reaction.

1:54:43And she's telling me, my God, there are people going around the block waiting to see the Godfather. I was like, I can't talk to you. Ellie, I got to finish the script and it was so crazy. The biggest success I ever had, which was of course the godfather, I wasn't there because I was trying to write the script for the great Gatsby. Was that caramel screening the first time you got to see it on a big screen? I showed it to all my friends. The book shows pretty much the same cut. All the film savvy people in San Francisco, no one said it was so great. Who was Al Rady? I already was a producer who along with his partner, Gray Frederickson, was making a film in San Francisco with Sydney, Fury, I think.

1:55:33And he had a company called Alphran, because he had a rich wife whose name was Francois. And since the Godfather was basically an unimportant project to Paramount at that time, They got this outfrant, which was out ready, and his partner got the job. But out ready was never around. He was always cooking up. He made a big thing about the anti -Italian. There was a Mafia guy who started an anti -Italian league. Out ready was just never around. He only showed around when there was a publicity still. And he's the guy who wrote the book that they made that show the offer, which nothing happened to where they said it was, nothing happened.

1:56:21The way they said it was and nothing's happened with whom they said it was. The picture, they had a movie star play out, ready, and there's a nice still of him there, you know, with a guy with a beard that's supposed to be me. There's no real picture of out, ready there, because he was never there. Well, like for example, in the offer, they're showing everyone riding around in a studio, Paramount Pictures stuff. Paramount didn't own the studio in those days. We were in an office in Crescent and Beverly Hills, the studio, I never was in the studio because they didn't own it. You know who owned it?

1:56:57No. The Vatican. The Vatican had a big Italian company, real estate company that invested in real estate, and they owned Paramount Studio. That's amazing. How has the film business changed over the course of your life? Well, I saw it change into the era of the so -called blackbuster. And then because of the outrageously overcharging cable fees that were initially done, the cable companies made so much money that they then bought the film industry so that now the film industry is owned by people who bought from people who bought from people who bought from people who wanted. So the only thing that people who run the film studios are worrying about is the debt service.

1:57:48That they are hired and paid a lot of money to ensure that the company makes this debt service. And if it doesn't, they're fired. So that you're dealing with it, not only a company, but a whole antique system. In other words, when there was a trolley car and Santa Monica boulevard years ago when I was a kid, and when they removed the trolley car, they also removed the tracks because they never wanted a trolley car back. They wanted it to be buses. So there's the movie companies, but there's the tracks. The tracks are the Rotten Tomatoes and the Seedings. In other words, all of the accoutrements that are the train tracks or, you know, the infrastructure is all controlled by these companies that are desperately trying to not go bankrupt.

1:58:40So that if you're not on their side, if you're not in their world, then you're going to get, you're not going to get four stars, you're going to get no stars, you're not going to get, But it's like the people, for example, do another analogy, it is possible to make Judd Fuel for aircraft that will not pollute the Earth. But to do that, they say, we're up for it. We want any kind of solution to that. We'll buy it. But what they don't say is that the tracks, the infrastructure, what takes the fuel from the tank to the airplane is what they own. and what would work would be hydrogen, but their system can't operate because it doesn't hold hydrogen at the low temperature.

1:59:25So in other words, it's not just the people who own the existing systems. They also own the infrastructure that supports it. That's more important to them. Do you know how the Godfather was received in Italy? I think it was very, very well received. El Pedro, El Pedro, you know, it was a big hit because I know because I ended up having more cousins than I thought I had. Ha -ha. What's the most beautiful place you've ever been on the planet? I have to say that my wife and I went to Syria and it was extraordinary. And it was before all the war and the Arab Spring and everything, and then it was...

2:00:10We just thought it was just most wonderful, beautiful. People were just so sweet and nice and the food was so great. And we went to see the Palmeera and it was an enchanted time. We were there, good three weeks too. Wow. That's beautiful. I would not have expected that answer. It was a unforgettable trip. And the people were wonderful. But you know, people are wonderful. Human beings are always there, although people are nice, and then you go there, they're nice. Yeah, everywhere.

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