Jeff Menne
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038822
- eISBN:
- 9780252096785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038822.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
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 ...
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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
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.
Jeff Menne
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038822
- eISBN:
- 9780252096785
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038822.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of ...
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Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, this book argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, the book reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1972) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, the book illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family—and how his studio, American Zoetrope, came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.Less
Acclaimed as one of the most influential and innovative American directors, Francis Ford Coppola is also lionized as a maverick auteur at war with Hollywood's power structure and an ardent critic of the postindustrial corporate America it reflects. However, this book argues that Coppola exemplifies the new breed of creative corporate person and sees the director's oeuvre as vital for reimagining the corporation in the transformation of Hollywood. Reading auteur theory as the new American business theory, the book reveals how Coppola's vision of a new kind of company has transformed the worker into a liberated and well-utilized artist, but has also commodified individual creativity at a level unprecedented in corporate history. Coppola negotiated the contradictory roles of shrewd businessman and creative artist by recognizing the two roles are fused in a postindustrial economy. Analyzing films like The Godfather (1972) and the overlooked Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) through Coppola's use of opera, the book illustrates how Coppola developed a defining musical aesthetic while making films that reflected the idea of a corporation as family—and how his studio, American Zoetrope, came to represent a new brand of auteurism and the model for post-Fordist Hollywood.
John Franceschina
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199754298
- eISBN:
- 9780199949878
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754298.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Popular
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 ...
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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
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.
Marie-Hélène Huet
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226358215
- eISBN:
- 9780226358239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226358239.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
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 ...
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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
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.
Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226472058
- eISBN:
- 9780226472089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226472089.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
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 ...
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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
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.
Sarah Cole
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195389616
- eISBN:
- 9780199979226
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389616.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
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 ...
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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
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.
Matthew Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199925674
- eISBN:
- 9780190201920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199925674.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
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 ...
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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
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.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318344
- eISBN:
- 9781846317798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317798.014
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
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 ...
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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
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).
Matthew Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199925674
- eISBN:
- 9780190201920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199925674.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
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 ...
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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
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.
