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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.

-Francis Ford Coppola

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The Whole Reason One

Francis Ford Coppola

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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.

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More From Francis Ford Coppola

I've Been Offered Lots Of Movies. There's Always Some Actor Who's Doing A Project And Would Like To Have Me Do It.

We Were Raised In An Italian-american Household, Although We Didn't Speak Italian In The House. We Were Very Proud Of Being Italian, And Had Italian Music, Ate Italian Food.

I Had Been A Kid That Moved So Much, I Didn’t Have A Lot Of Friends. Theater Really Represented That Kind Of Camaraderie.

Lots Of Friends

I Was A Pretty Shy, Lonely Kid. I Blossomed About Age 17, When I Went To College.

Whom God Wishes To Destroy, He First Makes Successful In Show Business.

I Bring To My Life A Certain Amount Of Mess.

Anyone Who's Made Film And Knows About The Cinema Has A Lifelong Love Affair With The Experience. You Never Stop Learning About Film.

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.

I Made This Movie For $40,000, Which Was This Little Black-and-white Horror Film Called Dementia 13, Which We Made In About Nine Days.

Black And White

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 Very Proud Of My Flops, As Much As Of My Successes.

You Don't Have To Specialize - Do Everything That You Love And Then, At Some Time, The Future Will Come Together For You In Some Form.

If I Have To Be Remembered For Something, I Want It Remembered That I Really Liked Children And Was A Good Camp Counselor.

Camp Counselors

Sound Is Your Friend Because Sound Is Much Cheaper Than Picture, But It Has Equal Effect On The Audience - In Some Ways, Perhaps More Effect Because It Does It In A Very Indirect Way.

I Liked To Work In A Shop Down In The Basement And Invent Things And Build Gadgets.

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 Always Found The Film World Unpleasant. It's All About The Schedule, And Never Really Flew For Me.

I Think A Sequel Is A Waste Of Money And Time. I Think Movies Should Illuminate New Stories.

If You're A Person Who Says Yes Most Of The Time, You'll Find Yourself In The Hotel Business And The Restaurant Business.

Finding Yourself

The Only Tv I Would Be Interested In Exploring Would Be Live Television. There's No Substitute For A Team Of Artists Performing At Their Peak Live When Failure Is Possible. It's A High-wire Act. That Excites Me.

Steven Spielberg Is Unique. I Feel That The Kinds Of Movies He Loves Are The Same Kinds Of Movies That The Big Mass Audience Loves. He's Very Fortunate Because He Can Do The Things He Naturally Likes The Best, And He's Been Very Successful.

Frank Capra Was A Prop Man, I Think. John Ford Was A Prop Man. It Was A Little Bit Of A Father And Son Thing, And You Kind Of Worked Your Way Up.

It Is A Little Disappointing To See That Your Legs Are Not As Strong. But I Like The Idea Of Growing Old, And The Thought Of Approaching Death Is Not Particularly Daunting To Me.

I Think Cinema, Movies, And Magic Have Always Been Closely Associated. The Very Earliest People Who Made Film Were Magicians.

I Have Much To Learn From My Daughter Sofia. Her Minimalism Exposes My Limitations: I'm Too Instinctive And Operatic, I Put Too Much Heart Into My Work, I Get Lost Sometimes In Bizarre Things - It's My Italian Heritage.

Films And Hotels Have Many Aspects That Are The Same. For Example, There Is Always A Big Vision, An Idea.

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.

Time Is The Lens Through Which Dreams Are Captured.

I've Been Blessed With Enough Wealth That I Can Make A Film Myself Up To A Certain Budget. So One Way I Thought I Would Reinvent Myself Was Just To Make These Very Small, Personal Films That I've Financed Myself.

Anything You Build On A Large Scale Or With Intense Passion Invites Chaos.

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.

Art Depends On Luck And Talent.

I Gladly, I Voluntarily Gave Up The Kind Of Commercial Film Career I Had Going As Soon As I Had Enough Money To Finance My Own Films. I Didn't Make That Money Necessarily From The Film Business, But I Eventually Made A Lot Of Money And That's What I Do. Of Course, I Consider Myself Unbelievably Fortunate, And I'm Pretty Content With My Life.

