How Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg shaped Hollywood

0:00Paul Fischer:From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:11Paul Fischer:Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. And my guest, the writer Paul Fischer, has, I think, an affinity for writing about the history of popular culture in a way that makes it feel vital and exciting. His books are really a ton of fun to read. One of my favorites is a Kim Jong Il production, which is a book about a kidnapping and the movie business and a totalitarian regime and an escape from that totalitarian regime. And his newest book also takes a look at the way movies have affected us. It is an incredible history of probably the last 60 years of filmmaking. The book is The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg and the Battle for the Soul of the American Cinema.

0:52Paul Fischer:Paul, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Elvis. It's my pleasure. And you really do have an affinity for taking the way history and popular culture intersect and then treating it kind of like a suspense novel. Thank you. I think all of these books kind of started with a hook. I know it sounds very kind of 1980s Paramount High concept to me, but I'm always kind of like, how can I take popular culture, but kind of pitch it in a way that my dad would want to read about it if it was a Hudson Booksellers at the airport kind of thing. you know how do I give somebody a way in and so they kind of come in this like you know either a true crime rapper or this kind of like you know friends take on the world rapper I think just because that offers someone a way in to maybe take an interest in that first books case North Korea in this book's case you know there's a fair bit of kind of contract chat and owning your own financial future chat and you know I open with like Jack Warner and the Paramount decision all this stuff.

1:51So how do I make a layman interested and also keep it fresh enough for someone like you or a film buff who already knows kind of the broad strokes of some of this stuff?

2:00Paul Fischer:Well, I think you do a great job of that here by just starting off with the accident that almost killed George Lucas and explains a lot about who and what he is. So, I mean, for people who aren't familiar, he's George Lucas in high school when he was young, kind of loved cars, loved fast cars, wanted to race cars. And he has this car crash in his senior year of high school i think where he nearly dies should have died and not only does it scare him off car racing so as to find something else that he's passionate about but it's sort of you get the sense from the way he talked about it over time that it gave him you know as many survivors have a feeling of well i must have survived for a reason i must make this count i must do something big and important with it and obviously you can kind of trace from there to a filmmaker who a lot of his success, I think, for someone who, by his own admission, hated writing, hated directing, kind of hated every part of it other than sitting in an editing table.

2:55I had that conviction to be so uncompromising to push this stuff through. That's another thing I wanted to do with kind of all three of these guys is, again, give your way into understanding, I guess, the level of ambition and self-confidence and ego, not necessarily in an unhealthy way, without becoming a pop psychologist either.

3:18Paul Fischer:It's true. We're talking about demythologizing the mythic with my guest, Paul Fisher, whose new book is The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas Spielberg, and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema. I mean, I think it's interesting because that kind of focus that you're talking about exists in all the books, especially here. These guys are really the most at home when they're doing this thing. And it's interesting because the beginning of the book, You walk us through Lucas going to Warner's basically what's the beginning of a changeover, the end of an era, him going into the studio the same day that Jack Warner is leaving for the last time and walking through all the departments, just wanting to be someplace where he could work by himself.

3:57Paul Fischer:Because at that young age, even he realized he basically had no social skills. and them being taken over to the only production going on in the studio, which is this kind of mad swirl of activity and an improvisation being led by this person who was the wave of the future. And it's interesting because you like these points where one era is ending and another is beginning. It's a way to sort of bring people into it because we should say that filmmaker whose film he was thrown onto was Francis Coppola doing a musical for Warners for which he was completely unsuited. But that film was Finian's Rainbow.

4:35Paul Fischer:But it sets up who these guys are in a way I think that's really kind of vital because also other people talking about them, you have George Lucas meeting Walter Murch, who was as influential in that era as anybody, and how Lucas basically kind of formed a compact with Walter Murch the first day they met. I mean, I think your interest in the people that these guys connect with is fascinating too. You know, I've been lucky enough to work on a few film sets. I went to film school. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I realized I didn't have the magic to be a great filmmaker, kind of bumbled away from there.

5:08But there's a lot of stuff about the experience of making films or the life of filmmakers or screenwriters or producers or whatever that is about, you know, your friends and the crew and the people you collaborate with and the people you can count on. And it was kind of a natural thing with this because, you know, Coppola kind of approaches stuff like it's family, Spielberg, especially in that time period, you feel as someone who was looking for a home and family. And Lucas is someone who even his friends, you know, will make jokes about, oh, George made half a dozen friends at USC when he was 21 and he decided that was it and he didn't need any more.

