Film Masters: Francis Ford Coppola (80s)

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of "The Law of the Street"

For Francis Ford Coppola the decade of the 80 was to forget. After his successes of the 70s, especially the two installments of "The Godfather" and Apocalipse now ", the director was considered as one of the best American directors of the time. But, from then on, his personal projects led him to ruin with his independent producer America Zoetrope for not connecting with the public.

"Hunch" poster

"Hunch" was a box office disaster in 1982, which meant he recovered only $ 2 million of the twenty he had invested. The fact that it was a musical and that it had a little-known cast didn't help much when it came to selling the film.

That same year, Wim Wenders, who was producing the film "The man from Chinatown”Left it lying around with less than a third of the production shot. Coppola finished the film himself, although he kept Wim Wenders' name in the directorial credits. Coppola, as a man of his word, fulfilled his end of the contract.

In 1983 he shot two tapes on one of his most recurrent themes, the spoiled youth, “rebels”And“ The law of the street ”. In them, he introduced a series of young actors who would be the main stars of the late 80s and the 90s, such as Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estévez, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane or his own nephew Nicolas Cage.

Both are good movies, but they were a box office flop, forcing Coppola to have to accept a custom film after them.

"Cotton Club" poster

It was in 1984, when the producer Robert Evans He suggested that he continue making "Cotton club", a film that had been filming for a week at that time. Coppola agreed on the condition that Diane Lane join the cast.

Again the filmmaker got a quality film, but it did not get any box office results. A real problem, since “Cotton Club"Was an even more expensive production than" Hunch. "

Coppola returned to connect with the public with "Peggy Sue got married" in 1986, although the quality of the film leaves much to be desired, what the director needed were box office results, since he had earned a reputation as a spendthrift with his films and this was going to put him difficult when it comes to producing your most personal cinema.

In 1987 he rolled “Stone gardens”, A film that goes quite unnoticed, during the filming of this film one of his sons loses his life in an accident, a fateful event that will mark the life of the author.

A year later he recorded a chapter for the TV series "Faerie tale theater" called "Rip van winckle".

They were being bad years for Coppola, and unlike years ago now the rich man was George Lucas and he was broke. So returning past favors, his friend with his production company Lucas Films produced "Tucker, a man and his dream" in 1988. The film was most personal, but had good acceptance among the public and even garnered three Oscar nominations.

To end this varied decade, he filmed the film together with Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen “New York Stories”. His episode "Life without Zoe" is rated by critics as the worst of the three in the film.


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.