His obituary will begin, “Francis Ford Coppola, the director of ‘The Godfather,’ died today.”
Here’s hoping this news update will be far in the future; the 82-year-old filmmaker said in a recent interview he has the genes to live past 100, and he’s planning on it. But there is no doubt that the landmark film, widely considered among the greatest ever made, and its two sequels, will always be Coppola’s defining legacy.
You might have heard that《教父》下个月就要满50岁并庆祝，派拉蒙图片正在发布电影的新4K恢复，这将专门屏蔽世界各地的杜比屏幕，其中包括八个湾地区AMC剧院，于2月25日星期五开始.4K超高清数字和蓝色在3月22日，还设定了包含所有三个“教父”电影的“教父”电影，也将被释放为3月22日。
But what if Coppola had never directed “The Godfather”? What would his career have been like? (Hint: The answer is contained in the other Coppola 4K restoration to hit theaters this month: 1974’s low-budget旧金山射击帕拉诺亚经典“谈话”。）
我们问这个问题,因为它是有点米尔acle that Coppola was even hired to direct “The Godfather.” At the time, he had just established his dream of an independent film company, American Zoetrope, at a warehouse on Folsom Street in San Francisco with co-founder George Lucas. None of Coppola’s previous four movies, including Zoetrope’s first film, “The Rain People” (1969), had turned a profit.
Mario Puzo的原始新颖的“The Tey Father”已成为一个不太可能的畅销书，并且派拉蒙有廉价的计划使电影便宜 - 工作室遭遇了一系列最近的失败，并陷入困境的财务海峡。几个热门董事已经拒绝了该项目 - 塞尔吉奥利昂，彼得博格丹诺维奇和奥托预防者之间。
Producer Robert Evans, often at loggerheads with the studio, successfully petitioned to hire a director of Italian American ancestry, hoping it would lend authenticity. Coppola fit the bill and also piqued Evans’ interest for his writing ability: Coppola won an Oscar as co-writer of the 1970 best picture winner “Patton.”
Coppola与Puzo共同写下了剧本，在纽约和旧金山的纽约和Coppola写作的小说家中，它在几个小时的课程中Caffe Trieste in North Beach.
Even after Coppola was hired, both Paramount and Evans were looking for any excuse to fire him should the project seem too big for the young director — Evans had the great Elia Kazan waiting in the wings.
As actor Robert Duvall, who played the Corleone Mafia family’s lawyer,put it to The Chronicle in 2010,“我获得了很多尊重（Coppola），在这些条件下工作。你必须真正地看着弗朗西斯作为拉扯那个的人。“
But what if none of that happened? What if Coppola had never been offered the job and was instead left to figure out how to cover the overages of American Zoetrope’s latest project, Lucas’ sci-fi film “THX 1138”?
从这里的景色：他的职业生涯会有所不同，但仍然非常成功，因为委员会的秘密调味酱是好莱坞历史上的伟大的河流赌博者之一。他是一个愿意冒险的人，但他有一个天生的商业意识，追溯到他的工作，为传奇的低预算生产商罗杰·科尔曼（包括Coppola的第一个特征）是古怪的恐怖电影“痴呆症13”（1963年）。
There aren’t many Hollywood directors who will willingly risk home and property to make a film, but Coppola has done that time and time again — and he’s doing it now: He and wife Eleanor Coppola recently sold their winery, Inglenook in Napa Valley, to fund his $120 million passion project “Megalopolis,” which is currently in preproduction.
“I couldn’t care less about the financial impact whatsoever. It means nothing to me,”CopPola在杂志的当前问题中告诉GQ。
His track record proves that. Coppola, flush with success after the first “Godfather,” which won Oscars for best picture, actor (Marlon Brando) and the Coppola-Puzo screenplay, had his pick of big-budget projects in Hollywood. Instead, he chose to head back to the Bay Area and Zoetrope for the low-budget “The Conversation,” which made a modest $4.4 million against a $1.4 million budget.