5:44And so those people are important. You know, Walter Murch is one of those people where if you're a film person who likes that era, you know, Walter Murch, you know, he's a genius. You've read in the blink of an eye, you know, all this stuff. But again, if you're my dad or the layman reading the book, then I've got an opportunity to introduce you to this guy who's got skill and talent and wisdom and perseverance. But we maybe don't know him as widely because it doesn't say directed by Walter Murch. And that applies to be it Kathy Kennedy or even people who will forget the writers, the John Meliuses, the Melissa Mathesons.

6:18If you're living through that period, they're all starring players in this community. And I wanted to kind of honor that. And then, you know, the famous house on the beach that Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt had where people would come and hang out and they would make meals and people connected there and met people there. You know, Easy Riders makes a big deal of the probably very truthful part of that house that was skinny dipping and drugs and hanging out and, you know, kind of promiscuous lifestyles. but the people I was sort of interested in was oh well you know Marty and George and Steve they're not doing any of that they're sitting stone cold sober in their clothes in the sand and all everybody's saying is look look at how pale they are because they never leave a screening room or an editing suite and Francis is up in San Francisco with kids and a Porsche and death and all this stuff that's so different from kind of straight down the middle kind of sex drugs and rock and role and they're the most influential guys.

7:21So it's kind of like, okay, how do we reframe all of this?

7:23Paul Fischer:I mean, they're all observers. I mean, that's something you make very clear in the way you write about Coppola and Lucas and Spielberg. It's almost like watching the entire world through cameras all the time anyway. Yeah. I was talking to Lorraine Brennan, who was Martin Scorsese's first wife, who had never spoken to anybody before me. So I felt very lucky and kind of trusted. And that's amazing that you got her. That's incredible. But talking to her, she kept repeating this thing of, oh, well, you know, Marty really, you know, he had to make it before he was 30. And I kept going, why 30 though?

7:57And she couldn't really explain it, but it was this mixture of, you know, it's the late sixties. So you're either in your twenties or you're decrepit and old. And it really felt like they felt that way. But it also felt like after 30, I've got to get a job and I got to live a normal life. And I have no idea how to do any of that. And they were all like that. You know, Steven Spielberg is a guy who like jumps into a television directing contract when he's 22 years old and immediately starts lying to people that he's actually 21 because he has this idea of I've got to be a director before I'm 21.

8:33No one cares, but it's so important to them. You know, and it's very relatable to, I have filmmaker friends you know who are like if i'm not making sits and cane by 28 then i might as well be dead and you're like or you know be sean baker be ava duvernay where you've made 12 films before anybody even notices you're alive because you're practicing your craft but i think bound into that that need they have is also this thing they accidentally perpetuated which is this myth of kind of especially male genius of you got to come out of the gate fully formed and that's something I also want to touch upon with this, which is these guys did not come out of the gate fully formed as desperately as they might have wanted to feel they were.

9:15Paul Fischer:We will take a break and talk more about ambition with my guest Paul Fisher, whose terrific new book is The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas Spielberg, and the Battle for the Soul of the American Cinema. It's a treatment. There's more to come. Stay with us.

9:33You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow up first wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why.

9:58Paul Fischer:Welcome back. It's The Treatment. I guess this is writer Paul Fisher. His new book is The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas Spielberg, and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema. He will be appearing, doing a personal appearance at Roman's Bookstore in Pasadena on April 20th. So to make sure I got that plug in there before we went any further. What's interesting to me about the book, Paul, is that the women really live in this. And not only did you get Lorraine Brennan, but you also, there's a lot about Melissa Matheson, who's really the linchpin who holds this entire era together. At some point, she intersects with all three of these filmmakers.

10:31Paul Fischer:And we should say, like all these guys, she had no interest in screenwriting. and she was kind of floating along. But there's kind of a maelstrom, this kind of gravitational force that these filmmakers create that just by being around them, she gets a chance to realize a dream she never had for herself. Yeah, and as a writer, you love what's complicated. Anytime you're dealing, you kind of stumble upon something and you're like, this is not black and white. I don't have any clear answers, but it feels like life. You know, that's kind of the good stuff. And Melissa Matheson was one of those people where for me, you think, okay, well, she's this great screenwriter, was a very private person because she was a private person to some degree.

