The Big Picture - ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ and Book Club No. 1—Francis Ford Coppola, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ and ‘The Path to Paradise’

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Sean and Amanda are joined by Ringer contributor and beloved “Mean Pod Guy” Adam Nayman to discuss ‘Drive-Away Dolls,’ the latest solo Coen movie—this time directed by Ethan and written along with his wife, Tricia Cooke (1:00). After that, it’s the first iteration of The Big Picture Book Club. Sean and Amanda dig into ‘The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story,’ what it reveals about the highs and lows of Coppola’s career, what it tells us outside of the already well-known mythology of Coppola, and—with ‘Megalopolis’ likely coming out this year—the ways it contributes to Coppola’s presence in the film zeitgeist in 2024 (24:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Adam Nayman Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world a Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the Prestige TV feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Opening a TFSA or learning about investing tools, we're here to help. But keeping your cat off your keyboard, that's up to you.

Reach out to TD Direct Investing today and make your investing steps count. Plus, enjoy 1% cash back. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show from Apocalypse Now to Zoetrope. Today on the show, we have our first ever edition of The Big Picture Book Club. We have read and we'll be digging into the Hollywood historian Sam Watson's psychological episodic portrait of Francis Ford Coppola Club. We have read and will be digging into the Hollywood historian Sam Watson's psychological episodic portrait of Francis Ford Coppola in The Path to Paradise, a Francis Ford Coppola story. We'll talk Apocalypse Now, The Godfather films, Hollywood in the 70s, and one of the most fascinating minds in movie history. But first, let's dig into the latest from another great

mind of the movies, a Coen brother. And joining us to do so is the great Adam Naiman. Adam, how are you? I'm well. How are you guys? I'm dandy. How are you, Amanda? I'm delighted to see Adam again. Hello. I'm delighted to see you guys. Adam, you're here because you are... What are you, the rabbi of the Coens? How do you define yourself when it comes to Coen Brothers projects?

I learned about their movies yesterday. I did some reading. I went on Reddit. How do you define yourself when it comes to Coen Brothers projects? I learned about their movies yesterday. I did some reading. I went on Reddit. No, I wrote a book about the Coens a few years ago, which I plan to hopefully make more complete in the event that they make more movies together. It was called The Book Really Ties the Films Together. But I also teach a course on them at U of T, which is really quite wonderful to put their films in front of undergrads who haven't seen them before and drawing connections between them. But like you, I'm also just a fan.

Yes, I am a huge fan. I love their movies very much. They mean a lot to me. And so writing about them and teaching about them is also just part of enjoying them. So you'd think that the arrival of a new film from a Coen brother would be greeted with great fanfare. And yet here we are in the midst of February and a new movie called Drive Away Dolls is coming to us in movie theaters. It is directed by Ethan Coen, but without his brother Joel, of course. It is co-written by Ethan and his wife,

Trisha Cook. And it's a bit of a romp. It's a comic romp starring two young women portrayed by Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley. And it's a movie that has been in development, I would say, for a great

number of years that Cook and Cohen have been working on it. I think they first wrote a draft back in the 90s. They tried to get it made in the late 90s, early 2000s with Alison Anders, the great independent filmmaker, and could never get it off the ground. Once upon a time, its title was, quote, Driveaway Dykes, which uh alluded to in the feature and this movie was supposed to come out last fall and got pushed back because of the wga and sag strikes and so here it is arriving at what is commonly known as dumpuary and i wonder adam expert that you are does this feel like a dumpuary release to you i mean it feels like a dumpuary release in terms of how it's been handled.

