#242 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. In celebration of 100 years of American filmmaking, the American Film Institute announced a list of the 100 greatest movies ever made.
Francis Ford Coppola was involved in five of the films on the list.
The Coppola entries spoke volumes about the filmmaker's career.
Each of the movies had been made in the 1970s, at a time when Coppola was young and hungry and at the pinnacle of his abilities and powers.
For one glorious decade, Coppola exacted an influence on moviemaking virtually unapproached by any other filmmaker.
Coppola would be the first to concede that none of his movies in the 1980s and 1990s deserved to be on the list, not by a long shot.
But one cannot help but wonder, what happened to Francis Ford Coppola?
Did he expend all of his artistic energy during the 70s?
Was he overrated as a filmmaker?
Was the failure of his company, along with his highly publicized financial problems, the driving force behind his decision to abandon his risky yet decisively creative endeavors in favor of safer and more profitable work?
Did his son's death give him occasion to reconsider his life as a filmmaker and in fact guide him toward a change in priorities?
Did he simply lose interest in putting himself on the line in film after film?
Did he grow complacent once he had rebuilt his empire?
That is an excerpt from the end of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Francis Ford Coppola, A Filmmaker's Life. And it was written by Michael Schumacher. And the fact that these questions appear at the very end of the book gives you an indication that there are not going to be any easy answers to this. This was an absolute fantastic book. It's a giant book, almost 500 pages. I spent over 25 hours trying to really fundamentally understand who Francis Ford Coppola was as a person and any kind of lessons that we can draw from his career. And one of the main lessons that I loved is that he was a very messy person. He had a very messy career. He had a very human career. And I like the fact that there was no clear-cut answers. To me, this biography was an exposition in what it means to be human, the messy life experience that you and I go through. And I'll tell you why I wanted to read the book and how it fits into every other thing that we're studying on the podcast. Once we get to George Lucas, I want to jump right into the relationship that he had growing up with his father. I just watched an interview with Francis Ford Coppola. He's 83 in the interview. This book is over 20 years old, so it was published when he's around 60 years old. But when he's 83, he made a very interesting comment in this interview that I wrote down, and this is a quote from the interview. He said, You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son.
So that's where I want to start. His father's name is Carmine. We'll go right into it. Carmine harbored ambivalent feelings about success, similar to the ones that his son would confront many years later as a filmmaker.
As a hired musician, Carmine could carve out a decent living, but he would never develop into the kind of artist that he aspired to be.