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I Have Always Credited The Writer Of The Original Material Above The Title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I Felt That I Didn't Have The Right To Francis Coppola's Anything Unless I Had Written The Story And The Screenplay.

-Francis Ford Coppola

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I Have Always Credited

Francis Ford Coppola

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I Have Always Credited The Writer Of The Original Material Above The Title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I Felt That I Didn't Have The Right To Francis Coppola's Anything Unless I Had Written The Story And The Screenplay.

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I've Been Failing For, Like, Ten Or Eleven Years. When It Turns, It'll Turn. Right Now I'm Just Trying To Squeeze Through A Very Tight Financial Period, Get The Movie Out, And Put My Things In Order.

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Roger Corman Exploited All Of The Young People Who Worked For Him, But He Really Gave You Responsibility And Opportunity. So It Was Kind Of A Fair Deal.

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Usually, The Stuff That's Your Best Idea Or Work Is Going To Be Attacked The Most.

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So Give Yourself That Chance To Put Together The 80, 90 Pages Of A Draft And Then Read It Very In A Nice Little Ceremony, Where You're Comfortable, And You Read It And Make Good Notes On It, What You Liked, What Touched You, What Moved You, What's A Possible Way, And Then You Go About On A Rewrite.

I Remember In The Conversation, They Brought All These Coats To Me, And They Said: Do You Want Him To Look Like A Detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do You Want Him To Look Like A Blah Blah Blah. I Didn't Know, And Said The Theme Is 'privacy' And Chose The Plastic Coat You Could See Through. So Knowing The Theme Helps You Make A Decision When You're Not Sure Which Way To Go.

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Ten Days That Shook The World, By Eisenstein, I Went To See It, And I Was So Impressed With This Film, So Impressed With What Cinema Could Do.

Drinking Wine Is Just A Part Of Life, Like Eating Food.

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My Film Is Not A Movie; It's Not About Vietnam. It Is Vietnam.

Most Filmmakers Can't Afford To Try Something Out That Doesn't Work.

Death Is What Makes Life An Event.

It Takes No Imagination To Live Within Your Means.

I Always Think Upon Lee Strasberg With Warmth, And Reviewing His Wisdom Is A Pleasure.

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The Whole Reason One Wants To Do Lower Budget Films Is Because The Lower The Budget, The Bigger The Ideas, The Bigger The Themes, The More Interesting The Art.

Although Knowledge Of Structure Is Helpful, Real Creativity Comes From Leaps Of Faith In Which You Jump To Something Illogical. But Those Leaps Form The Memorable Moments In Movies And Plays.

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The Internet In Hotels Should Be Free - And I Really Resent It When They Charge You Five Dollars For A Bottle Of Water Beside Your Bed.

The Stuff That I Got In Trouble For, The Casting For The Godfather Or The Flag Scene In Patton, Was The Stuff That Was Remembered, And Was Considered The Good Work.

Listen, If There's One Sure-fire Rule That I Have Learned In This Business, It's That I Don't Know Anything About Human Nature.

I Realized I Probably Wouldn't Make Another Film That Cuts Through Commercial And Creative Things Like 'godfather' Or 'apocalypse.'

Of All The Human Evils, Of Which We Have Thousands Of Years Of Record And Our Own Contemporary Experiences, The Most Horrible Evil Of All Is Hypocrisy. It's This Idea That There Are Those Who Do Bad And There Are Those Who Do Good, When, In Fact, Even The People Who Supposedly Do Good Are Saying They Do Good To Mask The Fact That They Do Evil.

I Always Knew What I Thought The Theme Was, The Core, In One Word. In 'the Godfather' It Was Succession. In 'the Conversation' It Was Privacy. In 'apocalypse' It Was Morality.

The Essence Of Cinema Is Editing. It's The Combination Of What Can Be Extraordinary Images Of People During Emotional Moments, Or Images In A General Sense, Put Together In A Kind Of Alchemy.

I'm No Longer Dependent On The Movie Business To Make A Living. So If I Want To Make Movies As Other Old Guys Would Play Golf, I Can.

I Bring To My Life A Certain Amount Of Mess.

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