And I think that, you know, at a time when it's harder than ever to not just get eyeballs, but like brain cells directed towards movies that don't come pre-sold, you know, with festival laurels or whatever. I think it's going to be a hard movie to turn into a conversation point in terms of content. I don't think it's itumpy Wary at all. I'm hoping that people will watch it and write about it and think about it as being, if not directly part of, close and adjacent to one of the great bodies of work in American cinema. And to me, a more interesting thought experiment or critical experiment than the movie signed by Joel Cohen. They're kind of photo negatives of each other too in terms of what is good about them and in terms of what is uh you know ambiguous about them

let's say or or that i'm ambivalent about i i have some questions about that actually and i wonder how much we can psychologically read these these two brothers these critical minds of the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century of cinema so the movie itself is set in 1999 it's a comic caper it follows these two women who are looking for an adventure essentially uh the vizwanathan character is kind of uptight margaret qualley's character is the free spirit and they're looking to just get out of town to to get it get away from the the northernmost eastern coast and to get down, hopefully, to Florida. And so they sign up for a driveway car, essentially, an opportunity to deliver either a package or a vehicle down south.

And in doing so, there's a mix-up, and the car that they take turns out to be a car that is owned and operated by some sort of criminal organization. And this leads to hijinks. Very simple framework. I would argue, slightly underbaked framework for a movie that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie so i i'm kind of curious amanda we sat beside one another at this screening you crashed my valentine's date with my wife eileen i did um i crashed the second half the second half of it and i was invited by someone who wasn't you, just to be clear. Right. And I did offer to sit directly in front of you guys in the other reserved seating.

And if you wanted to keep the date going. That would have been wildly strange. So we sat. I was in a sandwich between you and my wife. What did you think of the movie? I thought some of the funny parts were very funny. It's not an unsuccessful movie. As you said, the premise is it is light if a little

zany but it narratively carries it from start to finish and they get into some funny situations along the way it does feel a little bit like half of a coen Brothers movie, you know? And it is very recognizably in tone and to some extent in setup, but certainly like the feel of the comedy and even the types of characters you encounter and whatever Margaret Qualley is trying to do with that voice, which, you know, as a Southerner, that was just very tough for me.

But you feel whatever heft or strangeness or spin that gets put on it in a Coen Brothers movie. And that's, it does feel a little bit unfair to say, you know, people are allowed to make things by themselves and you don't really know what alchemy, who contributes what in a partnership. But it did feel incomplete. Yeah. So that's my question for you, Adam, because you've got the tragedy of Macbeth, which came out a couple of years ago from Apple, which was the film that Joel Cohen directed, starring his wife, Frances McDormand. And that was a fairly straightforward black and white adaptation of Shakespeare. I thought beautifully shot and interesting, but not my favorite Coen Brothers movie. And then you've got Drive Away Dolls, which is the zany kind of raising Arizona sequel,

kind of raising Tallahassee. It's got some intolerable cruelty in it, some Hail Caesar, that kind of like that peppy goofy like high goof you know the high goof that they do the coen brothers so well obviously informed in part by trisha cook's point of view which is uh do you they have a unique arrangement i would say ethan and trisha in that they are married but trisha is queer and out and they have kids together and they raise their kids together but they also have partners um outside of their marriage so they have kids together and they raise their kids together, but they also have partners outside of their marriage. So they have a unique situation. And so this movie clearly is very personal to Trisha,

but it has what feels very clearly like Ethan's tonality or what we can surmise as his tonality. So it's an odd duck of a movie. What do you make of it? The movie clarifies certain things about from which wing of the Coen brothers' certain props and ideas and other their movies may have come from for instance if you have ever wondered while watching burn after reading where the George Clooney dildo chair came from driveway dolls will will will offer some hints I think it's case closed but I'd say this I actually had the chance to interview the Ethan Cohen-Tricia Cook filmmaking partnership, not about this film, but about a film that hasn't really seen much, much exposure, which is a doc they made together about Jerry Lee Lewis.

