Francis Ford Coppola says he hopes to live long enough to make his ‘live cinema’ project Distant Vision.
During an in-conversation event in Rome on the eve of the Rome Film Festival, Coppola also decried the film business for its lack of risk taking, and said aspiring filmmakers should hone their skills in theatre rather than make short films.
Coppola said he wanted to film Distant Vision entirely live. It will reportedly tell the story of a family over three generations whose history coincides with the development of television. He started working on the project a decade ago, first workshopping it at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
“I’m 85 – I hope I live long enough to make Distant Vision which no one is going to want to produce,” said Coppola in Rome, describing the project as “very far out”.
Coppola, who famously self-financed his most recent film Megalopolis, stressed the importance of creating cinema as art and breaking rules. Talking to an audience largely comprised of film students, he said he was not interested in the film business but film as an art: “The people who produce movies want you to think that there’s only one kind of movie…That’s not true. There are no rules to art.
“The cinema that you and your grandchildren are going to make will be so different than Spider-Man that you can’t believe it. It’s not going to have anything to do with what they’re doing today. Because what they’re doing today is known as cinema without risk, which is an impossibility. You cannot have art without risk. Making art without risk is like making babies without sex.”
To underline his point, Coppola recalled that he owns Apocalypse Now because “nobody wanted it” despite the success of his Godfather films. “Still no one wanted to make Apocalypse Now, so I made it, and it’s still showing.”
Elsewhere in his talk, Coppola encouraged film students not to start their careers by making short films. “Why? Because when you make a short film, you have to shoot the film, you have to edit, put the sound in, change the music. By the time audience sees it, a year has gone by…You could do a one act play with one or two characters, invite an audience, and you see immediately the audience reaction to your work.”
He also addressed writer’s block: “Writing is something best to do in the same place at the same time. It might be in morning or late at night…the secret is to know what is good for you. I like to write very early in the morning, because no one has hurt my feelings yet, and if they hurt my feelings I can’t do anything.
“When you are writing your body makes you secrete an enzyme that makes you hate what you are writing. My recommendation is…write six pages, turn them over and don’t read them. Next day, write another six and don’t read them. When you finally have 100 pages, sit down and read them all. The reason is if you read six pages you would hate it, and start rewriting it and would never get far.”
He also spoke of the importance of rehearsals with actors. He noted that actors get paid the same whether they are rehearsing or shooting, so companies paying for films “don’t want you to rehearse. They think a rehearsal is to go and figure out with the photographer the shots…they don’t let you really rehearse the way you should rehearse.”
During his rehearsals, Coppola said he doesn’t use the film script but leads improvisations and games so that actors can build the characters’ memories. He said this worked best “where there’s some sensual component, like food or music or dance.”
“I discovered this when I was very young and I was doing The Godfather. Everyone was afraid to meet Marlon Brando and me too. So I arranged a table in a restaurant, and I put him sitting at the head of the table, like the father. On the right, I put Al Pacino his son, on the left I put Jimmy Caan, the other son. And everyone [was there], and my sister Talia [Shire] was bringing the food. I just said, have dinner together. And after that dinner, they were the characters.”
Rehearsal should also be fun, said Coppola. At this point of his talk, he asked for ten acting students to come to the stage for an impromptu theatre games session to demonstrate his rehearsal techniques.
Coppola also told the filmmaking students in the audience that the “two essential parts of cinema and theatre are acting and writing,” describing both as the most difficult parts of movie making. “From the very beginning, the great directors were mostly actors,” he said.
Coppola was speaking last night (October 15) during an in conversation event organized by Alice nella città, the independent and parallel section of the Rome Film Festival which kicks off today. The day before, the festival screened a ‘pre-opening’ presentation of Coppola’s Megalopolis at Cinecittà Studios.
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