Francis Coppola has an incredibly fertile mind. As the 1990s wound down Zoetrope Studio had no difficulty identifying projects of interest. There was new attention to the medium of television. In 1997 Coppola executive produced a miniseries for NBC, The Odyssey, with an all-star cast featuring Armand Assante, Isabella Rossellini, and Greta Scacchi. It was directed by famed Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky. He won an Emmy for direction. Also beginning in 1997 Coppola executive produced a science fiction series for the Sci-Fi Channel. A Canadian/American production, First Wave ran for 64 episodes.
A significant portion of Coppola's energy was gravitating toward the establishment of a major winery in the Napa Valley. The Niebaum Estate property (now called Niebaum-Coppola) was secure. He could focus on building a solid base in the wine and hospitality business. Although the industry of film had been an agitating and sometimes cruel experience for Coppola, even when there was a positive financial yield, this would not carry over to a new venture in a different environment. Francis could be entrepreneurial, he was the great impresario, and he knew how to surround himself with colleagues who had the corporate skills he lacked. He had wonderful taste and panache along with the ability to make a presentation on a grand scale. The Coppola name was a draw. To apply a circus analogy his family often uses, he was the ringmaster.
In 1994 Coppola entered into a joint hospitality venture with two high-profile friends and actors associated with Coppola-directed films: Robin Williams, who would soon act as the lead in the Coppola directed film Jack, and Robert De Niro, who had been extraordinary as young Don Corleone in The Godfather Part II. The trio invested in Rubicon, a San Francisco restaurant in the financial district very near Union Square where the lovers in The Conversation have their clandestine exchange. The Rubicon was conceived by Drew Nieporent, a master restaurateur who continues to collaborate with De Niro in the Tribeca section of New York. The Rubicon was highly successful in a competitive location until closing in 2008.
Francis and Eleanor Coppola had moved to the Napa Valley in 1975. Their original intention was to explore the region to find a retreat as a getaway from their oversized San Francisco mansion by the bay. Francis thought it would be nice for Gio and Roman to be able to climb trees in the country. They would look for a property with some grape vines so they could maintain the family tradition of making wine for the family. As chance would have it, while they were scouting the area, the well-known Niebaum Estate came on the market for auction. The estate was totally out of their price range, but the Coppolas’ real estate agent thought it would be pleasant for the Coppolas to see this beautiful section of Napa—part of the historic Inglenook Estate, which had been divided into parcels and had various owners. The estate was magnificent, but purchase was out of the question; they would be in way over their heads. Eleanor and Francis looked elsewhere, but nothing could satisfy them after Niebaum. In classic risk-taker fashion, Coppola impulsively bought the estate for $2 million—it had about 1,600 acres of vineyards and a glorious home. The purchase put Coppola between a rock and a hard place. In order to obtain financing for Apocalypse Now, he immediately had to use the newly purchased Niebaum Estate as security along with many other assets. In the jungles of the Philippines, Coppola had this additional stress to pile onto an already harrowing filmmaking situation. When the shoot was finally completed, Coppola returned to San Francisco, where the advance word on Apocalypse was not reassuring. The press had been ferocious and would continue its “Apocalypse When?” campaign for the lengthy postproduction period. The idyllic Napa estate was in constant jeopardy, but by hook or crook, they managed to hold onto the property while Coppola worked all film jobs he could get.
Flashforward to after Dracula, and Francis had $10 million in hand, which he gave to Eleanor to invest. Over time, the estate had become their main residence. The Coppolas had money in the bank and newfound security. And then lightning struck twice. The adjoining parcel to their property became available for purchase, and Coppola saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He asked Ellie for the money back and then needed another $2 million to meet the $12 million asking price. Coppola felt certain it was an investment that would pay off; indeed, it was a serendipitous acquisition that allowed Coppola to rejoin the original prized Inglenook vineyards. The real estate was an additional 95 acres and the stunning Inglenook château. Eleanor and Francis began to create an overarching vision for the substantial vineyards they now owned.
In 1997 Zoetrope, which was now virtual (www.zoetrope.com), launched an online quarterly magazine named Zoetrope: All-Story. Its mission is stated on its website: “a quarterly magazine devoted to the best new short fiction and one-act plays.”1 The stature of the magazine is evident from the caliber of its submissions and the numerous awards it has garnered. The magazine has a guest artist who designs each issue and a classic reprint—a short story that inspired a film, with the notion of illustrating the connection between the two mediums. A sampling of the participants to the magazine includes David Mamet, Mary Gatskill, Woody Allen, Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Elizabeth McCracken, and countless others. A sampling of guest illustrators and designers includes Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Gus Van Sant, Mike Figgis, Tom Waits, and countless others.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek Coppola was asked how all his businesses—food, wine, literature, film—connected with each other. Coppola explained, “I know that to some people it seems diverse. But to me, there's an underlying theme.’…”These are all projects at least vaguely associated with show business. They're all involved with presenting an idea, show, or story to people for their pleasure and orchestrating all the elements to some total result.”2 Coppola believed that all these pleasurable, stimulating enterprises engaged people in a kind of audience participation.