I won't spend much time talking about a film that the audience can't see, except to say their process of making and editing that seemed very interesting, seemed very equal. And I think that it's important that they're seen as co-authors of this movie to say their process of making and editing that seemed very interesting seemed very equal and i think that it's important that you know they're seen as co-authors of this movie because the sensibility while recognizably cohen-esque stems from her she's quite funny and you know as the writing around the film is saying you know quite out and quite vocal but wanting to make a movie that has a kind of you know zany sensany, sensual, queer, female pleasure to it, which I

think the movie succeeds at with a little bit of hiccups. The part that I'm interested in is how political a movie it is, which is something that is not always part of the Coens. It's always part of their work, but it's always like interpreted very strangely. People are like, they're conservatives, they're reactionary, and they're right wing. This movie would seem to clear that up too, or at least the angling of this particular story but it's also like a fantasy of a time when there were republicans and democrats in the u.s as opposed to something else it's very very importantly set on the edge of that 2000 election you have a character talking about working for nadir the the there is a politician figure I would never dream of spoiling

who plays him, but who very much sort of seems to belong to a different kind of moment of right-wing conservatism in America, not a MAGA figure, you know, at all. And because I take the Coens seriously and take their comedy seriously, I think it's as a kind of a political film

and a cultural film that I'm most interested in. Because as Amanda said, formally, it is not, but you guys would say it's not fully baked, which is also kind of what I like about it. If you were to say like a Coen brother made a slovenly 80 minute movie that

feels padded out to reach feature length, I'd be like, what happened? But I found that preferable to the fussiness in Macbeth, which is so accomplished and a little stiff, you know? Yeah, I, gosh, the film's only 84 minutes. Barely 84 minutes. Yeah, it's about 78 and a half minutes.

Yeah. Which obviously for a studio released movie is unusually short, especially if it's not animated. And it feels a bit like a sketch, but it also feels a bit like a time capsule piece. Like it feels like a movie that was written 25 years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Cause there are Coen brothers movies from 25 years ago that I like quite a

bit. I mostly like the performances though. I also kind of struggled with Margaret Qualley trying to do fast talking game and loose girl who leads the adventure. You know, she's kind of, with Margaret Qualley trying to do fast-talking dame and loose girl who leads the adventure. She's making a choice, and I always appreciate when she makes choices as an actor. I'm a big fan of hers. Didn't quite get to where I wanted it to be, personally. She has such a presence that at some point, I was like, okay, I guess you're just not going to lose this accent, and I'm just going to have to keep going with it.

Or I became used to whatever she was trying, both energy wise. So I'm still a fan of hers. But, you know, she's Margaret Qualley. Like she is very of right now and of Gen Z. And so is Beanie Feldstein, who in a very in a supporting role and as you noted is like you know a very memorable part of Booksmart which is a very generational thing whether you like or hate that generation it's it's not up to me to decide but so that took me out of the 99-ness of it all a bit and there is a there was for me just a kind of stuck between the two time

zones of the movies and i wonder whether like the tone and the politics are also slightly stuck between where it's set and when it's being released yeah adam can i frame the five b's for you the five b's of young contemporary female-led comedies are Bottoms, Booksmart, and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Right. And this movie's kind of, this is a double D, but it's kind of in that zone, but also not in that zone because it's made by people in their 60s. Well, made by people in their 60s, but also not made on autopilot or like on the other end of some mandated contract i mean one of the

things with the coens that you'll i'll always say about them is they've never made a movie that they didn't have to and even when there's been an aspect of obligation to it they've always personalized it like i find i think it's interesting that tonally this one is close to burn after reading which is the done burn after reading um intolerable, which is the closest thing you'll find to an impersonal Coen Brothers movie, but they sort of rescue it just through sheer talent. And what I sort of liked about this movie, not to be all, you know,

loosey-goosey and shift to critical goalposts, is I liked how unimportant it was. I liked how unimportant it was. I liked how casual it was. I liked that there's, like, weird psychedelic fades and dissolves between sequences. I liked how mismatched was i liked that there's like weird psychedelic fades and dissolves between sequences i liked how mismatched the acting was it felt relaxed and it felt like something that the two people who made it who i'd like to think are a happy couple in their configuration like

that they had fun making it it's like they're clearing their throat. If this was life's work, I would feel differently. But as a, not a throwaway, but as an exercise, it's charming. But it does make me feel the lack of that incredible polish and visionary, you know, the visionary direction you get when the two of them work together when Joel's behind the camera because he's always been the film school guy. The same way Macbeth lacked any sense of humor. Yeah. Anything. Did you even like, just human life really, it was very, very sewn up.

