To understand Francis Coppola's passionate desire to own a Hollywood studio in 1980, it is necessary to place his fervor into the historical context of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the classic Hollywood studio system.
Hollywood as the mecca of moviemaking developed during the silent film era when the nascent American film industry relocated from New York to find better weather and light. In Los Angeles and environs, studios were founded under the strong control of the moguls by the 1920s. The moguls were a group of businessmen largely comprised of Eastern European Jewish emigrants who had left their home countries under the strain of prejudice, poverty, and pogroms. These men fled their homeland to partake of the American dream and, in establishing studios in Hollywood, often ended up defining the American dream through the motion pictures their studios produced.
The moguls varied in their aesthetic and artistic sensibilities. They were not driven to make art; instead they wanted to create thriving businesses. Most had come out of retail businesses where they understood what the public wanted. Being immigrants in a country of immigrants the moguls could identify the tastes of the people who would become the prime audience for motion pictures. They strongly identified with the immigrants’ desire to assimilate and become part of the fabric of America. It was their desire, too. In a landmark book on the subject of the Jewish moguls of the Golden Age of Hollywood, author Neal Gabler traces how this group of men created the Golden Age and literally invented Hollywood. The book, titled An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,1 painstakingly examines the process by which these men gained power and placed their stamp on an entire industry for decades.
As recently as September 2011, Coppola told Cameron Bailey at the Toronto International Film Festival that he was “in awe of the Hollywood Studio System.”2 Probably more than most of his filmmaking peers who came out of the California film schools in the 1960s, Coppola was a student of film history. He didn't find it necessary to totally reject the accomplishments of the classic Hollywood studio system in order to function as an independent film artist in a new time. Coppola could embrace the enormity of the moguls’ contribution and, at the same time, respond with enthusiasm to Italian neorealism,3 the nouvelle vague of the late 1950s and 1960s, and filmmakers in Japan and worldwide. His response to any film movement or any filmmaker was based on artistry. Coppola embraced any circumstances that fostered innovation and the artists’ ability to create without hindrance. Coppola appreciated most of the Golden Age studio structure. As explained in extraordinary detail in The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era by Thomas Schatz,4 the major studios (Universal, MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, RKO) and the moguls and executives identified with them—such as Irving Thalberg, Jack Warner, David O. Selznick, and Darryl Zanuck—organized the film studio utilizing solid business concepts. Each discipline necessary to ensure the success of a final product was categorized as an organizational unit and had lines of progression that were clear-cut and definable. Departments had supervisors and staff, the majority of whom were under contract to the studio. The studio methodology was instituted with one concept in mind—a successful and profitable end product. Among the departments were Art Direction, Editorial, Screenwriting, Casting, Producers, Directors, Directors of Photography, Sound, Make-Up, Wardrobe, Music, and Publicity. The studio also had a stable of actors under contract. There were talent scouts searching for the next great star, elocution and dialect coaches, and dancing and singing instructors. Most critical was bottom-line profitability. The studios maintained careful accounting systems. Productions were budgeted and schedules adhered to. All this assembly-line production created a commanding corporate business model that flourished for over two decades from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. Those studios that were tightly controlled by the moguls and their executives and central producers turned profits and became known for their special strengths and genres. Movie stars were attached to specific studios. Prestige directors were hired by the studios to direct in their genres. Prominent novelists of the day were attracted to studios, lured by steady salaries. Scouts combed Broadway searching for new stars. Those with favorable screen tests were offered lucrative studio contracts. Within the rigors of the studio system and the imposition of demands on its employees top to bottom, the opportunity for motion pictures to advance as an art form coexisted in equal measure with artifice and forgettable fare. There are countless examples of directorial greatness, acting genius, wonderful storytelling, photographic beauty, breathtaking costumes, ingenious make-up, and advancement in sound, skillful editing, and art direction that merged with production design. Likewise, some studios didn't get it right, had unsteady balance sheets and poor results, and were either reengineered or folded. Coppola recognized that moviemaking was a business and there was a profit motive, but he also believed the studio heads of the Golden Age had taste and cared about a good show. So if both could be accomplished, it mattered to the moguls.
