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Francis Ford Coppola and the Underground Corporation

Jeff Menne

in Francis Ford Coppola

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. Taking a page from his mentor Roger Corman, Coppola gathered his film-school friends to form American ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. Taking a page from his mentor Roger Corman, Coppola gathered his film-school friends to form American Zoetrope, an off-Hollywood production firm that, like American International Pictures (AIP) before it, would make its way by setting up operations beyond the reach of the regulatory controls that had frozen young talent out of Hollywood. Coppola chose San Francisco for Zoetrope's base because it was an epicenter of the counterculture, and he wanted “bohemian life” to pervade the corporation. However, what kept Zoetrope from being another experiment for the New Communalists common enough then in and around San Francisco, was that the device organizing the endeavors of these like-minded friends was the corporation. They bent the device to their own ends, no doubt, but the effect was that corporate form partook of the informal energies on which the art world runs.Less

Seventy-Five Watusi Witch Doctors

John Franceschina

in Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire

Hermes Pan was hired by Twentieth Century-Fox to stage Cleopatra’s monumental procession into Rome for the film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor. Finishing business at Choreo Enterprises, Inc., a ... More

Hermes Pan was hired by Twentieth Century-Fox to stage Cleopatra’s monumental procession into Rome for the film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor. Finishing business at Choreo Enterprises, Inc., a record company Pan established with Fred Astaire, Hermes moved to Rome where he lived and worked for nearly a year. Returning to Hollywood he was hired to choreograph the film version of My Fair Lady directed by George Cukor and starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. He returned to television to stage “Think Pretty” and The Hollywood Palace for Fred Astaire before heading off the Las Vegas with his assistant Jerry Jackson to choreograph the centennial edition of the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana Hotel. At Astaire’s request, Francis Ford Coppola hired Pan to stage the dances for Finian’s Rainbow at Warner Brothers but fired him before the picture was finished.Less

“I Believe in America”: The Godfather Films and the Immigrant’s Tragedy

Paul A. Cantor and Paul A. Cantor

in Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies

In his Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola created American classics by dwelling on a classic American experience—immigration. In the story of the Corleone family, Coppola portrays Sicilian ... More

In his Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola created American classics by dwelling on a classic American experience—immigration. In the story of the Corleone family, Coppola portrays Sicilian immigrants struggling to create a new and better life in the United States. They must navigate the difficult transition from the Old World to the New, and also from the past to the present, from a quasi-feudal way of life in Sicily to a modern America characterized by impersonal economic relations and corporate organization. Vito Corleone achieves the American dream by succeeding in business and providing for his family, but his hopes for his sons are dashed. Carrying on Vito’s struggle, Michael Corleone defeats all his enemies, and yet in the process he destroys his family. Coppola sees the American dream as a source of tragedy, and this chapter analyzes both Vito and Michael as tragic heroes.Less

Now Playing Everywhere

Marie-Hélène Huet

in The Culture of Disaster

This chapter discusses an interview with Francis Ford Coppola regarding his film The Conversation. In this interview, he spoke of what it meant to be a spectator seated in the dark space of a movie ... More

This chapter discusses an interview with Francis Ford Coppola regarding his film The Conversation. In this interview, he spoke of what it meant to be a spectator seated in the dark space of a movie theater. The experience Coppola describes for the spectator—a transformation he himself, as filmmaker, hopes to produce in the spectator—duplicates the fate of The Conversation's protagonist, Harry Caul, a sound engineer specializing in surveillance, who is slowly drawn into the material he has recorded for a client he suspects of planning a murder. According to the film's lore, the name “Caul” resulted from a misspelling of “call,” and the film plays nicely on the homophony of sounds that associates the protagonist with calls he makes almost reluctantly and using the fewest possible words—until he spells out his name as C-A-U-L, when asking for an appointment with the man who has hired him.Less

Crossing The Line

Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe

in Crimes of Art + Terror

This chapter discusses the works of Joseph Conrad, John Cassavetes, Thomas Mann, and Francis Ford Coppola. It analyzes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese ... More

This chapter discusses the works of Joseph Conrad, John Cassavetes, Thomas Mann, and Francis Ford Coppola. It analyzes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.Less

Conclusion

Sarah Cole

in At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland

The brief conclusion looks at several important legacies, later in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, of the modernist strategies for engaging violence that At the Violet Hour has ... More

The brief conclusion looks at several important legacies, later in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, of the modernist strategies for engaging violence that At the Violet Hour has explored. It suggests how powerfully some of modernism's violence protocols have continued to resonate, despite some of the radical innovations in contemporary representation of violence and war.Less

Eating the Audience: Blockbusters

in Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s

Blockbuster cinema offers the audience an opportunity to experience awe and the sublime by taking them on a rollercoaster ride of action-adventure highlighted by stunts and special effects. Such ... More

Blockbuster cinema offers the audience an opportunity to experience awe and the sublime by taking them on a rollercoaster ride of action-adventure highlighted by stunts and special effects. Such films appeal to a wide range of audiences while also upholding the dominant ideology's status quo. In addition to their political nature, blockbusters typically tackle broken or dispersed families, punctuated by the creation or recreation of a social unit as well as father–son relations. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola were largely associated with the blockbuster movies of the 1970s. Irvin Kershner's Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980) ends with a cliffhanger, but all other blockbusters had upbeat and reassuring, rather than amphicatastrophic, conclusions. This chapter examines the blockbuster films THX 1138 (1971) and the Star Wars trilogy, along with the first two Superman films and Mike Hodges's Flash Gordon (1980).Less

Smoke and Gold

Matthew Kennedy

in Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

Walt Disney Studios’ only entry into the 1960s roadshow market, The Happiest Millionaire, is covered in chapter five. Based on the life of an eccentric Philadelphian, the cast included seasoned ... More

Walt Disney Studios’ only entry into the 1960s roadshow market, The Happiest Millionaire, is covered in chapter five. Based on the life of an eccentric Philadelphian, the cast included seasoned veterans (Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, Geraldine Page, Gladys Cooper) alongside newcomers (Lesley Ann Warren, John Davidson, Tommy Steele). With music by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins), the results were uninspired. Millionaire was not a moneymaker for Disney. Warner Bros. was meanwhile preparing Camelot for release and planning to film the 1947 Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow. It had a strange plot involving a leprechaun and race relations, but it was believed that neophyte director Francis Ford Coppola would give it a needed youthful sensibility. Cast as father-daughter were the elder Fred Astaire and current pop tune superstar Petula Clark.Less

Battle of the Girls

Matthew Kennedy

in Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

The premiere of Warner Bros.’s Finian’s Rainbow opens chapter eleven. The lovely score was offset by a bizarre plot and sloppy production values. It performs fairly at the box office. Funny Girl was ... More

The premiere of Warner Bros.’s Finian’s Rainbow opens chapter eleven. The lovely score was offset by a bizarre plot and sloppy production values. It performs fairly at the box office. Funny Girl was heavily marketed and premiered in the fall of 1968. Under William Wyler’s direction, Barbra Streisand won raves and became an instant movie star. Box office revenue was huge. Fox readied Star! for premiere, but was shocked at public apathy. In stark contrast to Funny Girl, interest in the latest Julie Andrews film was nil. Fox’s Richard Zanuck tried to salvage his expensive project with reediting and even retitling the film Those Were the Happy Times, but nothing clicked. The film sank and left Fox with a huge debt. The chapter concludes with a look at the film landscape of late 1968, revealing why Star! held limited appeal.Less