Yeah, I agree. You know, you being more of an expert on them than Amanda or I, is that known? Is it known that Joel was bringing the dramaturgical power and the filmmaking and that ethan was the zany madcap guy and together they made something special well i love the end i mean you know joel was supposed not supposedly i mean you know the story is that he's the film school guy and the guy who met up with sam ramey and kind of you know cut his teeth on that diy

thing and and et Ethan was at Princeton. There's the story where he talked about how he couldn't turn in an assignment because he had his arms eaten by a bear and he was like talking to the dean with both arms at that point. I mean, I've always been of the mind from what I've read and from my experience interviewing them and certainly writing about them. I think they operate on a form of telepathy, which is why I want to grant the same partnership to Ethan and Trisha Cook, like not see it solely as an Ethan Coen movie. Like it's directed by him solely

the way that all the Coen brothers movies were directed by him, by Joel solely. Yes, very much. They sat next to each other making the movie, yes. But I would say watching this, I was making a joke about the dildo chair. I mean, it's not a joke. There's more marital aids in this movie

than any other American movie ever made. But it clarifies just that certain things might seem to be of interest to him, not that they're not of interest to Joel. And one of the other ones I think is very funny in this movie is the extent to which it's kind of a statement against nihilism or kind of a statement against a lack of pleasure in life. Like it's got these very discount Fargo goons in it, you know, which are very 90s post-Tarantino

characters, but their running argument is just about like enjoying life. And if you sort of treat people like an asshole, you'll be treated like one. And if you're nice to people, you get what you want. And I found that funny because I see that in so many of their movies, these dueling pairs or these kind of dichotomous pairs of worldviews. So it's not like they've just completely gone out of the comfort zone, you know, thematically with Joel gone. But I do joel's the camera guy so those two guys who are played by cj wilson and joey slotnick who are pretty classical cohen supporting characters um in terms of the kind of character actor that you might find to play them are just two of an unusually star-studded by me standard of supporting characters that includes Coleman Domingo, currently Academy Award nominated Pedro Pascal, who is very briefly in this film, very brief,

but is, you know, we see more of his face than we do in the Mandalorian. That's for sure. Um, Bill camp, the homie, the homie,

Bill camp thriving. Adam, do you ever see sound of freedom? Uh, you know, it's on the queue. Okay. Which is,

because I think it's going to really speak to me and determine, you know, my activities in the next year. I can't wait to watch it. I feel very strongly about this. It's worth it for the Bill camp. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, he's very good. He's doing something exciting in one of the craziest parts in a long time. So you saw Sound of Freedom.

Oh, I thought you were talking about this movie. No, I'm talking about Sound of Freedom. Oh, okay. No, I never saw Sound of Freedom. Also, Mrus i'm gonna i'm gonna watch it and do whatever it tells me to i think it's just scan a qr code i think that's what they really want you to do yeah right um and my and miley cyrus also has a small role in this one which i did not was not aware of yeah and then there's a bit there's a big big old movie star who's in the movie too we're not spoiling but um i do think he's been out promoting the movie is that well i think

probably needs it right his is the only promo cycle that i've seen since the movie was delayed because of the strikes and inability to promote it should we just say the man's name no no but is it also not fair to say that this is sort of the reliable surprise movie star? Oh, yeah. Yes. This is usually the guy who, if you don't know he's in the movie, then he ends up being in the movie. Right. Correct.

