WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 You know, usually when we talk about a visionary 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:05.599 artist, we picture someone in a very quiet studio, 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:10.279 just carefully painting a canvas or composing 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:12.560 a symphony. Right, something very safe. Yeah, 00:00:12.859 --> 00:00:14.800 very contained. Like you put the artist in the 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:16.660 room and the art just comes out. It's a highly 00:00:16.660 --> 00:00:19.120 controlled environment. You control the lighting, 00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:22.579 the temperature, the basing, all of it. But then, 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.559 you look at the career of Francis Ford Coppola, 00:00:25.780 --> 00:00:29.679 and suddenly, that quiet studio is in the middle 00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:32.439 of a literal jungle. Yeah, surrounded by typhoons. 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:34.340 Surrounded by typhoons, and the Candace is just 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:38.600 like on fire. So welcome to today's Deep Dive. 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:42.380 We are dissecting the mind of an absolute cinematic 00:00:42.380 --> 00:00:44.939 titan today. It's a wild story. It really is. 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:46.960 We're looking at this huge, fascinating stack 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:49.679 of biographical sources to answer one very specific 00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:53.500 question for you. How did a man who revolutionized 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:56.539 American cinema lose literally everything only 00:00:56.539 --> 00:00:59.960 to build a billion dollar lifestyle empire? Right. 00:01:00.079 --> 00:01:02.560 We're talking wine, luxury resorts, cannabis. 00:01:03.060 --> 00:01:05.900 Exactly. All of that just to buy back his artistic 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:08.920 soul. OK, let's unpack this because the sources 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:11.659 show a life story that's honestly wilder than 00:01:11.659 --> 00:01:14.040 the plot of any of his actual movies. It really 00:01:14.040 --> 00:01:16.480 is. And what's fascinating here is that Coppola's 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:18.859 career is the ultimate case study and risk taking. 00:01:19.079 --> 00:01:22.120 Like what we are really exploring today is the 00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:25.680 60 -year tightrope walk, just balancing that 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:28.900 constant exhausting tension between art and commerce. 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:33.200 Absolutely. And to really understand this uncompromising 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:35.840 visionary, we actually have to go back to a surprisingly 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:37.760 isolated childhood. Which a lot of people don't 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.480 realize. Right. He wasn't born this Hollywood 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:42.900 golden boy with all these connections. As a kid 00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:46.959 in the 1940s, Coppola contracted polio. Which 00:01:46.959 --> 00:01:49.420 at that time was a terrifying diagnosis, highly, 00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:52.120 highly isolating. Exactly. He was bedridden for 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:54.480 large periods of his childhood. So I want you 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:57.060 to imagine being this highly active, really imaginative 00:01:57.060 --> 00:01:59.420 kid, and you're just completely stuck in a bed 00:01:59.420 --> 00:02:01.840 for months on end. Your entire world shrinks 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:04.319 down to the size of your bedroom. Right. So to 00:02:04.319 --> 00:02:06.079 entertain himself, he starts putting on these 00:02:06.079 --> 00:02:10.539 homemade puppet theater productions and he started 00:02:10.539 --> 00:02:13.439 tinkering with eight millimeter home movies. 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:16.139 And this is where we see that first spark of 00:02:16.139 --> 00:02:18.819 his genius, really, because it wasn't exactly 00:02:18.819 --> 00:02:21.560 a stellar student. Oh, really? Yeah. Academically, 00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:23.500 his teachers considered him pretty mediocre. 00:02:23.639 --> 00:02:26.419 Yeah. But he had this absolute obsession with. 