Francis Ford Coppola

The Third Act of Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola, just four days after wrapping his latest picture in Northern California, flew to the Marrakesh International Film Festival to share his knowledge of filmmaking with students at a special discussion at the Palais des Congres. Coppola is a rare talent in Hollywood, even rarer for his ability to create outside of the studio system. Luxist spoke to Coppola at a secluded library deep inside La Mamounia on how he's living his Third Act in life.

In what could be called his Second Act, Coppola was dealt a series of blows in big-budget productions, including a heavy legal battle with Warner Brothers over the rights to Pinocchio, and his abandoned utopian vision "Megalopolis." But it was only by delving into his businesses that he was finally able to find his true calling in cinema.

It was only after becoming incredibly successful through his hotel and wine endeavors that Coppola realized that his path was to write and direct deeply personal films in which he had complete control. "I looked at my daughter and I thought gee I taught her how to make a movie for $2-3 million. I can make a movie for $2-3 million. That's when I went off to Romania, very quietly, and made that first film."

The man who once rightly predicted film will go digital, swears by the new medium. Coppola is able to work under low budgets in order to finance his own films, nothing surpassing $7 million, often by working with new actors, and filming in locations where the exchange rate is favorable to the dollar. "I feel blessed. I mean how many filmmakers are given that blank check to say go make a film every year, two years?" he asked. Not many. And, if he ever finds himself without the means to make a movie, he says he'll use whatever resources he has available, even if it's merely an iPhone camera.

To be in such a position involves a fair amount of risk-taking, but even more so a sense of fearlessness. "I recognize in life from my own family, my own father, that people are obsessed with money and frightened about losing money. And somehow I never had that attitude," he said. "I never hesitated to put up my own money or lose money. And I did lose money. I bought the studio in Hollywood. I spent ages 40-50 paying back the Chase Manhattan bank, a big loan that I owed them. So I don't think you can live your life in fear of whether you're going to have money or whether you're not going to have money."

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Francis Ford Coppola Opens New Restaurant

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Director Francis Ford Coppola is a man who loves his food and wine and he'll be combining both at Rustic, a new restaurant inside the Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville, California. The full title of the restaurant is Rustic Francis' Favorites which gives a clue to the fact that the menu is geared toward the tastes of the great man himself. The restaurant will serve Italian favorites including Neapolitan style pizzas as well as meat cooked on an Argentine-style parilla and a Brazilian-style Tomasi rotisserie. Seasonal produce will be sourced from the on-site vegetable and herb garden. Eater SF recently had a photo tour of the total facility which includes two tasting rooms, a cocktail bar, retail area and plenty of movie memorabilia including as Don Corleone's desk from The Godfather.

Inside Scoop chatted with Coppola about his new creation and the vision behind it. He wanted to put the focus on rustic country cuisine serving hearty fare using fresh ingredients. Starting this fall the restaurant will have 'a tavola' service on Sundays. Instead of order ing from a menu, guests will be served a variety of dishes that the chef prepares and sends out, a nod to old-fashioned family Sunday suppers.

Tags: celebrity restaurant, celebrity restaurants, celebrity restaurateur, francis ford coppola, geyserville, winery

Coppola Sues Over Faulty Wine Closures

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

Oxidized wine can be a nightmare for any winemaker. Francis Ford Coppola's winery is suing Vinocor, the maker of specialized screw caps and custom bottles for the Coppola's Encyclopedia wine series. The wines were created to showcase varietals that best represent the culture and traditions of different winegrowing regions and have distinctive beaker-like bottles. Coppola's team says that defective bottles and caps ended up ruining 55,000 cases of wine.

Francis Ford Coppola Presents is taking on Vinocor USA, saying that they paid $685,000 for the packaging but that the first shipment had bottles with chipped glass and caps that had uneven threading and were bent. According to Courthouse News Service, Coppola has said that he complained about the first shipment and Vinocor promised it would fix the problem. Coppola says he ordered another 100,000 screw caps and another round of bottles, but they were also defective. The bottles and caps leaked and allowed air in, causing oxidation and tainting the wine. Coppola's winery wants a return of money spent as well as unspecified damages.

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Tags: coppola winery, CoppolaWinery, francis ford coppola, FrancisFordCoppola, lawsuit, wine

Sofia Coppola to Design Collection for Vuitton

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Handbags

Despite the fact that, as we reported last month, Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs is getting sick of the fashion house's frequent collaboration projects, director Sofia Coppola has just signed on to design a new capsule collection for the brand. Coppola, a close friend of Jacobs' who recently appeared in a Vuitton ad (above) with her famed father Francis Ford Coppola, will reportedly create a range of handbags and shoes for the company. Though nothing's been confirmed, it's expected that the new collection will initially only be available in Japan like LV's current collaboration with Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo.

"I've kind of warned everybody up there [at LV] that I think they've gotten a little too into this idea ," Jacobs said of the collaboration projects just last month. "I'm glad that everybody gets behind it, but what they don't realize is that I do it at a pace that maintains the brand's integrity and seems really right, and I think that sometimes everybody loves a good idea so much that they kind of go too far and it kind of kills it." Perhaps he's making an exception for personal friends like Coppola.

Tags: Francis Ford Coppola, FrancisFordCoppola, Louis Vuitton, LouisVuitton, Marc Jacobs, MarcJacobs, Sofia Coppola, SofiaCoppola