11:14And because she was a woman, we don't have all the stuff that's written about John Milius or about, you know, all these other screenwriters that Joe Esther has, these people that were like, oh, they're big personalities. They were influential. And so I thought, okay, she's part of this generation and I should write about her. And then on top of the right thing, you're like, oh, she has a long, long relationship with Francis Coppola. And then she marries Harrison Ford. And, you know, she's kind of everywhere. And in the same way that you talk about George Lucas walks into Warner Brothers when Jack Warner leaves, Melissa Matheson is also kind of in a certain kind of Los Angeles family going to a school in Burbank that's a Catholic showbiz school where the kids talk about, oh, you'd wait for the bus.

12:00and you'd see, you know, dying Walt Disney waiting for his chauffeur across the way at the studio. And so has also lived through this kind of stuff, but has also a very complicated life because she's 18 when she meets Francis Coppola and they start a relationship that makes you feel very uncomfortable, but that also you speak to people and you read her words and you speak to family and friends and they go, you know, it kind of worked for both of them. And Coppola is also the guy who tells her you should write and you have a talent for writing. and she sustains him in some way. And then Eleanor Coppola, who's married to Francis Coppola, who is a very creditable artist at the very least in her own right, is also at home raising children, sustaining him in that way and having her own kind of demons about, oh, I'm now living the stuff I sort of resented my mother for doing, but I don't know how to escape out of it.

12:52And so on top of that idea that, oh, these guys are looking to create the creative ecosystem, But to them, that means getting a warehouse and hanging out with the bros and sharing screenplays without realizing ecosystem is also these women who kind of toil in the shadows, supporting them every time they have a struggle. It felt worthwhile writing about Melissa Matheson and people like that within those ecosystems, but also because it kind of complicates just all of them. You know, it complicates how you think of someone in a way that is interesting and truthful. I talk to people about Coppola.

13:27Well, they'll go, I'm reading your book. And on page 111, I love him. And on page 113, I want to smack him. And on page 117, I love him again. And on page 120, I don't understand him. And that's where you go, OK, I've done my job because I've made these people full rather than kind of shortcuts and shorthands.

13:45Paul Fischer:It's the treatment. We're talking to somebody who's apparently still nostalgic for Quibi. My guest is the writer Paul Fisher. His new book is The Last Kings of Hollywood. would. I just find this so interesting, Paul, just because there is kind of somebody in all these books, especially here, these people who are kind of aware of the long view, the big picture. In its weird way, it's Lucas, because he is the person who actually finally ends up kind of growing up. He is a 180 from the person we meet at the beginning of the book by the end. Coppola and Spielberg is still in some ways pursuing, but still these kids who don't quite know how to talk to the people who live through the movies, who basically come alive when there's something on the other side of the camera in front of them and still have these movies that they've been wanting to make since they were kids in some way.

14:32Paul Fischer:And Lucas is this person who's become the kind of person he made fun of at the beginning of the book. You always get this tickle whenever you come across a real, like a human being at a time in their life where you go, anything you fight in yourself kind of comes back to you as fate unless you accept it. And George Lucas is one of those people where, you know, you start the book and he's a young, very cool, very hip guy who's like, I'm making abstract mood poems and I hate narrative and I hate the cigar chompers and I don't want to work for any studio and I hate the mainstream and I'm a filmmaker, the way a toy maker is a toy maker.

15:1015 years later, he's Irving Thalberg. He's the guy hanging over the director going i make the decisions i pay the bills you know george lucas for someone who really has just made a lot of money making films for children and then gone off and lived his life without really bothering anybody gets a lot of hate from people who feel entitled to those films for children and to what he should or should not have done with all that stuff and there's just something tragic and compelling and moving and human about meeting that guy when you think, oh, you probably would have hated yourself at 40. But that's how life goes for all of us.

15:51And they all have that in different ways at the beginning, but kind of lack of self-awareness. Spielberg is someone who, in his own words, wants to be like, not for himself, but for being like everybody else, because he feels so different. And then he kind of finds his groove and his swing when he realizes, He says, oh, actually, I understand what's in everybody else. I understand the fears and the dreaming and all of that stuff. I can tap into that no matter how different I feel. And Coppola is someone who thinks of himself as, I'm a novelist. I'm a theater maker. I want to work with people. It's all collaborative.

16:25But part of him wants to be Louis B. Mayer. And part of him just wants to be at a craps table risking everything because he wants to feel that thrill of rolling the dice kind of thing. But you're right. You're right. Lucas is the guy who, again, starts his life wanting to race cars. And filmmaking is almost like an interlude to other things. But at the same time, he's the guy who can see it more clearly than anybody else, who can tell you, in the late 80s, early 90s, we're going to have AI actors, we're all going to have little niches of like, if you like horror films, you'll go here. If you like something else, you'll go there.

