Frank talk with Francis

Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola
on what Sofia has taught him, Martin Scorsese,
Kenneth Anger and his latest epic Tetro

STARK AND SURREAL: Tetro

by MATTHEW HAYS

Francis Ford Coppola has a commanding voice on the other end of the line. But I realize I may well be reading into things. This is, after all, one of the greatest American filmmakers ever, a man with legendary, obsessive filmmaking techniques who created some of the most brilliant films to come out of what was Hollywood’s last truly great decade, the ’70s.

Now, Coppola’s storied career—from the highs of the first two Godfather movies, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, to the lows of bankruptcy with One From the Heart—has taken another turn. In his first screenplay since The Conversation, Coppola has written and directed Tetro, a film about the strained relationship between two brothers. Vincent Gallo plays the title character, a tortured soul who lives in self-exile in Buenos Aires.

When his kid brother (played by Leonardo DiCaprio-alike Alden Ehrenreich) shows up, eager to know why Tetro abandoned the family over a decade ago, Gallo is distant and cold. Ehrenreich spends the rest of the film trying to solve his broken family’s innermost mysteries. It’s a complex, gorgeous film, shot entirely in black and white, and it’s earning Coppola the kind of critical notices he hasn’t seen in some time.

Mirror: Is Francis Ford Coppola there?

Francis Ford Coppola: Yes, this is me, forgive me, I was with someone else on the phone. A journalist started asking me what my favourite street in the world was. I couldn’t quite think of that. I think she said she also writes for a travel magazine.

M: We journalists are all whores.

FFC: We all are. Everybody’s trying to make a living.

M: I know that Tennessee Williams was a huge influence on you as a young person, and I can feel that running through Tetro.

FFC: I think the first book that I read that was a grown-up book was A Streetcar Named Desire. I thought it was so beautiful and it was so moving. When I was a theatre student in the late ’50s, the gods of the theatre were Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Odets. In my mind, that’s what was beautiful writing. We’re a product of the ocean we’re swimming around in. The Godfather was the freak accident that changed everything. I’m still trying to sort all that out.

Living in black and white

M: Many filmmakers use black and white as shorthand for realism, but here you give it a very stark, surreal quality.

FFC: I think we’re the product of what impressed us. You could say that 90 per cent of the greatest movies ever made are in black and white. A filmmaker is trying to understand himself and the world around them. I thought The Best Years of Our Lives is such a beautiful film, as are many of the films of William Wyler. It’s hard to separate what inspires you from what kind of film you want to make. I don’t want to make every film in black and white, but occasionally.

M: Some have read the relationship in Tetro as being an allegory for your own tortured relationship with Hollywood.

FFC: You know, I never really had a falling out with Hollywood. Hollywood always welcomed me, seemed to like me and gave me everything they could. It’s made up of many people, executives and wonderful artists—many of whom would like to be making personal films. They’re struggling with how to make them personal but also make them a box-office success. You have to share audiences now with sports, TV news—which has become entertainment—video games. It’s become much tougher. I think you have to do the movie business not because you want to become rich and famous, but because you really want to do it, even if you have to have a day job.

M: When I spoke with Sofia Coppola, she said she learned two things from you: respect for story and working carefully with your actors. What have you learned from Sofia?

FFC: I learned that you can just go out and make a movie for a few million dollars and just make it personal. She saw what I did—working from the Roger Corman school of guerrilla filmmaking—and I learned from her that you don’t have to make huge-budget films. I could just make the films I could afford to finance. She taught me minimalism. My films are often too big: too much dialogue, too much action. Sofia is a master of economy.

M: That’s interesting, because I read an interview with you where you said, “To do good is to be abundant. If I cook a meal, I cook too much and have too many things.”

FFC: For me, it’s hard to do too little. And that’s often the best thing to do. At this point, I’ve ended up with a successful wine and hotel business, so I figure why not finance little movies like I wanted to do when I was young. I wanted to do things that were moving to me.

M: And yet, when you revisited Apocalypse Now and added all that footage, people said it was a better film.

FFC: Apocalypse Now was about the Vietnamese War, and some people made films about that topic on a smaller scale. I went at it from the other extreme, as if I was America, with huge resources and equipment, and that’s the way I made the film. The film is the war in a way, because it was made in the same style the war was fought. I like movies that are what they’re about. You know, you see a movie that’s hard to separate from its theme. Even Tetro is really made from the flesh of that theme—a family that loves each other but has rivalries. I was very moved by that subject matter, because it’s close to home. Why is it every family has some uncle who made it big in a business, and then the brothers can’t get along the way they used to because of that? I have kids who are all creative. How does the one nephew cope with the fact that a nephew named Nicolas Cage is so successful? Feelings get hurt.

BACK TO BASICS: Coppola with Ehrenreich

Provocative plus

M: What’s the worst thing you see happening in cinema today?

FFC: Just the sameness. Cinema is relatively young—it’s only about 100 years old. The fact that we have any cinematic language at all is about what was established in the first 20 years. As films are controlled more by a financier, or the fact that when anyone does something daring, the critics call them pretentious or it’s a jumble, that’s problematic. When I read a book and I’m having a little trouble understanding it, it’s my fault. But not with film. Film should be provocative. I love it when I see a film that’s totally like nothing I’ve seen before, like Punch-Drunk Love.

M: Kenneth Anger came to Montreal a couple of years ago, and he told this story about several employees of Zoetrope begging you not to throw yourself out a window.

FFC: He’s a strange fellow. Kenneth Anger is fascinated with the subject of artists or writers who were very successful as young people, and then had failures later in their career and would commit suicide. He thought it would be really cool if I would commit suicide somehow, because I’d made The Godfather and then never made anything that great again. I think that’s more his story than mine.

M: It’s too bad that One From the Heart really hurt you, because I think it’s a beautiful and unusual film.

FFC: There’s no career out there that doesn’t have a couple of projects that people point to and say ‘Well, what about that failure?’ You take a picture like Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, that’s one of my all-time favourite movies. Maybe it didn’t make as much money as the others, and it took some knocks, but that stands alongside his greatest as far as I’m concerned. Every successful filmmaker has those films, and in many cases, those what-about-that-movie? films are in fact their best.

M: Is it true you’ve never watched The Sopranos?

FFC: I haven’t got around to it. I’m not interested in gangsters and I’m sure as hell not interested in The Godfather. But someday we’ll have a Sopranos festival or something, and I’ll see them. I know people think they’re very good.

TETRO OPENS THIS FRIDAY, AUG. 14