THE PATH TO PARADISE

A vivid biography of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939) and his production company, American Zoetrope.

“As no other filmmaker does,” writes veteran film biographer Wasson, “Coppola lives in his stories, changing them as they change him, riding round an endless loop of experience and creation”—until, usually reluctantly, letting go of them, only to watch some crash and burn. “Artistic perfection has never been integral to Coppola’s colossal experiment,” writes the author. “Learning and growing have been. Living is. Dying is. The adventure is.” Part of the pain in the failures is that, like his successes, Coppola’s films cost a fortune, and money flows freely through his fingers. Indeed, the author devotes significant attention to the finer points of financing, with one elusive film, Megalopolis, yet unmade, projected in 2001 to cost at least $100 million. It’s not that Coppola’s films haven’t made money: Apocalypse Now, the tortured tale of whose making forms the heart (of darkness) of this book, turned a profit after it threatened to drag all involved into bankruptcy, and The Godfather and American Graffiti sent generations of film executives’ kids to college. Throughout, Wasson shows the studio system as a source of constant hindrance, imposing conditions that sometimes work out and sometimes don’t. Coppola’s one-man-band perfectionism is another enemy. “They had to move quicker,” writes Wasson of one shoot. “But if Coppola the producer said that to Coppola the director, the latter would tell him to take it up with Coppola the writer.” Not to mention Coppola the businessman, with a wine business bringing in about $100 million per year, enough to keep his beloved, legendary American Zoetrope studio afloat “not as an alternative to Hollywood, but a complement”—though still not enough to make Megalopolis a reality, at least not yet.

A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure.