It’s been 10 years since we’ve heard from Francis Ford Coppola in a director capacity and, according to the five-time Oscar-winner, that’s due to numerous reasons including the time it takes to choose a project. The unusual, twisty dramatic film Youth Without Youth starring Tim Roth brings Coppola back into the spotlight as a director.
Youth Without Youth follows an aging linguistics professor named Dominic Matei (Roth) who's struck by lightning while crossing the street. The jolt should have killed him, but instead Dominic recovers from the shock and finds his youth miraculously restored. Not only is his body back to the state it was in as a much younger man, his mind is quicker and his intellect sharpened to the point where he can pick up languages and absorb knowledge at an astounding rate. His incredible recovery and new talents interest Nazi scientists, and Dominic is forced into exile where he reunites with his long-lost love.
Asked why he'd finally returned to directing with Youth Without Youth after a 10 year absence, Coppola offered a lengthy explanation. “After the difficulty financially that I had after One from the Heart, I was in the pattern of making one movie every year because I had a bank payment every year. After Dracula I pretty much had paid off the debt. I was more of a free man. I began to think, ‘Gee, at the age that I am, I would love to find my place in movies. I don’t want to just be a director who directs a movie every year.’ ‘Oh, here is this movie. You can go, here’s the script. This actor wants to work with you…’ So much of what you do as a filmmaker is what you choose. It’s the type of movie you are going to do. If you are going to choose program pictures, then you’ll be a program film director. So I was very conscious, since I started so young, that now I was of an age where I had to try and find my place in all of the work.
At first I thought I would instigate the projects. As you know, I worked on Pinocchio as a project because I anticipated what became a wonderful success with Pixar films. I had a cataclysmic experience because I spent so much time, 10 years, and I put a lot of money in. To make Pinocchio we had a deal and then Warner Brothers contacted Columbia and said, ‘Oh, we own it.’ So there was a big lawsuit. That took more time and more money. We won it. We were given almost $100 million dollars in damages from Warner. I said, ‘Ha, ha, ha. But I’m not going to spend it.’ Sure enough, a year later it was reversed by a higher. That is pretty much what big corporations do. They are afraid of jury trials, but they are more comfortable within the give and take of the appeal.”
Coppola continued, “Then I thought, ‘God, I just lost 5 million dollars of which I had worked so hard to build up, but more important is my time.’ Now, I’m 62 years old, and I tried to think of what I should do. Again, I had to find my place. ‘Where do I belong?’ I thought it was time for me to do my dream project. Like every advertising executive in New York, probably someday, they will retire and write a novel. I said, ‘Now, it’s time for me.’
Fortunately for me, I had told my wife after Dracula, ‘If I do three more movies, can I keep the money I earned so that I can use that money to finance something for myself?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I was offered the Robin Williams picture for Disney, Jack, and I got involved in a John Grisham picture. And then I said, ‘I can’t do a third one. I’m running out of time.’ I took that money I had earned from those two pictures and I began work on the screen project Megalopolis, which I had been working on for years. Thinking of a movie that would have a sweet little theme, it would be unusual, and it could maybe contribute some new ideas into the language of movies. I thought, ‘Movies are only 100 years old. Why is it that the language isn’t evolving as it did on Eisenstein, or Pabst, or Griffith? Surely all that was discovered about movies wasn’t finished then.’”
Coppola's dream project was just about to get underway when the horrific events of 9/11 ground production to a stop. “ I worked on the script and began the preparation,” said Coppola. “I went to New York, I was shooting second unit, and it was a story about utopia. It was set in Manhattan. Right in the middle of when we were shooting was the tragedy of the Twin Towers. Everything was changed about New York. If you were going to use New York as a quasi-fictional city to set a story like this, then it was changed forever. I tried to write that in, deal with Islamic radicalism, and understand these issues. How could I try to understand?
Megalopolis began to be, almost, a trap for me. I was so very bull-headed about a movie… I don’t give up easily, but it wasn’t falling into my lap. I certainly had artistic issues in the script, especially now that I had to expand it in this new world event which had happened. But, also, it was an expensive movie. The film industry started to change. The so-called, studios were not really interested in a big drama anymore. They were interested in a series of movies, thrillers, or Spider-Man or something.”
“I became very worried. ‘Even if I do lick this script, then I’m going to have to go get Russell Crowe who had just become a big star.’ These people start to be more difficult to get to be with you. Even when I made Apocalypse Now, after all the success I had making those movies, I still had a difficult time getting an actor that would go with me to the Philippines.”