Adding to his enterprises, in 1999 Coppola opened Café Niebaum–Coppola in the North Beach section of San Francisco where as a young filmmaker he spent many mornings in modest cafés typing screenplays. It was a stone's throw from the historic City Lights Bookstore, famed stomping grounds of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, a film project still on Francis's radar.
To extend his reach even further, Coppola opened a luxury resort hotel named Blancaneaux Lodge in the rain forest of Belize (formerly British Honduras). Coppola had a fascination with Belize not only for its beauty and culture but because he envisioned the location as an ideal hub to expand intercontinental communications and initiatives throughout the Americas. Coppola's enterprises would grow in number and sophistication. In the 1990s, Zoetrope.com and the restaurants, cafés, resort accommodations, Zoetrope All-Story, and the wine collection were in their growth phase; these would mature and prosper as twenty-first-century propositions.
Francis and Eleanor Coppola observed with gratification the maturation of their two children, Roman and Sofia. Each was involved in artistic endeavors. Roman had attended New York University's film school, the Tisch School of the Arts, to prepare himself academically for a career in film. He was fortunate to have had practicum through the years on Francis Coppola's film sets. When he returned to the West Coast, he worked closely with his father in charge of the second unit on Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jack, and The Rainmaker.
Roman was also forging his own path working with friends and family of his generation. In 1996 he acted in and cophotographed a short directed by his sister Sofia, Andrew Durham (who would become a high-end photographer),3 and Ione Skye, who also wrote the short. The other cinematographer on the shoot was Spike Jonze, Sofia's longtime boyfriend and future first husband. Also in the cast were renowned singer-songwriter Donovan Leitch, Ione Skye's father, and Jacqueline de la Fontaine, the late Gio Coppola's girlfriend and Gia Coppola's mother. In Hollywood and environs, it was not unusual for the offspring of famous people to establish close bonds with one another. Sofia Coppola and Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of independent filmmaker John Cassavetes and renowned actress and muse Gena Rowland, had been close friends for several years. And, of course, the Coppola dynasty itself was growing by leaps and bounds. Roman was the executive in charge of production for Gunfighter (1999), written and directed by his cousin Christopher Coppola, brother of Nicolas Cage.
Roman branched out, making full use of newer technologies. He founded The Director's Bureau, a compendium of directors working on music videos, commercials, and films. Roman directed numerous music videos for major entertainers such as Green Day, the Strokes, Fatboy Slim, and Phoenix. He is in demand directing commercials on an ongoing basis. His corporate clients have included Orbitz.com, Levis, Honda, GAP, and Coca-Cola. It is abundantly clear he inherited his father's comfort with technological innovation and penchant for invention. Equally adept in a variety of media, Roman shifts with the dictates of creativity and business demand. Invariably he is available to support Sofia Coppola's projects. When she was developing her first feature, The Virgin Suicides, he was on board as second unit and more importantly as a safety net.
Sofia spent her years after attending California Institute of the Arts exploring her artistic options. She had interests in photography, music, and design but wasn't sure exactly how to blend them. In the early 1990s Sofia produced a short video with her friends Zoe Cassavetes and Andrew Durham titled Ciao L.A. Zoe and Sofia were also in the cast along with Adam Horovitz, who is playwright Israel Horovitz's son. Sofia also appeared uncredited in another video short titled Beastie Boys: Sabotage. Both shorts were directed by Spike Jonze. Sofia and Spike became very close. In 1994 Sofia, her friend Stephanie Heyman, and Sonic Youth alternative-rock group member Kim Gordon founded MilkFed, a clothing store in Japan. The major draw was a t-shirt line, but the store also included some dresses, pants, and accessories. The impetus for the clothing line was casual attire with a bit of flair not ordinarily found in t-shirts and other reasonably priced apparel. The demographic appeal was young women. The impression is that the designs are for small-figured bodies. MilkFed was a success, and its brand is Heaven 27. There is a Heaven 27 boutique in Hollywood. Sofia explains the fashion philosophy: “You know, most clothes in this price range are pretty generic. The Gap all looks the same. My clothes are definitely different. Now my father wants to know when I'm going to do my perfume!”4
Sofia and Cassavetes teamed up for a short-lived Comedy Central show called Hi Octane, which had a fun-filled run on cable in 1995. It was the first series shot entirely on digital video and was characterized by entertaining skits and off-beat guests. When Jon Stewart interviewed the two hosts on his show, one gets a glimpse of Sofia's persona.5 While Cassavetes is animated and vocal and makes eye contact with her interviewer, Sofia is retiring and appears somewhat nervous, at times looking off in another direction. Her voice is soft and has a tendency to trail off at the end of a sentence. It seems hard for her to keep a rhythm with Stewart in their exchanges, yet when they cut to a break and you can still see her, she leans in and appears engaged with Stewart in a much more relaxed manner. Simply put, she is shy and reticent yet has a sweet quality that makes people like her. She has acknowledged that she has stage fright, and in truth it shows.