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:28.780 the mechanics of things. Like technology and 00:02:28.780 --> 00:02:30.960 stuff. Yeah, technology, engineering, just figuring 00:02:30.960 --> 00:02:33.219 out how things were put together. Yeah. It was 00:02:33.219 --> 00:02:36.039 so pronounced that his childhood nickname wasn't 00:02:36.039 --> 00:02:39.400 about art or movies at all. His family and friends 00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:42.229 actually called him Science. Science. Oh my gosh, 00:02:42.270 --> 00:02:44.449 I love that so much. Right. And that scrappy 00:02:44.449 --> 00:02:47.150 tinkerer energy totally defined his early hustle 00:02:47.150 --> 00:02:50.509 in the 1960s. So picture this. He gets out of 00:02:50.509 --> 00:02:53.050 film school, and he's making a whopping $10 a 00:02:53.050 --> 00:02:56.009 week. Just barely scraping by. Barely. He needs 00:02:56.009 --> 00:02:58.610 to survive. So to make extra cash, he turns to 00:02:58.610 --> 00:03:01.009 what the industry back then called nudie cuties. 00:03:01.150 --> 00:03:04.969 Right, yeah. These were soft core, voyeuristic 00:03:04.969 --> 00:03:07.830 films that played in underground theaters. Exactly. 00:03:08.310 --> 00:03:11.610 He writes and shoots this 12 -minute comedy short 00:03:11.610 --> 00:03:15.449 called The Peeper for just $3 ,000. He even managed 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:17.629 to hire a Playboy Bunny to star in it. Which 00:03:17.629 --> 00:03:20.150 was incredibly characteristic of that era's underground 00:03:20.150 --> 00:03:23.530 film scene. But the crucial part of this story 00:03:23.530 --> 00:03:26.590 isn't just that he made it. It's what he did 00:03:26.590 --> 00:03:28.610 when it failed. Because it didn't sell on its 00:03:28.610 --> 00:03:30.550 own, right? Correct. Nobody wanted it as a standalone 00:03:30.550 --> 00:03:33.509 piece. But he didn't give up. Instead, he got 00:03:33.509 --> 00:03:37.159 paid $500. to basically mash his short film up 00:03:37.159 --> 00:03:39.699 with another shelved erotic western called The 00:03:39.699 --> 00:03:42.099 Wide Open Spaces. Just splicing them together. 00:03:42.180 --> 00:03:44.580 Yeah. And then later, a producer hired him to 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:47.419 re -edit a German film called Sin Began with 00:03:47.419 --> 00:03:50.479 Eve, asking him to artificially add in new color 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:53.020 footage to make it more marketable. So wait, 00:03:53.039 --> 00:03:55.080 he's basically functioning as a mechanic here, 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:57.560 not like a traditional artist. Precisely. He 00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:00.039 was taking broken parts from different junked 00:04:00.039 --> 00:04:02.300 cars and finding a way to make the engine run. 00:04:02.430 --> 00:04:05.389 Wow. It's so funny to think of the guy who would 00:04:05.389 --> 00:04:08.110 eventually direct The Godfather, just sitting 00:04:08.110 --> 00:04:10.729 in a dark room, cutting together B -movie skin 00:04:10.729 --> 00:04:13.590 flicks. It really is. It really reminds me of 00:04:13.590 --> 00:04:18.029 a modern day scrappy tech startup founder. Or, 00:04:18.029 --> 00:04:20.170 you know, an indie YouTuber. The kind of creator 00:04:20.170 --> 00:04:23.329 who is willing to completely duct tape a project 00:04:23.329 --> 00:04:25.529 together with whatever is lying around just to 00:04:25.529 --> 00:04:27.579 prove they can do it. Yeah. And that duct tape 00:04:27.579 --> 00:04:30.000 mentality is exactly what caught the eye of the 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:32.660 legendary B -movie producer Roger Corman. Yes. 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:35.420 The Corman connection is huge. So Coppola is 00:04:35.420 --> 00:04:37.819 over in Ireland, right, working as a sound man 00:04:37.819 --> 00:04:40.959 for Corman on some racing movie. Right. And he 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:44.519 notices there is about $40 ,000 of leftover funds 00:04:44.519 --> 00:04:47.120 from the budget. So he actually talks Corman 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:49.759 into letting him use that leftover cash to shoot 00:04:49.759 --> 00:04:51.839 his own horror film, a movie called Dementia 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:53.800 13. The audacity of that is just incredible. 00:04:53.899 --> 00:04:55.600 I mean, he didn't even have a script. Right. 00:04:55.689 --> 00:04:57.689 The sources say he wrote a draft in a single 00:04:57.689 --> 00:04:59.910 night, got the green light, and then shot the 00:04:59.910 --> 00:05:03.490 entire movie in nine days. Nine days. It's pure 00:05:03.490 --> 00:05:06.269 unadulterated hustle. And it's crucial for us 00:05:06.269 --> 00:05:08.889 to understand this era because it highlights 00:05:08.889 --> 00:05:12.829 his lifelong DNA. Well, he had this intense anti 00:05:12.829 --> 00:05:15.769 -establishment drive and an obsession with doing 00:05:15.769 --> 00:05:18.720 things his own way. Those early days of begging, 00:05:18.939 --> 00:05:21.680 borrowing, and stealing to make a movie really 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:24.660 planted the seeds for American Zoetrope. Ah, 00:05:24.740 --> 00:05:26.759 right. That was the independent studio he founded 00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:28.939 in San Francisco a few years later. Exactly. 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:32.399 His entire goal with Zoetrope was to create an 00:05:32.399 --> 00:05:36.920 artistic utopia. He wanted to subvert the rigid 00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:39.839 Hollywood studio system that he felt was, you 00:05:39.839 --> 00:05:43.360 know, completely stifling true artistic vision. 00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:45.759 He wanted creators to actually own the means 00:05:45.759 --> 00:05:48.519 of production. Yes. Exactly that. Okay, but here's 00:05:48.519 --> 00:05:51.579 the irony of that utopia. That anti -establishment 00:05:51.579 --> 00:05:54.100 indie filmmaker suddenly found himself completely 00:05:54.100 --> 00:05:56.740 broke, which forced him right back into the mainstream 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:59.060 machine he was trying to destroy. Right. In the 00:05:59.060 --> 00:06:01.980 early 1970s, because of some massive budget overruns, 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:05.500 American zoetrope found itself $400 ,000 in debt 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:07.779 to Warner Bros. Which in the early 70s was a 00:06:07.779 --> 00:06:09.139 staggering amount of money. I mean, it threatened 00:06:09.139 --> 00:06:12.019 to wipe out everything he had built. So to survive, 00:06:12.339 --> 00:06:14.490 and literally just to pay off the debt, Coppola 00:06:14.490 --> 00:06:16.670 reluctantly takes a job directing a mafia movie 00:06:16.670 --> 00:06:18.970 for Paramount Pictures. And we should emphasize 00:06:18.970 --> 00:06:21.850 very reluctantly, he initially turned down The 00:06:21.850 --> 00:06:25.970 Godfather entirely. Wait, really? The greatest 00:06:25.970 --> 00:06:28.410 mob movie of all time and he didn't even want 00:06:28.410 --> 00:06:31.350 it? Not at all. He had read Mario Puzo's novel 00:06:31.350 --> 00:06:33.990 and thought it was incredibly sleazy and sensationalist. 00:06:34.089 --> 00:06:36.709 Wow! Yeah, he actually described the source material 00:06:36.709 --> 00:06:39.689 as pretty cheap stuff. He thought it glorified 00:06:39.689 --> 00:06:42.370 the mafia in a really cheap way. But the Zoetrope 00:06:42.370 --> 00:06:44.930 debt was looming. The creditors were knocking. 00:06:45.910 --> 00:06:48.410 So imagine you are facing total financial ruin. 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:51.139 And your boss forces you to take on a project 00:06:51.139 --> 00:06:54.060 you actively despise. It's a nightmare scenario. 00:06:54.259 --> 00:06:56.620 That was Coppola on day one of The Godfather. 00:06:56.959 --> 00:06:58.699 And the production itself was a nightmare, too. 00:06:58.779 --> 00:07:01.660 Oh, absolutely. The studio fought him on absolutely 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:04.100 everything, especially the casting. The sources 00:07:04.100 --> 00:07:06.879 outline these battles, and they are wild. He 00:07:06.879 --> 00:07:09.660 had to practically beg to cast Marlon Brando 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:13.000 as Vito Corleone. Which seems insane now. Right, 00:07:13.100 --> 00:07:15.459 the Paramount executives flat out told him Brando 00:07:15.459 --> 00:07:18.120 would never appear in the picture. They considered 00:07:18.120 --> 00:07:20.439 Brando box office poison at the time. So how 00:07:20.439 --> 00:07:23.139 did he get him? Well, Coppola had to accept these 00:07:23.139 --> 00:07:25.759 insane constraints. He only got Brando because 00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:28.420 Brando agreed to do a screen test, which, by 00:07:28.420 --> 00:07:31.660 the way, A -listers hated doing. Oh yeah, huge 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:34.779 insult. Totally. Brando also had to take a massive 00:07:34.779 --> 00:07:37.160 pay cut and put up a personal financial bond 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:40.439 promising not to cause any delays on set. Coppola 00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:42.959 was under constant daily threat of being fired 00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:46.779 by the studio. Yet out of that crucible of studio 00:07:46.779 --> 00:07:50.199 pressure and frankly financial desperation, he 00:07:50.199 --> 00:07:53.339 doesn't just deliver a hit. He goes on... arguably 00:07:53.339 --> 00:07:55.399 the greatest run of films in the history of cinema 00:07:55.399 --> 00:07:58.100 during the 1970s. Let's talk about that run because 00:07:58.100 --> 00:08:00.339 it's unbelievable he wins an Oscar for writing 00:08:00.339 --> 00:08:02.980 Patton and even there he had to fight tooth and 00:08:02.980 --> 00:08:05.959 nail just to keep that famous opening scene where 00:08:05.959 --> 00:08:07.920 George C. Scott gives a speech in front of the 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:09.720 giant American flag. His studio wanted to cut 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:11.420 that. They wanted to cut it then he directs The 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:13.839 Godfather then The Conversation which is this 00:08:13.839 --> 00:08:16.740 brilliant surveillance thriller. Which incredibly 00:08:16.740 --> 00:08:19.720 happened to be released right as the Watergate 00:08:19.720 --> 00:08:22.279 scandal was unfolding. I mean talk about capturing 00:08:22.279 --> 00:08:24.600 the zeitgeist. Right. The timing is crazy. And 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:27.259 then he follows that up with The Godfather Part 00:08:27.259 --> 00:08:30.420 2. And here's a fun fact from the sources. The 00:08:30.420 --> 00:08:33.320 studio actually hated the title. Really? Yeah, 00:08:33.419 --> 00:08:35.159 they thought audiences wouldn't go see something 00:08:35.159 --> 00:08:36.600 called part two because it sounded like half 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:39.639 a movie. That's hilarious. Right. Coppola basically 00:08:39.639 --> 00:08:42.820 had to force it. And in doing so, he birthed 00:08:42.820 --> 00:08:46.019 the entire Hollywood trend of numbered sequels. 00:08:46.019 --> 00:08:48.379 It's just a breathtaking streak. But it brings 00:08:48.379 --> 00:08:51.159 up a vital point about the mechanics of his success. 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:53.600 Well, wait. So he made arguably the greatest 00:08:53.600 --> 00:08:56.120 movie of all time only because he was broke and 00:08:56.120 --> 00:08:58.759 desperate. Like, so what does this all mean? 00:08:59.179 --> 00:09:01.740 Did he consciously decide to make The Godfather? 00:09:01.639 --> 00:09:03.779 Was it either a masterpiece or did film critics 00:09:03.779 --> 00:09:06.720 just decide later that it was like a metaphor 00:09:06.720 --> 00:09:08.740 for capitalism? That's a really great question. 00:09:09.240 --> 00:09:11.779 The metaphor was actually how he tricked himself 00:09:11.779 --> 00:09:13.340 into caring about the movie in the first place. 00:09:13.340 --> 00:09:15.899 How interesting. Yeah. He realized that to survive 00:09:15.899 --> 00:09:18.000 directing a script he thought was cheap, he had 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.759 to elevate the material. If we connect this to 00:09:20.759 --> 00:09:23.740 the bigger picture, he decided that The Godfather 00:09:23.740 --> 00:09:26.360 couldn't just be about organized crime. It needed 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:29.860 to be a grand tragic metaphor for corporate capitalism 00:09:29.860 --> 00:09:33.009 in America. The Corleones were a corporation. 00:09:35.050 --> 00:09:37.669 anti -establishment feelings into this mafia 00:09:37.669 --> 00:09:40.730 story. Exactly. And this is where the alchemy 00:09:40.730 --> 00:09:42.990 of constraints, the mechanics of his genius, 00:09:43.269 --> 00:09:45.289 really show. Think of it like a pressure valve. 00:09:45.309 --> 00:09:47.830 Okay. When Coppola had the studio system acting 00:09:47.830 --> 00:09:51.309 as this iron cage around him, all his wild, chaotic, 00:09:51.690 --> 00:09:53.909 indie filmmaker energy was forced through a tiny, 00:09:54.190 --> 00:09:56.289 restricted nozzle. Oh, I see. And because it 00:09:56.289 --> 00:09:58.350 was so compressed by those constraints, it came 00:09:58.350 --> 00:10:01.250 out as a hyper -focused, laser -sharp masterpiece. 00:10:01.529 --> 00:10:03.549 I love that analogy. The constraints were the 00:10:03.549 --> 00:10:06.370 nozzle. The guardrails force his wild sensibilities 00:10:06.370 --> 00:10:09.029 into a focused narrative. But that begs the obvious 00:10:09.029 --> 00:10:10.789 question. What happens when you remove the nozzle? 00:10:10.929 --> 00:10:12.710 What happens when you take away the iron cage? 00:10:13.230 --> 00:10:15.610 Well, with massive success comes a complete lack 00:10:15.610 --> 00:10:18.789 of guardrails. Nobody tells you no anymore. And 00:10:18.789 --> 00:10:21.889 for Coppola, that total freedom led to peak hubris 00:10:21.889 --> 00:10:24.909 and a spectacular financial fall. Which brings 00:10:24.909 --> 00:10:28.399 us back to the literal jungle. Apocalypse Now. 00:10:28.779 --> 00:10:31.419 Right. Adapting Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of 00:10:31.419 --> 00:10:34.899 Darkness into a surreal Vietnam War epic. It 00:10:34.899 --> 00:10:37.240 is widely considered one of the most notoriously 00:10:37.240 --> 00:10:40.059 chaotic productions in human history. Chaos doesn't 00:10:40.059 --> 00:10:41.899 even begin to cover it. I want you to picture 00:10:41.899 --> 00:10:44.480 the logistics of this. They are shooting on location 00:10:44.480 --> 00:10:47.580 in the Philippines. Entire elaborate sets are 00:10:47.580 --> 00:10:50.700 destroyed by actual literal typhoons. Which is 00:10:50.700 --> 00:10:52.659 terrifying on its own. Yeah. And then the lead 00:10:52.659 --> 00:10:55.679 actor Martin Sheen suffers a near fatal heart 00:10:55.679 --> 00:10:57.620 attack in the middle of production and has to 00:10:57.620 --> 00:10:59.779 drag himself to a road for help. And then of 00:10:59.779 --> 00:11:01.899 course there's the Marlon Brando situation. Right. 00:11:02.059 --> 00:11:04.379 Brando shows up to the set to play this hardened, 00:11:04.620 --> 00:11:07.860 emaciated green beret, but he arrives completely 00:11:07.860 --> 00:11:11.000 unprepared, hasn't read the script, and is vastly 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:13.019 overweight. Not exactly the character on the 00:11:13.019 --> 00:11:16.019 page. Not at all. Coppola is panicking. How do 00:11:16.019 --> 00:11:18.120 you shoot an emaciated soldier when your actor 00:11:18.120 --> 00:11:20.980 is heavy? Well, he had to invent a new stylistic 00:11:20.980 --> 00:11:24.559 approach on the fly. He decided to shoot Brando. 00:11:24.639 --> 00:11:28.240 almost entirely in deep shadows, obscuring his 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:31.159 body and making him look like this terrifying 00:11:31.159 --> 00:11:33.639 disembodied presence. It's brilliant, but it 00:11:33.639 --> 00:11:36.559 was born out of absolute panic. And my absolute 00:11:36.559 --> 00:11:39.000 favorite detail from your sources about the mechanics 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.179 of the shoot. Kobala needed military helicopters 00:11:42.179 --> 00:11:44.740 for the famous attack scenes. Right. So he rented 00:11:44.740 --> 00:11:47.500 them from the Philippine military. But the military 00:11:47.500 --> 00:11:50.200 was actively fighting a real insurgency at the 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:52.460 time. Oh my god. So in the middle of a complex 00:11:52.460 --> 00:11:54.340 film shoot, the government would just radio the 00:11:54.340 --> 00:11:56.179 pilots, take the helicopters back, and they'd 00:11:56.179 --> 00:11:59.159 fly off to fight real actual rebels in the jungle. 00:11:59.320 --> 00:12:01.539 It is absolute madness. And Coppola wasn't blind 00:12:01.539 --> 00:12:03.899 to it. He knew they had lost control. When the 00:12:03.899 --> 00:12:06.340 film finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, 00:12:06.679 --> 00:12:09.799 he made this incredibly grandiose, almost unhinged 00:12:09.799 --> 00:12:12.419 statement. What did he say? He stood up and told 00:12:12.419 --> 00:12:15.289 the press, My film is not about Vietnam. It is 00:12:15.289 --> 00:12:18.649 Vietnam. Wow. That is quite the statement. Yeah. 00:12:19.029 --> 00:12:21.149 He openly admitted to the crowd that they had 00:12:21.149 --> 00:12:23.970 too much money, too much equipment. And in his 00:12:23.970 --> 00:12:27.169 exact words, little by little, we went insane. 00:12:27.490 --> 00:12:29.730 It perfectly mirrors a phenomenon you see in 00:12:29.730 --> 00:12:31.690 the business world all the time. It's like a 00:12:31.690 --> 00:12:34.649 CEO who gets so incredibly successful that they 00:12:34.649 --> 00:12:37.440 start believing their own myth. Yes. The echo 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:39.419 chamber. Exactly. They stop listening to their 00:12:39.419 --> 00:12:41.340 advisors. They think every random thought they 00:12:41.340 --> 00:12:43.840 have is gold and they just keep doubling down 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:46.120 and expanding until the whole company goes bankrupt. 00:12:46.379 --> 00:12:48.539 And bankruptcy is precisely what was waiting 00:12:48.539 --> 00:12:51.580 for him in the next decade. Right. Because having 00:12:51.580 --> 00:12:54.279 barely survived the uncontrollable chaos of the 00:12:54.279 --> 00:12:57.149 jungle. Coppola decides his next move in the 00:12:57.149 --> 00:13:00.110 1980s will be the exact opposite. He wants total 00:13:00.110 --> 00:13:02.889 absolute control. So he decides to make a musical 00:13:02.889 --> 00:13:05.450 called One From the Heart. And the mechanics 00:13:05.450 --> 00:13:08.129 of how he made this movie are fascinating and 00:13:08.129 --> 00:13:10.350 ultimately doomed him. He didn't just go film 00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:13.470 in Las Vegas. His hubris demanded that he rebuild 00:13:13.470 --> 00:13:16.169 the city of Las Vegas entirely inside his sound 00:13:16.169 --> 00:13:19.149 stages at Zoetrope Studios. Rebuild Las Vegas. 