It’s likely that the gargantuan Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now” — a long-dormant Zoetrope project — wouldn’t have been made without Coppola’s “Godfather” success (in the late ’60s, Coppola and co-writer John Milius conceived of shooting “Apocalypse Now” on location in Vietnamduring the war）。谁知道20世纪70年代后期会在20世纪70年代后期制造的“教父”斗牛席？
But he likely would have arrived at the ill-fated American Zoetrope musical “One From the Heart” — a long-dreamed-of project — no matter what. The notoriously expensive 1982 bomb caused Coppola — who had put up the winery, which he had purchased in 1975 with his “Godfather” loot — to be in hock to Chase Bank for a decade.
The conventional wisdom is that Coppola spent that time working for hire to pay off his debt, but that is only partially true (see: “The Cotton Club” and the great “Peggy Sue Got Married”). In reality, Coppola was still pursuing his own passion projects: The S.E. Hinton collaborations “The Outsiders” (suggested to Coppola by an elementary school teacher in Fresno) and “Rumble Fish”; and a long-dormant Zoetrope project, “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” co-produced by Lucas.
普雷斯顿Tucker（杰夫桥），尽管来自三大汽车制造商的反对，但试图让他的梦想成为他的梦想，这可能是培养人的最接近的精神。
历史说，他通过制作“教父：第三部分”（1990）来将他的酿酒厂摆脱了飞翔。在我们的非“教父”替代宇宙中，由于来自湾区电影艺术家Winona Ryder的意想不到的礼物，他会出现债务，然后在她的行为克劳堡的高度。她恳求他制作“德拉姆斯托克的德古拉”，主演了她，吉安的Reeves，加里老人和安东尼霍普金斯并成为全球磅塞。
“Bram Stoker’s Dracula” stands as one of Coppola’s most delirious and pleasurable, visually out-there films.
他花了20世纪90年代试图为两个激情的项目，“巨大的波利斯”和一个活着的行动“pinocchio”融资，但是当两者都落下时，他从他的女儿索菲亚·科普拉那里拿了一个提示，他正在与较低预算的项目进行方式。20世纪200年代的难以置力的“无青年的青年”和旺盛的“Tetro”是自筹资金，也提供了艺术履行感，即使票房结果很悲惨。
现在，感情时间越来越短，Coppola，曾经是河船赌徒，已经决定在“巨大的大家”中打赌，这是一个未来派的电影，其中细节是朦胧的。
Eleanor, Francis’ wife of 59 years (they met on the set of “Dementia 13”), confirmed that she signed off on the Inglenook sale during a Q&A with a Berkeley Art Museum audience on Saturday, Feb. 19, after a Pacific Film Archive screening of her 1991 documentary “Hearts of Darkness,” a must-watch look at her husband at work in the Philippines as the filming of “Apocalypse Now” was coming apart at the seams.
“我鼓掌弗朗西斯，”她在Q＆A期间说。“我认为这很棒。”
毕竟，这是一个长期以来他在好莱坞成功的人，在湾区建立了一个滩头，以反对它。
“I think the secret of life is to not be afraid of risk,” Coppolatold The Chronicle in 2009.“人们经历了冒着金钱的危险，冒着失去这种情况，冒着失去的风险。但事情的真相是，只有一个风险。因为当然，你要死了，你就在那里，你在想你的生活而你说，'哦，我希望我要这样做，我希望我能够做到这一点。
“That’s the risk. So basically, I try to say yes more than no.”
“教父”（r）返回AMC剧院for a limited run starting Friday, Feb. 25.
More Coppola in theaters:“谈话”（r）在下午1点播放2月26日星期六和3:40。2月27日星期日.8-13美元。Roxie Theatre，3117第16届圣，S.F.415-863-1087。www.roxie.com;“Rumble Fish” (R) plays at 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 27. $5-$14. Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. 510-642-0808.www.bampfa.org