People Feel The Worst Film I Made Was 'jack.' But To This Day, When I Get Checks From Old Movies I've Made, 'jack' Is One Of The Biggest Ones. No One Knows That. If People Hate The Movie, They Hate The Movie. I Just Wanted To Work With Robin Williams.

I Just Admire People Like Woody Allen, Who Every Year Writes An Original Screenplay. It's Astonishing. I Always Wished That I Could Do That.

Work On Nothing Less Than Epic Scale

The Time A Movie Is Made Is Unique, Not Only From The Talent That Is Available But If The Public Was Ready For It.

I Landed A Job With Roger Corman. The Job Was To Write The English Dialogue For A Russian Science Fiction Picture. I Didn't Speak Any Russian. He Didn't Care Whether I Could Understand What They Were Saying; He Wanted Me To Make Up Dialogue.

A Lot Of The Young People Make Beautiful Films Or Big Films Or Are Able To Finance Them, But They Can't Get Anyone To Distribute Them, They Can't Get Anyone To See Them, So They Go To These Thousands Of Film Festivals. So I Still Believe That Even Though A Young Kid Might Be Able To Make A Masterpiece Or Something That Changes The Direction Of Cinema, The Issue Of How To Get It To People Is Still Not Solved.

When You Make A Film It Is Like Asking Yourself A Question. When It Is Finished, You Know The Answer. Ultimately With All Of Cinema, We Are Just Trying To Learn About Ourselves. I Have Always Used The Opportunity To Make A Film To Learn More About Myself, Which I Am Still Doing.

I Had A Number Of Teachers Who Hated Me. I Didn't Do Well In School.

When I Do A Novel, I Don't Really Use The Script, I Use The Book; When I Did Apocalypse Now, I Used Heart Of Darkness. Novels Usually Have So Much Rich Material.

An Essential Element Of Any Art Is Risk. If You Don't Take A Risk Then How Are You Going To Make Something Really Beautiful, That Hasn't Been Seen Before?

There Can't Be Art Without Risk. It's Like Saying No Sex, And Then Expecting There To Be Children.

The Very Earliest People Who Made Film Were Magicians.

So Much Of The Art Of Film Is To Do Less. To Aspire To Do Less.

If You're Not Allowed To Experiment Anymore For Fear Of Being Considered Self-indulgent Or Pretentious Or What Have You, Then Everyone's Going To Just Stick To The Rules - There's Not Going To Be Any Additional Ideas.

I Probably Have Genius. But No Talent.

I Wrote The Script Of Patton. I Had This Very Bizarre Opening Where He Stands Up In Front Of An American Flag And Gives This Speech. Ultimately, I Was Fired. When The Script Was Done, They Hired Another Writer And That Script Was Forgotten.

But Who Said Art Has To Cost Money? And Therefore, Who Says Artists Have To Make Money?

I Had An Older Brother Who Was Very Interested In Literature, So I Had An Early Exposure To Literature, And And Theater. My Father Sometimes Would Work In Musical Comedies.

Cinema Without Risk Is Like Having No Sex And Expecting To Have A Baby.

Death Is What Makes Life An Event.

It's Ironic That At Age 32, At Probably The Greatest Moment Of My Career, With The Godfather Having Such An Enormous Success, I Wasn't Even Aware Of It, Because I Was Somewhere Else Under The Deadline Again.

'godfather' Was Very Classical, The Way It Was Shot, The Style, The Whole Driving Force Of It Was More Classical, Almost Shakespearean.

Movies Are The Art Form Most Like Man's Imagination.

Everyone Knows The Phenomenon Of Trying To Hold Your Breath Underwater - How At First It's Alright And You Can Handle It, And Then As It Gets Closer And Closer To The Time When You Must Breathe, How Urgent The Need Becomes, The Lust And The Hunger To Breathe. And Then The Panic Sets In When You Begin To Think That You Won't Be Able To Breathe - And Finally, When You Take In Air And The Anxiety Subsides...that's What It's Like To Be A Vampire And Need Blood.

Most Italians Who Came To This Country Are Very Patriotic. There Was This Exciting Possibility That If You Worked Real Hard, And You Loved Something, You Could Become Successful.

