One of the films that premiered at Cannes this year is the low budget, black and white drama Tetro. The words “low budget, black and white drama” are surely going to deter a large chunk of the movie going population, but the fact is you should be excited about this movie. I mean it. Not just mildly interested, or half-heartedly curious. You should be blowing your fucking brains out in anticipation: Balls-to-the-wall, eye-popping, cat-strangling anticipation.
This is serious business.
Why should you care? Simple. This is the first movie that Francis Ford Coppola has written and directed and given a shit about for two decades.
Let me take you back to the pot and coke fuelled days of Hollywood in the 1970’s.
(Insert watery transition and harp music here)
For as long as anyone cares to remember the studios have been in control of the film business. They’ve honed their craft to science: crapping out countless bland, formulaic genre movies for an increasingly uninterested audience.
Suddenly out of the aether a new crop of filmmakers arrive. They are independent, artistic, egotistical, and – most importantly – they believe in the creative control of the director as Auteur. These filmmakers begin a revolution in Hollywood that will last ‘til the end of the 70’s and change the face of Hollywood forever.
These filmmakers have names like Peter Bogdanovich Will Friedkin, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and Martin Scorsese. These men are making fantastic films, achieving critical success and garnering a lot of attention. The biggest name of them all, the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of both critical praise and cultural ubiquity, is Francis Ford Coppola.
Everything Coppola touches turns to gold.
It all starts in 1972 with a film called The Godfather. It gets made, despite the studio’s reservations about releasing a gangster film in a time when the genre is so out of style, and blows everyone’s minds. It breaks box office records, wins every award possible, and cements Coppola’s position as the unquestioned God of New Hollywood. Coppola is an egotistical figure, pushing people around to get his way, and making great films in the process. 1974 sees the release of two films, the money-burning chart topping sequel The Godfather: Part II, and the lower budget, more personal The Conversation. Both further increase Coppola’s standing in Hollywood and add more weight to his already healthily engorged ego.
But Hollywood – in the immortal words of Bachman-Turner overdrive – ain’t seen nothing yet.
Coppola takes on his next project, his biggest one yet: A Vietnam war film based on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It promises to be special, and Coppola easily finds financial backing. The shoot is an absolute nightmare. Originally meant to take a few months, the film is not completed for four years. Coppola insists on shooting on site in the Southeast Asian jungle. He begins dressing and acting like Fidel Castro. Bad weather ruins much of the shoot, as well as logistical problems to do with Coppola’s over-ambitious shot compositions (getting an entire fleet of army helicopters into formation is harder than it looks). On top of this, Martin Sheen has a heart attack, Marlon Brando turns up weeks late and several kilograms too heavy (his character Kurtz was described as gaunt and wraith-like, Brando was obese and jowly), Coppola buys cadavers off someone who is later convicted of grave-robbing (Coppola thought they were donated bodies) and the budget balloons to several times its original size. All of this leaves the cast, crew and producers feeling crazed, angry and abused.
The film breaks Coppola’s financial back. Ruins his company American Zoetrope. Destroys any relationship Coppola has with anyone in Hollywood. And ultimately bring an end to the revolution that Coppola helped begin.
The film, Apocalypse Now, was also the best film of the decade, but no one took any notice of that.
So let’s make a tally of films listed so far that Coppola wrote and directed and gave a shit about: The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. In a matter of around ten years, Coppola managed to put out four of the best films ever made. Problem is, after that all his bridges were burned.
Coppola has never really possessed free reign he was given for those four films ever again. Despite continuing to make films, all evidence points to the fact that he really stopped giving a shit and was just turning up for the paycheck. This is clearly evidenced by the 1996 Robin Williams “Comedy” Jack. Coppola has been accused of being nothing but a studio whore for the past two decades.
However, there light at the end of the tunnel my friends: after twenty years of making films that he doesn’t care about, Coppola has come out with Tetro. Self funded, shot on location, written and directed by Coppola. This film has all the hallmarks of the old days, with Coppola at the helm and in full control.
Early reports say that the film is incredible, and the footage and previews that have been released look beautiful. This is some exciting shit, because it heralds the comeback of an American Genius. While I’m not promising that this movie will be as monumental as The Godfather, the very idea of another Coppola film entering the pantheon of his other greats is thrilling enough to justify the price of the ticket.
So seriously, when Tetro is released in cinemas, watch it. You could be witnessing the redemption of a truly great director.
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