The myriad elements of the extraordinary motion picture industry during the Golden Age were well understood by Coppola. He wanted to extract the best of that unique era and transform it into an updated version of a self-contained, technologically cutting-edge studio entity. Without a concrete studio property, Coppola had been using the American Zoetrope brand and the substantial influence of the Francis Coppola moniker in the 1970s to support, influence, and engage in a wide and varied amalgam of artistic endeavors. Coppola, as the oldest of the New Generation, aka American New Wave, and the first to achieve commercial success, was viewed by his colleagues as a mentor.
It was in Coppola's nature to assume this guiding role and expand it further to include backing and underwriting ventures he believed sustained the world of film as an art form. If he had money or could negotiate it using his influence, he took that route. If he couldn't provide financial support, he found other ways to make contributions. Coppola was an impresario in the broader sense of its meaning.
The definition of impresario was a remarkably good description of Coppola. The origin of the term is in Italian opera of the eighteenth century. The impresario was a pivotal figure in the success of a season of opera. It was the responsibility of the impresario to organize new material from composers and assure it was prepared for presentation. All the requirements to bring the operas to the stage rested with the impresario—singers, sets, costumes, and orchestra. The impresario was expected to finance the entire enterprise. If the season was a success, the impresario reaped the benefits. If it failed, the losses were his losses. To be a gainful impresario, it was useful to be a risk taker comfortable hazarding a gamble. The impresarial concept evolved over time and exists to this day in broader conception in the entertainment industry. An example of a modern-day impresario was the renowned Sol Hurok, who was responsible for facilitating American presentations by performing artists from around the world. These artists might not have been showcased without his sponsorship. Under the banner “S. Hurok Presents’… Hurok was responsible for bringing the Bolshoi Ballet to the United States in 1959 when the Cold War had prevented their appearance there. He presented dancer Isadora Duncan, considered the creator of modern dance, to the United States when she had previously appeared only in Europe and the Soviet Union. He showcased famed pianists Vladimir Ashkenazy and Van Cliburn and presented violinist Isaac Stern, classical guitarist Andres Segovia, and many other musical luminaries who might not have received such heightened exposure in the United States without his efforts. Arthur Rubenstein introduced Hurok to singer Marian Anderson, and he became her manager. In 1939 Hurok used the clout of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to negotiate the magnificent Ms. Anderson's iconic Easter Sunday performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Coppola had seen a version of German film director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Our Hitler, aka Hitler: A Film for Germany. This seven-hour film was highly controversial in theme and idiosyncratic in presentation. With the spirit and artistic commitment of an impresario, Coppola was enthralled with the film's ingenuity and wanted it to have an airing. He sponsored the film at special screenings for $10 a ticket and sold out a 2,000-seat theater in San Francisco. The film travelled to other venues with the same enthusiastic reception. Coppola took a similar approach with Abel Gance's 1927 masterwork Napoleon, which was being restored by famed film historian Kevin Brownlow. Brownlow's reconstructed version was re-edited and American Zoetrope released it through Universal Pictures. Planned as an event, Napoleon was screened in New York City's Radio City Music Hall, where it appeared from January 23 through 25, 1981, to standing-room-only crowds. Coppola engaged his father, Carmine, to write a score for the silent film, which was performed live as accompaniment to the viewing. Playbills were given to the audience members. There is an essay written by Carmine Coppola titled Writing the Score for Napoleon, in which he says, “The style of the music had to be of the time. I researched the songs of the French revolution’…‘C'ira, the song they sang following ox-carts bearing nobility on the way to the guillotine’…‘and of course the daddy of them all ‘La Marseillaise’—the film has a thrilling scene showing the birth and acceptance of this wonderful anthem.”5
Francis was awestruck by the early invention and scope of Napoleon. Well before its time, Gance employed a three-screen visualization, which required three synchronized projectors. This triptych approach allowed for panoramas long before the existence of widescreen formats or 70mm projection. The triptych was also used to show simultaneously different actions projected onto each third of a screen.6 Rightly, Francis Coppola believed film audiences would respond enthusiastically to film artistry of this caliber if given the opportunity. Coppola continues to expose the film-going public to these spectacles. On occasion he has used the phrase, “Francis Ford Coppola Presents’… in the same manner as the impresario Hurok.