You're In A Profession In Which Absolutely Everybody Is Telling You Their Opinion, Which Is Different. That's One Of The Reasons George Lucas Never Directed Again.

I Was Never Sloppy With Other People's Money. Only My Own. Because I Figure, Well, You Can Be.

I Don't Go On Set With An Army Of People Because The Most Expensive Elements Of A Movie Production Are The Plane Tickets, The Hotel Rooms, Food And Gasoline. If You're Willing To Discover New Colleagues In The Place That You Are, You Can Save A Ton Of Money.

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.

I Wanted To Be A Film Student Again, As A Man In My 60s. To Go Someplace Alone And See What You Can Cook Up, With Non-existent Budgets. I Didn't Want To Be Surrounded By Comforts And Colleagues, Which You Have When When You're A Big Time Director. I Wanted To Write Personal Works.

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

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

Sequels Are Not Done For The Audience Or Cinema Or The Filmmakers. It's For The Distributor. The Film Becomes A Brand.

I Was Raised As A Catholic, But I Didn't Like The Catholic Church At All. I Thought The Nuns Were Mean.

I Associate My Motion Picture Career More With Being Unhappy And Scared, Or Being Under The Gun, Than With Anything Pleasant.

One Thing That I'm Sure Of Is The Real Pleasure Of Life - It's Not Being Known, It's Not Having Your Own Jet Plane, It's Not Having A Mansion The Pleasure Is To Learn Something

In Kindergarten That Used To Be My Job, To Tell Them Fairytales. I Liked Hans Christian Andersen, And The Grimm Fairy Tales, All The Classic Fairy Tales.

All Of A Sudden, There Are Great Japanese Films, Or Great Italian Films, Or Great Australian Films. It's Usually Because There Are A Number Of People That Cross-pollinated Each Other.

I've Been Offered Lots Of Movies. There's Always Some Actor Who's Doing A Project And Would Like To Have Me Do It. But You Look At The Project And Think, 'gee, There Are A Lot Of Good Directors Who Could Do That.' I'd Like To Do Something Only I Can Do.

I Don't Think There's Any Artist Of Any Value Who Doesn't Doubt What They're Doing.

I Just Finished A Film A Few Days Ago, And I Came Home And Said I Learned So Much Today. So If I Can Come Home From Working On A Little Film After Doing It For 45 Years And Say, "i Learned So Much Today," That Shows Something About The Cinema. Because The Cinema Is Very Young. It's Only 100 Years Old.

Today's Winemakers Still Worry About Quality.

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.

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.

You Ought To Love What You're Doing Because, Especially In A Movie, Over Time You Really Will Start To Hate It.

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

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.

When A Movie Is About To Come Out On Its Initial Debut, There Are A Lot Of People Involved - The Financiers, The Studio And The Producers And Also, Many Times, The Foreign Distributors. So It Is A Time Of Tremendous Pressure And Uncertainty.

I Was Terrible At Maths, But I Could Grasp Science, And I Used To Love To Read About The Lives Of The Scientists. I Wanted To Be A Scientist Or An Inventor.

My Film Isn't About Vietnam. It Is Vietnam. It's What It Was Really Like. It Was Crazy. And The Way We Made It Was Very Much Like The Way The Americans Were In Vietnam. We Were In The Jungle, There Were Too Many Of Us, We Had Access To Too Much Money, Too Much Equipment And Little By Little We Went Insane.

When I Was About 9, I Had Polio, And People Were Very Frightened For Their Children, So You Tended To Be Isolated. I Was Paralyzed For A While, So I Watched Television.

Lots Of People Have Criticized My Movies, But Nobody Has Ever Identified The Real Problem: I'm A Sloppy Filmmaker.

I Still Think Ned Beatty Should've Played Don Corleone.

I Was The Kind Of Kid That Had Some Talents Or Ability, But It Never Came Out In School.

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.

I Had A Heartbreaking Experience When I Was 9. I Always Wanted To Be A Guard. The Most Wonderful Girl In The World Was A Guard. When I Got Polio And Then Went Back To School, They Made Me A Guard. A Teacher Took Away My Guard Button.

I Gladly, I Voluntarily Gave Up The Kind Of Commercial Film Career I Had Going As Soon As I Had Enough Money To Finance My Own Films.