00:13:19.309 --> 00:13:22.950 Yes. He wanted to control the lighting, the weather, 00:13:23.309 --> 00:13:26.850 every single extra. The budget exploded to $26 00:13:26.850 --> 00:13:31.389 million, which was an astronomical sum for a 00:13:31.389 --> 00:13:33.450 quirky romance musical at the time. And when 00:13:33.450 --> 00:13:36.470 it finally hit theaters, it grossed less than 00:13:36.470 --> 00:13:39.210 $1 million at the box office. Less than a million 00:13:39.210 --> 00:13:43.659 on a $26 million budget. That isn't a flop. That 00:13:43.659 --> 00:13:46.539 is a total collapse. The fallout was brutal and 00:13:46.539 --> 00:13:49.080 immediate. He was forced to sell his beloved 00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:52.559 23 -acre Zoetrope studio. He lost his utopia 00:13:52.559 --> 00:13:55.279 and he had to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. 00:13:55.519 --> 00:13:57.820 So for anyone who isn't a financial expert, what 00:13:57.820 --> 00:14:00.279 does Chapter 11 actually mean for a film director 00:14:00.279 --> 00:14:02.700 in this context? Because it's not just, oh, I 00:14:02.700 --> 00:14:05.019 lost my house and I'm starting over. Right. In 00:14:05.019 --> 00:14:06.759 corporate bankruptcy, specifically Chapter 11, 00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:09.159 you don't just walk away clean. You restructure 00:14:09.159 --> 00:14:11.820 your debt to keep the entity alive. Yeah. Which 00:14:11.820 --> 00:14:13.740 means Coppola essentially became a corporate 00:14:13.740 --> 00:14:16.759 indentured servant to his creditors. He had to 00:14:16.759 --> 00:14:19.720 keep generating massive amounts of steady, reliable 00:14:19.720 --> 00:14:22.600 income just to pay off the interest of what he 00:14:22.600 --> 00:14:25.710 owed the banks. He became a hired gun. He spent 00:14:25.710 --> 00:14:28.889 the entire 1980s and 1990s just taking whatever 00:14:28.889 --> 00:14:31.730 studio jobs paid the bills, which means you lose 00:14:31.730 --> 00:14:34.509 final cut. You shoot what's on the page. You 00:14:34.509 --> 00:14:36.889 do what the executives say. Which is the real 00:14:36.889 --> 00:14:40.610 tragedy of this era. The groundbreaking, rebellious 00:14:40.610 --> 00:14:43.990 storyteller we saw in the 70s became a highly 00:14:43.990 --> 00:14:46.529 skilled technician for hire. The failure of one 00:14:46.529 --> 00:14:49.110 from the heart essentially killed his golden 00:14:49.110 --> 00:14:51.779 era of innovation. Yeah, you look at the filmography 00:14:51.779 --> 00:14:53.759 in this period. He's directing John Grisham's 00:14:53.759 --> 00:14:56.220 The Rainmaker, which is a solid, completely conventional 00:14:56.220 --> 00:14:58.779 legal thriller. But then he's doing Jack, the 00:14:58.779 --> 00:15:00.940 critically panned Robin Williams movie about 00:15:00.940 --> 00:15:03.639 a boy aging four times too fast. A movie that 00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:06.039 feels like it was directed by a committee, not 00:15:06.039 --> 00:15:08.529 the man who made the conversation. and the ultimate 00:15:08.529 --> 00:15:11.009 indignity. He even had to reluctantly return 00:15:11.009 --> 00:15:13.590 to make The Godfather Part 3 out of sheer financial 00:15:13.590 --> 00:15:15.409 necessity. And he didn't even want to call it 00:15:15.409 --> 00:15:17.950 that. No. He and Mario Puzo felt the story was 00:15:17.950 --> 00:15:20.110 over. They begged the studio to let them title 00:15:20.110 --> 00:15:22.470 it as an epilogue, calling it The Death of Michael 00:15:22.470 --> 00:15:25.169 Corleone. But the studio held the purse strings. 00:15:25.710 --> 00:15:27.730 They forced the numbered title because it was 00:15:27.730 --> 00:15:30.309 better for marketing. He was entirely trapped 00:15:30.309 --> 00:15:32.750 in the machine he had tried to break. He was 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:35.029 shackled to what he later depressingly called 00:15:35.029 --> 00:15:38.360 factory movies. He was making films for a system 00:15:38.360 --> 00:15:41.360 that demanded broad commercial appeal, which 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:43.720 went against every anti -establishment bone in 00:15:43.720 --> 00:15:46.980 his body. So how does an uncompromising artist 00:15:46.980 --> 00:15:49.740 escape the Hollywood factory once and for all? 00:15:50.039 --> 00:15:51.799 Well, by building a completely different kind 00:15:51.799 --> 00:15:54.220 of factory. Exactly. Here's where it gets really 00:15:54.220 --> 00:15:56.460 interesting. This is the pivot that blew my mind 00:15:56.460 --> 00:15:59.139 in the sources. He escapes by becoming his own 00:15:59.139 --> 00:16:01.779 patron of the arts. He builds an incredibly lucrative 00:16:01.779 --> 00:16:04.539 lifestyle empire. Decades before it was the standard 00:16:04.539 --> 00:16:07.090 playbook. Right. Decades before modern influencers 00:16:07.090 --> 00:16:09.029 and celebrities were launching their own tequila 00:16:09.029 --> 00:16:12.110 brands and curated newsletters, Coppola was already 00:16:12.110 --> 00:16:14.929 running the playbook. It is a fascinating strategic 00:16:14.929 --> 00:16:17.490 pivot, and it actually started quietly back during 00:16:17.490 --> 00:16:21.350 his peak in 1975. Using a chunk of his massive 00:16:21.350 --> 00:16:23.970 payout from the first Godfather, he purchased 00:16:23.970 --> 00:16:27.070 the historic Ingle Nook estate in California's 00:16:27.070 --> 00:16:30.039 Napa Valley. And he was hands -on. The sources 00:16:30.039 --> 00:16:32.700 say he literally had his family out in the vineyards, 00:16:32.899 --> 00:16:35.159 stomping the first vintage of grapes barefoot. 