In his mentoring role, Coppola lent support to films and filmmakers who were having difficulty at some stage of their projects. Most notably, he and George Lucas were responsible for bringing esteemed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha to the international community. Lucas had discovered Kurosawa was having funding difficulties in Japan. He brought the issue to Coppola, who immediately agreed to lend his support. Coppola and Lucas executive produced the film internationally, and Lucas convinced Alan Ladd Jr. at Fox to bolster the financing.
By the end of the 1970s the legendary master of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, had fallen out of favor largely due to the extreme political tone of his films during the decade. He had plans for a film about Bugsy Siegel, but not the capital. When Coppola colleague Tom Luddy,7 who knew Godard, told him Godard was out of funds, Coppola felt compelled to support the filmmaking icon of the film-school generation and advanced him $250,000. Although the project fell through, he made a feature entitled Sauve qui Peut (La Vie) and to meet his financial commitment offered the U.S. rights to Coppola and Luddy. The film was released by New Yorker Films.
In 1977 Coppola's UCLA classmate and member of the original American Zoetrope team Carroll Ballard began directing The Black Stallion, the first of a children's book series by Walter Farley. This was at Coppola's request. Coppola was so high on the idea of The Black Stallion he bought the rights to the entire Stallion series. He envisioned sequels and perhaps a TV series. He asked Walter Murch to couple with Ballard on the film's development. Ballard, son of late famed cinematographer Lucien Ballard (The Killing, The Wild Bunch, True Grit [1969]) had been raised in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA he spent most of the 1960s working for the United States Information Agency shooting documentaries.
Both Ballard and Murch thought the Stallion material was not particularly original and perhaps a bit sappy. They talked about their feelings and then met with Coppola. Ballard told Michael Schumacher in an interview in Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life, “I really didn't like the book that much. I thought it was kind of a Leave it to Beaver story.”8 Coppola was furious and told Ballard and Murch they could get out if they didn't like the project. Coppola was very committed to the story and felt hurt, angry, and betrayed. Not only did Coppola think the film would be a success, he also believed he was providing a solid work assignment. In the end, cooler heads prevailed and Ballard completed the film. When Coppola executive produced The Black Stallion Returns (1983) he chose to assign Robert Dalva as director. He had been the editor on the original.
The Black Stallion opened in 1979. Coppola was the executive producer. Murch worked uncredited. In the cast was Teri Garr, who had appeared in The Conversation and would join Coppola as part of his repertory at Zoetrope Studios. Carmine Coppola was responsible for the original score. Preproduction was not without friction. Coppola and Ballard disagreed on the script. In the end the film was a success and was nominated for two Academy Awards. Although Ballard felt that Coppola had interfered during filming, he did come to recognize that without Coppola he would never have made a film in Hollywood. Further, it positioned Ballard to go on to other projects in the next phase of his career.
During the timeframe before Apocalypse Now was finally released, Coppola was in a fragile mental state. The protracted production and postproduction period had worn Coppola down. His extramarital affairs had frayed his marriage and left him in conflict and despair. The press was nipping at his heels. Coppola, who was typically skillful and an excellent self-promoter, had always made himself accessible to the press. He had been the press's darling after the triumphant Godfathers; now he fell victim to a voracious rumor mill that produced story after story anticipating the failure of Apocalypse Now and alluding to Coppola's loss of control. Coppola was hurt and angry, frustrated by the manipulation of information bombarding the media about Apocalypse Now and its ultimate fate.