Sofia continued to photograph professionally, and her work appeared in high-end glamour magazines. Not only is she a talented photographer, she is also a photographic model and over time became Marc Jacobs's photographic muse. In 1997 Marc Jacobs became the creative director for the Louis Vuitton men's and women's apparel collections. Arguably, he was and continues to be the most influential designer of the day. His diverse women's ad campaigns appeal on the one hand to the Marc Jacobs signature or on the other to Louis Vuitton's. Sofia Coppola is an integral part of Marc Jacobs's line and continues to be a major photographic model for his brand. She may not have been able to act, but despite a crooked nose and a mouth that can look a bit snarly, the camera loves and transforms her. Jacobs is in awe of Sofia. He described her as “young and sweet and innocent and beautiful. The epitome of this girl I fantasize of.”6
Before meeting Sofia, Jonze had been developing his own filmmaking career. Spike Jonze is a pseudonym for Adam Spiegel. Spiegel was born on October 22, 1969, in Maryland, and grew up primarily in Bethesda. His parents were divorced early, and, by accounts, Adam was often left to his own devices. He had an early passion for dirt bikes and skateboarding. He attended high school but showed no passion for learning. He is described as nonintellectual and unschooled even in film, although he attended San Francisco Institute for the Arts and met several classmates who would be future collaborators, notably Lance Acord, who photographed his breakout film Being John Malkovich.
Sofia worked with Spike on some of his many projects, but he was on his own with Being John Malkovich, which took years to be greenlighted. The Charlie Kaufman script had been travelling around Hollywood studios and almost everyone loved it, but no one would commit. The business environment in Hollywood was risk averse, possible even more so than in Francis's day. On occasion Francis Coppola intervened on Jonze's behalf. Jonze and Kaufman struggled to get a studio commitment and an okay from John Malkovich, who needed to agree to appear in the film. Malkovich got a call from Coppola asking that he meet with Jonze. Malkovich recalls Francis saying, “In 10 years we'll all be working for him.”7 They met in Paris.
Jonze is notoriously introverted and rarely makes himself available to the press for interviews. His close friend and associate Mark Lewman says Jonze avoids interviews, cancels press conferences, fabricates biographical information, and does not correct erroneous reports that circulate about him.8
Spike Jonze, as he is most often known professionally (although he has also used the name Richard Koufey [spelled variously]), is an inventive, quirky, prolific, and exceedingly successful director of music videos for groups such as the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, singer Björk, Weezer, R.E.M., and Beck. He was a founder of Dirt magazine and edited Freestylin’ magazine. He directs clever, cutting-edge commercials for clients like Adidas, IKEA, and GAP. He cocreated the television series Jackass and Jackass: The Movie.
As he geared up for his first feature, executive produced by Michael Stipe, the unique artist of R.E.M., Sofia was in the planning stages for her debut feature, The Virgin Suicides. After directing her first short, Lick the Star, in 1998, she felt ready to commit to a filmmaking career. She realized how much she had absorbed from years on Francis Coppola's movie sets. Francis now gave her specific counsel: “Sit right next to the camera so the actors see you; see you're in control. Remember that the actors’ hands are almost as important as their faces. Hands are very expressive. If you cut hands out of the frame you're losing 30 percent of the performance.”9 Sofia's father, the experienced director, was trying to impart all the tricks of the trade to his fledgling director daughter.
On June 26, 1999, Sofia Coppola and Jonze married at her parents’ Napa Valley estate. The wedding was elegant, with friends, family, and colleagues in attendance. Francis served wines from 1971, the year of Sofia's birth, and explained the wine's special bouquet to guests at every table. Film director Lucas was present, which must have been a thrill for Jonze, who is rumored to have seen Star Wars hundreds of times.
At the time of their marriage both the bride and groom were in postproduction on their films. Being John Malkovich was released in October 1999. It was an unpredicted success, achieving almost universal raves. The film circulated for many months and grossed in the vicinity of $22 million worldwide. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Direction—Spike Jonze, Best Original Screenplay—Charlie Kaufman, and Best Supporting Actress—Catherine Keener and received many other accolades. So there was not one happy couple, but two. Kaufman and Jonze would definitely team up again.