00:16:35.419 --> 00:16:37.500 But he didn't stop at just putting his name on 00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:40.460 a wine label. He built an entire ecosystem called 00:16:40.460 --> 00:16:43.279 the Francis Ford Coppola presents brand. And 00:16:43.279 --> 00:16:45.720 the expansion of that is staggering. He opened 00:16:45.720 --> 00:16:49.539 luxury eco resorts in Belize, Guatemala and Argentina. 00:16:50.200 --> 00:16:52.139 If you wanted to vacation like Coppola, you could. 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:55.299 He opened a traditional Italian cafe in San Francisco 00:16:55.299 --> 00:16:58.779 called Cafe Zoetrope. Right. He even co -founded 00:16:58.779 --> 00:17:01.779 a high -end literary magazine called Zoetrope, 00:17:01.960 --> 00:17:04.799 All Story. And this wasn't just some vanity zine. 00:17:04.819 --> 00:17:07.339 He was publishing writing from literary heavyweights 00:17:07.339 --> 00:17:10.180 like Margaret Atwood and bringing in guest designers 00:17:10.180 --> 00:17:12.460 like David Bowie. He was building a brand around 00:17:12.460 --> 00:17:15.079 his own eclectic tastes. He even dipped into 00:17:15.079 --> 00:17:18.220 political media, filming a televised mass rally 00:17:18.220 --> 00:17:20.640 for Democratic presidential candidate Jerry Brown 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:23.619 during the 1980 primary. Oh, interesting. Yeah, 00:17:23.619 --> 00:17:26.240 just another facet of this massive diversification 00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:28.640 of his interests. He never stopped expanding. 00:17:29.319 --> 00:17:32.460 In 2018, he even launched a cannabis brand. It 00:17:32.460 --> 00:17:36.119 was called the Growers series. And in a very 00:17:36.119 --> 00:17:40.140 clever winking nod to his winery roots, he packaged 00:17:40.140 --> 00:17:43.519 the weed in a mock black tin wine bottle. That's 00:17:43.519 --> 00:17:45.779 Brazilian marketing. It really is. But let me 00:17:45.779 --> 00:17:48.200 ask you, why does all this side hustle stuff 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:50.660 actually matter for a film director? Why does 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:53.000 the audience need to care that he owns a hotel 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:55.599 in Belize? Because we have to look at the mechanics 00:17:55.599 --> 00:17:58.319 of why he did it. Yeah. He wasn't just diversifying 00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:00.880 a portfolio for the sake of buying a bigger yacht. 00:18:01.220 --> 00:18:03.619 He was building a personal wealth engine. Right. 00:18:03.779 --> 00:18:06.339 The ultimate goal of the wine, the resorts, the 00:18:06.339 --> 00:18:08.819 magazines. It was all mathematically designed 00:18:08.819 --> 00:18:11.519 to generate so much passive cash flow that he 00:18:11.519 --> 00:18:13.500 would never, ever have to take orders from a 00:18:13.500 --> 00:18:15.700 movie studio executive again. It's the ultimate 00:18:15.700 --> 00:18:18.369 paradox. He despised the Hollywood factory and 00:18:18.369 --> 00:18:20.269 everything it stood for. But to escape it, he 00:18:20.269 --> 00:18:22.589 literally had to build his own corporate factory. 00:18:22.829 --> 00:18:25.990 He had to become a ruthless, highly successful 00:18:25.990 --> 00:18:28.150 capitalist in the business world so he could 00:18:28.150 --> 00:18:31.089 afford to be an absolute uncompromising communist 00:18:31.089 --> 00:18:34.789 in his art. That is exactly the dynamic. He realized 00:18:34.789 --> 00:18:37.529 that in America, true artistic freedom isn't 00:18:37.529 --> 00:18:40.230 free. You have to buy it. He had to build a corporate 00:18:40.230 --> 00:18:43.150 empire to build a fortress around his artistic 00:18:43.150 --> 00:18:46.009 soul. And the craziest part, the empire worked. 00:18:46.250 --> 00:18:48.650 It gave him the money to finally return to his 00:18:48.650 --> 00:18:52.029 scrappy indie roots, but on a massive unprecedented 00:18:52.029 --> 00:18:55.009 scale. After the 1990s, when the debts were paid 00:18:55.009 --> 00:18:57.309 and the wine money was flowing, he basically 00:18:57.309 --> 00:19:00.069 stopped acting as a professional director for 00:19:00.069 --> 00:19:02.450 hire. He transitioned back to self -financed 00:19:02.450 --> 00:19:05.250 experimental indie films, movies like Youth Without 00:19:05.250 --> 00:19:08.569 Youth and Tetro. These were deeply personal films 00:19:08.569 --> 00:19:10.869 that didn't have to answer to a marketing department 00:19:10.869 --> 00:19:13.569 or a focus group. And he also started spending 00:19:13.569 --> 00:19:16.589 years revisiting and re -editing his past work 00:19:16.589 --> 00:19:18.690 to match his original visions, just completely 00:19:18.690 --> 00:19:20.609 ignoring what the studios had originally demanded. 