At the end of April, 1977 Coppola transmitted an internal memo to his fellow employees at American Zoetrope in San Francisco. In the memo, Coppola communicated several edicts that seem to reflect his unstable state: paranoid, dictatorial, and defensive. It began: “This company will be known as American Zoetrope and, purely and simply, it is me and my work. We will not be in the service business’…‘but rather will maintain these facilities in order to realize my own projects. Therefore, you really are not employees of a company—instead the staff of an artist, very much like the crew of a motion picture. Wherever I am will be considered the headquarters of the company.” Coppola, who throughout his career juggled finances and gambled with his own funds, went on to say, “I am cavalier about money because I have to be in order not to be terrified every time I make an artistic decision. Remember, the major studios have only one thing a filmmaker needs: capital. My flamboyant disregard for the rules of capital and business is one of my major strengths when dealing with the studios. It evens the score, so to speak.” Coppola continues by noting: “Please remember, my name is Francis Coppola. I am dropping the Ford. This comes from a statement I once heard: Never trust a man with three names.” In conclusion he declares, “I've heard that success is as difficult to deal with as failure—perhaps more so.” And finally, in an intentionally warped paraphrase of a proverb sometimes attributed to Euripides, Coppola concludes, “Euripides, the Greek playwright said thousands of years ago: ‘Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes successful in show business.’”9
If the staff who received the memorandum were nonplussed, that was not the worst of it. The memo was leaked to the press and appeared in Esquire in the November 1977 issue. The public issuance of the memo deeply humiliated Coppola and added grist to the rumor mill. He surely sounded off-kilter in the memo; his usual swagger and confidence were gone, replaced by defensive, inarticulate pronouncements. Coppola's image suffered a major blow and perhaps irreparable damage.
The delay in the release of Apocalypse caused another agony for Coppola. Whereas he expected it to be the first major film release to tell the story of the war in Vietnam, the market caught up with him, and several motion pictures on the subject were in circulation first. Most significant was the late 1978 release of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. Coppola tried to keep his feelings sub rosa as he attended the New York premiere. He may often have worn his heart on his sleeve, but when Coppola was asked in 1979 to present the Academy Award for Best Director, he accepted graciously. As fate (and the odds makers) would have it, the award was granted to Italian American filmmaker Cimino for his direction of The Deer Hunter. For the world to see, moviegoers and colleagues of all stripes, Coppola bear-hugged Cimino and called him paisan. It was a vintage Coppola moment, reminding the international viewership why they believed throughout the 1970s that Francis Ford Coppola was the father of New Hollywood. A few days later, back in Napa Valley, the Coppolas, friends, and relatives celebrated Francis's 40th birthday in style.
The epic story of the rise and fall of Zoetrope Studios began on March 25, 1980, when Coppola purchased Hollywood General Studios for $6.7 million.10 The studio site had been built in 1919 by John Jasper and had been called Jasper Hollywood Studios. It then became General Services Studios and through resale was Hollywood General when Coppola took title. Coppola had started looking for a Hollywood property in the summer of 1979. He had lost his taste for location shooting after the torturous experience of two years in the jungle on Apocalypse Now. Then too, after being skewered in the press during production and postproduction with Variety issuing alarming stories practically on a daily basis, Coppola was desperately in need of the control and status he had enjoyed throughout most of the decade. He was emotionally bruised by the fallout of his “private” memo and the embarrassment it caused him, and also needed to absorb the impact of Eleanor Coppola's diary published in August 1979, which chronicled the Apocalypse Now experience from her perspective. Notes, as the journal was titled, had not been intended for publication when Ellie started writing it in March 1976. By the journal's final entry in November 1978, she had been encouraged by friends and colleagues to publish her notes. Eleanor Coppola had been through a life-altering experience during this period. She had held to her agreement with Francis to document the making of Apocalypse while enduring extreme physical and emotional hardship (at one point she weighed 90 pounds.) She cared for Sofia, who was age four when the move to the Philippines occurred, and her two boys Gio and Roman, who shuttled back and forth between school in the United States and the rest of the family on location. On occasion Eleanor returned to San Francisco, but for the vast majority of location time, she was there, functioning as a wife, mother, and film documentarian. Francis Coppola suffered massive mood swings and erratic behavior as he directed Apocalypse. Unbeknownst to Eleanor, Francis was having an affair during most of production and postproduction, and many members of the cast and crew were aware of the situation. As is often the case, Eleanor was among the last to know. Suffice it to say, with tincture of time Francis and Eleanor moved through this stage of their marriage, but while it unfolded, Francis, who loved his wife and was a devoted family man, was deeply pained. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to end his clandestine relationship. Eleanor Coppola was and is an extremely private person. Ultimately Notes was therapeutic. As she began to examine her life with Francis, she realized she had always acceded to his needs. She had lived a life of “waiting.” She likened herself to Kay Corleone in the Godfather. Occurring at the height of the women's movement, Eleanor did not need to look too far for support from her community of friends. Before its publication she read passages to Francis, and he acknowledged it should be published—although, in truth, he may not have been the decider. On one level the diary was an informative companion piece to the film, but on the flip side it would reveal his infidelity and be yet another source of embarrassment to him.
