Francis Ford Coppola is 75 years old today. A ilm director, producer and screenwriter, Coppola is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywoods most innovative and influential film directors. He epitomized a group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood. Emerging in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary filmmaking, the group included Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman and George Lucas. In 1970, Coppola won the Oscar for best original screenplay as co-writer, with Edmund H. North, of Patton (1970). His directorial prominence was cemented with the release of The Godfather in 1972. The film revolutionized filmmaking in the gangster genre, earning praise from both critics and the public before winning three Academy Awards—including his second Oscar (Best Adapted Screenplay, with Mario Puzo), Best Picture, and his first nomination for Best Director. Coppola followed with The Godfather Part II in 1974, which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, it brought him three more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture, and made him the third director, after Billy Wilder and James L. Brooks, to be honored three times for the same film. The Conversation, which he directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme dOr at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed 1979s Apocalypse Now. Notorious for its over-long and strenuous production, the film was nonetheless critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning the Palme dOr at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. Coppola is one of only eight filmmakers to win two Palme dOr awards and is the only filmmaker to win both in the same decade. Here, Coppola offers advice in an interview.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 05:34:23 +0000
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