00:19:20.710 --> 00:19:23.369 Like Apocalypse Now Redux. Yeah, releasing Apocalypse 00:19:23.369 --> 00:19:26.029 Now Redux, adding back in all the weird, surreal 00:19:26.029 --> 00:19:28.849 scenes the studio made him cut. He spent $500 00:19:28.849 --> 00:19:32.150 ,000 of his own cash to painstakingly restore 00:19:32.150 --> 00:19:33.930 a movie he made in the 80s called The Cotton 00:19:33.930 --> 00:19:36.470 Club. Because now he could afford to correct 00:19:36.470 --> 00:19:39.769 the record. Exactly. And all of this independence 00:19:39.769 --> 00:19:43.150 culminates in 2024 with his film Megalopolis. 00:19:43.569 --> 00:19:45.490 This was a passion project he had been developing 00:19:45.490 --> 00:19:48.069 in his head since the 1990s. It's massive. It's 00:19:48.069 --> 00:19:51.190 this giant, surreal epic about the reconstruction 00:19:51.190 --> 00:19:54.329 of a futuristic megacity. And because he financed 00:19:54.329 --> 00:19:57.750 it himself, he fully utilized his hard -won independence 00:19:57.750 --> 00:20:00.869 to make it exactly, bizarrely how he wanted. 00:20:01.349 --> 00:20:03.890 And, you know, at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors, 00:20:04.349 --> 00:20:06.269 his old friend and fellow Renegade filmmaker, 00:20:06.410 --> 00:20:09.529 George Lucas introduced him. Lucas summarized 00:20:09.529 --> 00:20:12.450 Coppola's entire ethos with one perfect quote. 00:20:12.490 --> 00:20:15.170 What did he say? He said, what Francis does creatively 00:20:15.170 --> 00:20:19.049 is jump off clefts. Oh, I love that. It's such 00:20:19.049 --> 00:20:21.470 a beautiful, wild, full -circle moment. I mean, 00:20:21.490 --> 00:20:24.289 think about it. He started as a scrappy kid with 00:20:24.289 --> 00:20:26.710 $40 ,000 of Roger Corman's money running around 00:20:26.710 --> 00:20:28.529 Ireland doing whatever he wanted because he flew 00:20:28.529 --> 00:20:30.670 under the radar. And he ends up in his 80s doing 00:20:30.670 --> 00:20:32.690 exactly the same thing, jumping off cliffs, just 00:20:32.690 --> 00:20:34.609 with millions and millions of his own wine money 00:20:34.609 --> 00:20:37.390 to break his fall. This raises an important question, 00:20:37.769 --> 00:20:39.730 though, about the nature of art and commerce. 00:20:40.039 --> 00:20:43.539 He proved that true artistic freedom in America 00:20:43.539 --> 00:20:46.759 often requires you to master capitalism first. 00:20:47.400 --> 00:20:50.200 He successfully recreated that feeling of being 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.500 a bedridden kid making 8mm movies in his room 00:20:53.500 --> 00:20:56.099 where he controlled everything. He just managed 00:20:56.099 --> 00:20:59.450 to do it on a global stage. So as we wrap up 00:20:59.450 --> 00:21:01.569 today's deep dive, I want you to think about 00:21:01.569 --> 00:21:04.230 Francis Ford Coppola as so much more than just 00:21:04.230 --> 00:21:06.589 the guy who directed The Godfather. He's a survivor. 00:21:06.829 --> 00:21:09.869 Yeah, he is a man who bet his sanity in the jungle. 00:21:09.869 --> 00:21:12.029 He went completely bankrupt trying to build an 00:21:12.029 --> 00:21:15.470 indoor utopia, and he sold wine, resorts, and 00:21:15.470 --> 00:21:18.650 weed just to buy back his soul. A life lived 00:21:18.650 --> 00:21:21.529 entirely stubbornly on his own terms. It is a 00:21:21.529 --> 00:21:23.450 remarkable testament to the endurance of creative 00:21:23.450 --> 00:21:26.130 vision. But it leaves you with a final provocative 00:21:26.130 --> 00:21:28.839 thought to ponder. We talked about the pressure 00:21:28.839 --> 00:21:31.480 valve, the nozzle. So I want you to imagine a 00:21:31.480 --> 00:21:33.720 totally different timeline if Coppola had never 00:21:33.720 --> 00:21:35.519 gone bankrupt. Oh, that's an interesting thought. 00:21:35.799 --> 00:21:38.490 Right. Like if that Vegas musical, One From the 00:21:38.490 --> 00:21:40.809 Heart, had been a massive runaway hit and he 00:21:40.809 --> 00:21:42.710 had never lost his studio, would he have made 00:21:42.710 --> 00:21:46.089 better films in the 80s and 90s? Or does an artist 00:21:46.089 --> 00:21:48.589 of his magnitude actually need the constraints 00:21:48.589 --> 00:21:51.569 of debt and studio pressure and the threat of 00:21:51.569 --> 00:21:54.369 total financial ruin to temper his madness into 00:21:54.369 --> 00:21:56.430 a masterpiece? Does the canvas need to be on 00:21:56.430 --> 00:21:58.730 fire? Exactly. Does the canvas need to be on 00:21:58.730 --> 00:22:00.789 fire for the art to matter? Something for you 00:22:00.789 --> 00:22:02.829 to mull over the next time you open a bottle 00:22:02.829 --> 00:22:05.190 of Coppola wine. Thanks for joining us and we'll 00:22:05.190 --> 00:22:06.869 see you on the next Deep Dive.