At the beginning of 1980 Francis Coppola planted a small palm tree on the Hollywood General property. It was a symbol of the Zoetrope Studio dream he believed would serve as the utopia of his professional life. Coppola had chosen zoetrope as the name for his studio back in 1969 with Lucas when he founded American Zoetrope. He had been given a zoetrope, which was a prefilm wheel-like device for producing moving images, by Mogens Scot-Hansen, a European filmmaker who ran a welcoming film company called Lanterna Films.
Coppola thought he had the deal locked up, but there were complications involving transfer of property rights and lawsuits about ownership. To resolve them, Coppola had to lay out more than originally contemplated for the purchase and at higher rates of interest; thus, as was so often the case with Coppola transactions, the monetary ante was already upped. Lucas counseled against the whole transaction. He told Coppola, “being down there (Hollywood), you're just asking for trouble, because you're trying to change a system that will never change. Here (in San Francisco and environs), we don't change a system because there is no system.” Lucas, in talking about his newly founded Lucasfilm, remarked, “I'll have mine, and it will take a lot longer to get built, but I don't think it's ever going to collapse out from under me.”11 Lucas's statements were prescient. He had released the first Star Wars, which ranked as one of the biggest blockbusters of the decade, and it evolved into a franchise worth billions of dollars. But Lucas and Coppola were not cut from the same cloth. Coppola had chosen a simple love story, One from the Heart, as his first project and believed its returns would pay for the start-up of the studio. Coppola did not consider, or perhaps could not comprehend, the business or financial environment in which he was functioning, nor did he address the trends unfolding in the film market, although Lucas's Star Wars was a prime example. Some of the Hollywood studios still retained the same or similar names as during the Golden Age, but in all respects they were a far cry from that era. Generally, Hollywood was run by conglomerates and spilled over into hybrids encompassing films, television, and music divisions. The sole purpose of these entities, which grew more and more complex, was to sell tickets, and the best way to insure a project was to replicate what had succeeded already. The concept of a sequel, which had been at its zenith with The Godfather II, became an ordinary vehicle for recycling familiar fare. Franchises became part of the film vernacular, and branding of commercial products attached to the franchise was another way to exploit a film product. Inflation was sky high, and bank interest rates were approaching double digits. But Coppola was confident that Zoetrope, which would be a state-of-the-art facility encapsulating both theatrical cinema and never-before-used electronic wizardry, would be a perfect antidote.
Zoetrope Studio (briefly called Omni Zoetrope), on 10½ acres with nine sound stages, was organized with 1,500 employees on its roster. Coppola as mogul hired his classmate from Hofstra, Robert Spiotta, as the president and CEO of the studio. Spiotta, an oil executive, had been cast as Stanley Kowalski in Coppola's Hofstra production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Lucy Fisher, who had been a vice president at Twentieth Century Fox, was vice president–head of production. Department heads included Dean Tavoularis for art and design, and Jennifer Shull for casting (she had cast The Conversation); Dennis O'Flaherty and Dennis Klein, both young TV series writers, and William Bowers, a veteran screenwriter, were hired as resident writing staff. Fred Roos, whose skills in identifying talent were legendary, was the commissar of talent. Coppola brought on members of the old guard. Rudi Fehr, a venerable film editor who had also been a key executive at Warner Bros. under Jack Warner, was editorial consultant. Friend, confidante, and colleague Walter Murch was the head of the sound department. Coppola also had on staff the legendary Gene Kelly as dance consultant. British director Michael Powell, who had worked at the very same studio directing The Thief of Baghdad during World War II (supposedly one of Coppola's favorite films) acted as an advisor on occasion. Finally, Tom Luddy, who screened films from an enormous archive for public enjoyment and became a producer, was placed in charge of special projects.