17:01It's all going to come to your house on a disc or through the airwaves. saw it very, very presciently. Even though he was the one guy who was very happy to turn his back on filmmaking the second he didn't need to actually stand on a film set at six in the morning anymore.

17:15Paul Fischer:I can't leave you without talking a little bit about how what became Apocalypse Now is really kind of this accretion of details, like it's almost like a piece of chewing gum picking up whatever it lands on. I mean, you go into great detail about this, this actor named Steve Canale, who ended up being a regular on Dallas, by the way, who is a big influence. He's kind of a wannabe actor in those days who John Milius meets and gives Milius so much detail that he basically should have been credited as a co-author on the film. If I think war in Vietnam, so much of it is informed about films, including Apocalypse Now.

17:50And it's a film made by a bunch of guys who never went. And don't know what it was like. But, you know, they get stuff through this guy, Steve Canale. Like John Milius likes to shoot guns. He goes to a shooting range. There's this guy who's there who's just come back from it and he's got stories. And Milius is like, I'm going to pump all of this from you to kind of paint this fantasy in a way that is grounded. I'll take the stuff that I need and don't need. And I love the life of that film because it's so tapped into their psyches, right? Like it starts with John Milius, this guy who's at film school, who's, you know, an upper middle class boy who's just come back from this kind of prep school in the Colorado woods that he talks about as if he was living in the wilderness.

18:36And he can't go to Vietnam. And that was his dream was to go, he says, and he can't go because of the asthma. But everybody who meets him is like, I'm pretty sure John wouldn't have gone. And so he latches onto this thing. And then Lucas latches onto it because he's like, oh, you know what I love? I love the Battle of Algiers and Dr. Strangelove and black and white stuff. And so we're going to make it is this kind of mockumentary satire. We're going to film some of it in Vietnam with the troops, and we're going to film some of it in the rice field in Sacramento. And you're like, that makes no sense.

19:09How are you going to do this? And then it comes to Coppola, and this is my favorite bit of it that makes even less sense than anything else. Coppola picks up this thing and goes, I have money, I have clout, I've just made Godfather 2, I can do whatever I want. I want to have income streaming in from something I own. I'm going to take this thing that crazy John Milius wrote that Lucas tried to push him to make just the darkest mockumentary satire ever. And you know what I see? I see Rambo. I see a fun, big Vietnam action film blockbuster that I can make really quickly. It's going to have a few set pieces and movie stars, and it's going to make me super rich.

19:49And there's nothing at any point in any of the draft that suggests this is anything other than a harrowing, awful time at the movies. But he decides this will be, you know, essentially my Star Wars. This will be my mainstream blockbuster that will make me rich because I will own it and the teenage boys are going to love it. And it'll bring me all this money. And then of course, the second he starts working on it, being Francis Coppola, it becomes bigger and it becomes weirder and it becomes about his own personal life. And it becomes about the process rather than the end result almost. And it becomes one of those ventures where he almost needs to flirt with bankruptcy to pull it together and make it.

20:29And it just has all these different lives where you're like, oh, imagine if we had George Lucas's Apocalypse now. I don't think we would have had George Lucas's Star Wars. And what does Coppola do after Godfather 2? And what would this film have looked like when that film would have looked like? And it's a nice reminder of like, you know, the film you see on screen has 28 lives before it gets to that point. And some of them are very, very different. And their filmmakers' careers could be very different.

20:53Paul Fischer:Well, I can't thank you enough for doing this, Paul. My guest who has made me rethink the career of Steve Canale and will make you watch Dallas in a very different way is the writer Paul Fisher. His new book is The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas Spielberg, and The Battle for the Soul of American Cinema. Paul, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for doing this. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

21:17Paul Fischer:Writer Paul Fisher turns his books on cultural and social history into psychological studies and does so again with his newest book, The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema. On Monday, April 20th, you can join Fisher at Roman's Bookstore in Pasadena for a book signing and discussion. Previous conversations on writers have used culture to look back at the way we were include Garrett Kennedy and Kenneth Turan, and both can be heard, along with many others, at the archive, kcrw.com slash thetreatment. The Treat is our continuing series with creators on inspiration.

21:59Paul Fischer:A new installment drops every week, and this week is the directors of the film Project Hail Mary, Phil Lord and Chris Miller on a movie that made almost no impact over 50 years ago and has found new admirers every year since. The Treatment is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist. To better days everyone, I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.