Without A Doubt, I Was Born To Want To Make Cinema, But The Kind Of Cinema I Want To Make Is Not Like Commercial Movies, Which I Enjoy Myself, But I Wanted To Be The Kind Of Filmmaker Who Wrote Original Work, Sort Of Like A Novelist Would Who Deals With Who We Are And Our Times Or Our Relationships.

Being A Former Theater Student, Of Course, There Is A Part Of Me That Is Fascinated With Stage Crafts And What You Can Do With Illusions And Working Within The Confines Of The Studio.

One Of The Most Important Tools That A Filmmaker Has Are His/her Notes.

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

When I Was Going For My Graduate Degree, I Decided I Was Going To Make A Feature Film As My Thesis. That's What I Was Famous For-that I Had My Thesis Film Be A Feature Film, Which Was 'you're A Big Boy Now.'

When I Was 13, I Worked For Western Union. When The Telegrams Came In, I Would Glue Them On The Paper And Deliver Them On My Bicycle.

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

I Used To Love Going Into Local Hardware Stores, To Look At Little Things They Made Locally. Nowadays It's Harder, Though You Can Still Do It In Vietnam.

Stay Innocent. I'm 69 Years Old, And I'm Still Innocent.

The Essence Of Cinema Is Editing.

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

It Was The Man's Dream, And His Inspiring Attempt To Make Them Come True That Remain Important.

Follow Your Dreams

I Had A Number Of Very Strong Personalities In My Family. My Father Was A Concert Flutist, The Solo Flute For Toscanini.

I Remember Growing Up With Television, From The Time It Was Just A Test Pattern, With Maybe A Little Bit Of Programming Once In A While.

A Director Is The Ringmaster Of A Circus That's Inventing Itself.

When Newspapers Started To Publish The Box Office Scores Of Movies, I Was Horrified. Those Results Are Totally Fake Because They Never Include The Promotion Budget.

When That Happens - When Risk Is Taken And The Filmmakers Dive Into The Subject Matter Without A Parachute - Very Often What You Get It Something With Those Qualities That Make It Age Well With The Public.

I Like To Work In The Morning. I Like To Sometimes Go To A Place Where I'm All Alone Where I'm Not Going To Get A Phone Call Early That Hurts My Feelings, Because Once My Feelings Are Hurt, I'm Dead In The Water.

I Have More Of A Vivid Imagination Than I Have Talent. I Cook Up Ideas. It's Just A Characteristic.

Vivid Imagination

In A Sense, I Think A Movie Is Really A Little Like A Question And When You Make It, That's When You Get The Answer.

Always Make Your Work Be Personal. And, You Never Have To Lie... There Is Something We Know That's Connected With Beauty And Truth. There Is Something Ancient. We Know That Art Is About Beauty, And Therefore It Has To Be About Truth.

Music Is A Big Factor In Helping The Illusion Of The Film Come To Life. The Same Way Music Brings Back Different Periods Of Our Lives.

I Think It's Better To Be Overly Ambitious And Fail Than To Be Underambitious And Succeed In A Mundane Way. I Have Been Very Fortunate. I Failed Upward In My Life!

We Had Access To Too Much Equipment, Too Much Money, And Little By Little We Went Insane.

If The Movie Works, Nobody Notices The Mistakes... If The Movie Doesn't Work, The Only Thing People Notice Are Mistakes.

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.

The Things You Get Fired For When You’re Young Are The Same Things That You Get Lifetime Achievement Awards For When You’re Old.

I Was Interested In The Idea Of Succession - Showing A Father And A Son Both In Their Own Time And Drawing A Contrast

By Working In The Morning, I Find A Sense Of Peace; It's Isolated Peace, But I Can Definitely Be In Touch With My Feelings, And Then I Just Start.

I Thought I Wanted To Be A Playwright Because I Was Interested In Stories And Telling Stories.

Telling Stories

The Great Hope Is That People Who Wouldn't Normally Make Films Will Be Making Them. Suddenly, One Day Some Little Fat Girl In Ohio Is Going To Be The New Mozart And Make A Beautiful Film With Her Father's Camera And For Once The So Called Professionalism About Movies Will Be Destroyed Forever - And It Will Really Become An Art Form.