Coppola indicated that San Francisco would still be the base for research and development and the think tank for the studio. Francis Coppola would remain in Napa Valley, but physical production was in Hollywood. Replicating the actors’ contract system of classic Hollywood, Coppola enlisted talent who would form a repertory company prepared to appear in projects as they unfolded. Members included Teri Garr, who had been in The Conversation; Laurence Fishburne and Albert Hall from Apocalypse Now; Frederic Forrest from both The Conversation and Apocalypse; and Raul Julia. A young Rebecca De Mornay was part of the troupe.
One from the Heart was conceived as a simple love story: a young couple has lost their sense of contentment. The setting is Las Vegas on July 4 the fifth anniversary of Frannie (Teri Garr) and Hank (Frederic Forrest). Each has a one-night affair with an exciting partner—Frannie with a handsome dancer (Raul Julia) and Hank with a beautiful and sensual circus high-wire performer (Nastassia Kinski.) Coppola envisioned the story as a musical with the songs sung off-screen by Tom Waits, who wrote the score, and Crystal Gayle. After one night apart, the couple reunites, perhaps wiser. One from the Heart was to be the first film to use electronic cinema, a technique that would allow Coppola and his crew to visually conceptualize and edit the film as they shot. The cutting-edge equipment was provided by the Sony Corporation. Coppola resided in a trailer called the Silverfish and addressed the actors as they performed. Coppola contended that this revolutionary method would be economically cost-effective and would revolutionize moviemaking. To photograph the film, Coppola called on Vittorio Storaro. The American unions immediately balked at the use of a foreign cameraman, but Coppola won out. The entire production was planned and designed to be shot on the studio lots. Its look was to be fantastical.
The challenges of studio production for the sets, lighting, and composition were enormous. Tavoularis designed a street in Las Vegas on the studio lot and Las Vegas's McCarran Airport. A real plane was brought in as one of the props. Storaro, at Coppola's insistence, shot in an aspect ratio to give the show an older 1940s look. They then had to change course and reconfigure the format to accommodate the sets top to bottom. Cost overruns made the notion of cost effectiveness with new technology moot. What might have been a sweet, stylized confection of a movie that came in on-budget to support Coppola's technological assertions became a bloated hodge-podge at an estimated cost of $27 million.12 Coppola was not in control at the helm. The story seemed secondary when lacquered over by the artistic excess Coppola demanded.
When asked by writer Gay Talese in a July 1981 Esquire interview (“The Conversation”), “How do you feel about the picture you've just finished?” Coppola replied, “One from the Heart is interesting to me because I think it represents a new direction in my work that I'd like to pursue in the next ten years. Stylistically, and in its use of film language, it's different from anything I've done before—anything anyone's done before. On one level it's a thrust into a new technology and way of working; on another, it's an examination of love and jealousy themes. I see myself becoming more of a film composer. All my future films will be musical—with songs and dances and more fluid imagery.”13
It's fair to say that most of the Hollywood establishment was gunning for Coppola, the maverick mogul of Zoetrope Studio. Advance press about One from the Heart had been negative. The industry was cynical about the concept of electronic cinema. Critics were mostly brutal, but even minority praise fell on deaf ears. Such was the predestined providence of One from the Heart. Box office receipts were abysmal, and the studio was bankrupt. In these more pitiless financial times, Chase Manhattan Bank demanded Zoetrope Studio in Hollywood be put up for sale. About one issue, Coppola had been on target. In the ensuing years Coppola's technological predictions came to pass.
One from the Heart has not been revisited as a masterpiece before its time. Its execution was simply misguided. Francis Coppola would not spend the next 10 years making musicals; instead the majority of his films would be made as a director for hire, in need of work to pay off his debts and protect his house and home.