As Long As I Can Make Lots Of Money In Other Businesses, I'll Continue To Subsidize My Own Work.

To Make Great Movies, There Is An Element Of Risk. You Have To Say, 'well, I Am Going To Make This Film, And It Is Not Really A Sure Thing.'

Collaboration Is Like The Sex Of Creativity.

I Believe That Filmmaking - As, Probably, Is Everything - Is A Game You Should Play With All Your Cards, And All Your Dice, And Whatever Else You've Got. So, Each Time I Make A Movie, I Give It Everything I Have. I Think Everyone Should, And I Think Everyone Should Do Everything They Do That Way.

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.

I Like Simplicity; I Don't Need Luxury.

The Professional World Was Much More Unpleasant Than I Thought. I Was Always Wishing I Could Get Back That Enthusiasm I Had When I Was Doing Shows At College.

A Number Of Images Put Together A Certain Way Become Something Quite Above And Beyond What Any Of Them Are Individually.

In America, Even The Critics - Which Is A Pity - Tend To Genre-ize Things. They Have A Hard Time When Genres Get Mixed. They Want To Categorize Things. That's Why I Love Wes Anderson's Films And The Coen Brothers, Because You Don't Know What You're Going To Get, And Very Often You Get Something That You Don't Expect And That's Just What A Genre's Not Supposed To Do.

It Takes No Imagination To Live Within Your Means.

George Lucas Doesn't Have The Most Physical Stamina. He Was So Unhappy Making Star Wars That He Just Vowed He'd Never Do It Again.

The Most Adventurous Thing I've Done Is Learn How To Fly A Helicopter In The Philippines. One Night We Landed On A Beach And Slept On It.

That's Part Of The Requirement For Me To Be An Artist Is That You're Trying To Share Your Personal Existence With Others And Trying To Illuminate Modern Life, Trying To Understand Life.

There's Nothing Creative About Living Within Your Means.

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.

My Family Were Symphonic Musicians And In The Opera. Also, It Was My Era, The Love Of Radio. We Used To Listen To The Radio At Night, Close Our Eyes And See Movies Far More Beautiful Than You Can Photograph.

When I Was Sixteen Or Seventeen, I Wanted To Be A Writer. I Wanted To Be A Playwright. But Everything I Wrote, I Thought, Was Weak. And I Can Remember Falling Asleep In Tears Because I Had No Talent The Way I Wanted To Have.

They Needed Someone To Write A Script Of The Great Gatsby Very Quickly For The Movie They Were Making. I Took This Job So I'd Be Sure To Have Some Dough To Support My Family.

Wine Is So Much More Than A Beverage. It's A Romance, A Story, A Drama-all Of Those Things That Are Basically Putting On A Show.

You Have To Really Be Courageous About Your Instincts And Your Ideas. Otherwise You'll Just Knuckle Under, And Things That Might Have Been Memorable Will Be Lost.

I Became Quite Successful Very Young, And It Was Mainly Because I Was So Enthusiastic And I Just Worked So Hard At It.

I Never Went To A Psychologist Or Psychiatrist In My Life. Never. You Know, Italians Are A Little Prejudiced Against That Kind Of Thing.

I Live Near San Francisco In The Most Beautiful Spot On Earth And Enjoy Myself In Many Ways. Yes, I Love To Work, Which For Now Is To Think And Read And Write, So It's All A Dream Come True.

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.

The Photographer And The Director Are Where Reality And Fantasy Meet.

I Was Excited To Discover, In This Tale By Eliade, The Key Themes That I Most Hope To Understand Better - Time, Consciousness And The Dream-like Basis Of Reality.

Some Critics Are Stimulating In That They Make You Realise How You Could Do Better, And Those Are Valued.

My Talent Is That I Just Try And Try And Try And Try Again And Little By Little It Comes To Something.

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.

I Know That If A Film Is Ready To Emerge Out Of What I Write, I'll Be Able To Go Off And Make It Without Asking Anyone's Permission.

I Wanted To Write And Direct Movies And Not Be Forced To Adapt Them From A Bestselling Book.

Most Directors Have One Masterpiece By Which They Are Known. Kurosawa Has At Least Eight Or Nine.

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