I think that's enough said. You know what's funny about that? There was another version of that that just came out today. A young star who does this in a forthcoming film. I don't know if either of you have had this spoiled for you yet but this the surprise cameo from the well-known person is something that we used to have a lot of and i want to have more of i want to bring it back and i feel like this movie and now this other movie that is coming out very soon also it's bringing this really great specific writing like we were told taught you know in creative writing class i always use sometimes you have to seed clues for the audience at home.

So Drive Away Dolls, you recommend this film, Adam? Yeah, I'd recommend it. I think I'm going to write for it for your site soon. That seems to be the plan and to talk about its co-in-ness or lack thereof.

But I would recommend it and I think it's just one of those fates of distribution that it seems to be coming out very close to Love, Lies, Bleeding, which I haven't seen yet, but which was at Sundance, which it's almost like built for a joint review, right? Yes. They're very different and very similar. Love, Lies, Bleeding rocks very hard. I would say significantly harder than Driveaway Dolls, but I don't think that that's

Driveaway Dolls' intention. As you said, Drive Away Dolls is a romp. And the crowd that we saw it with, we saw it in a big theater, they were hooting and hollering. They loved it. You know, like it is something maybe to be seen with other people. So just to put a cap on that,

as I said, this was our, the day before Valentine's Day, my wife and I had a Valentine's Day date. We went out to a local eatery, had a few drinks, had a meal. And my wife sat with us and watched the movie. And when the movie ended, Amanda just darted out of the movie theater, like into the night sky. And Eileen and I took our time. And as we were walking out, Eileen turned to me and she said, I fucking loved that movie. Really? Which I cannot remember the

last time Eileen said that to me about a movie. And she immediately after that said, no, I have had two drinks. But I loved it. And if you're looking for a fun time, I think it's a fun time at the movies.

I think so too. And I think that it'll be interesting as their career continues because it will hopefully and there's rumors that the rumors are kind of from one of those sites

where it's like it's never actually right about things. Remember people who post from some of these sites? I'm like it's never actually right about things remember people who post from some of these sites i'm like they've never actually gotten anything right but that that that said you know if they are going to work together again i wonder how macbeth and this will be seen whether they'll be seen as as footnotes or separate chapters i think about this thing as a book author because you want to know what to to do with them but i kind of wish that this would at least get the same level of analysis

and exegesis that Macbeth did. It's just Macbeth was positioned as an Oscar movie, and this is being positioned as the opposite. And I just like, I want some of our good people on this. You know? But you're the guy. You're the man for the job. Yeah, I want people to write about it interestingly.

I'd like to read female critics write about this movie. I want Trisha Cook's authorship to be part of the bargain because even if it's a bit of a throwaway, I don't want it to be disposed of, right? Should I see if my wife can write a 5,000-word essay about the film? That would be good because it would be taking money, work directly out of my mouth. That would be great.

But I, you know, and I'm going to go now and watch Sound of Freedom. Okay, thank you. Great, wow. And I'll let you know what I think.

I can't wait. Adam, you're the best. Thank you so much for joining the show with the region on thewriter.com and elsewhere. Yeah, it's nice to see you guys. You take care of yourself.

Bye, Adam. Bye. Bye. Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Okay, Amanda, we're talking about men now. We're talking about what men do. What do men like Francis Ford Coppola do? They make a lot of promises and try their best, but don't always deliver. So let's foreground our discussion of this new book by Sam Lawson with some of your experience recently working in the podcasting industry. Oh, great. Okay. Well, you were one of the producers of Brian Raftery's Do We Get to Win This Time?

Yes. And so you have now, I think, a much deeper understanding of the history of Hollywood's relationship to Vietnam. Mm-hmm. Apocalypse now perhaps being the pinnacle of that experience. One of. Oh, interesting. A multi-pinnacle. Well, you know, I mean, it depends on— A re-apex, one might say.

Whether it's a filmmaking perspective. Okay. Whether it's a political perspective. Oh, interesting. Whether it's a— I mean, you know, and history changes over time, but continue. Damn right. You're really an emotionally sophisticated person.

Thank you so much. And so, you know, going into this book, obviously Apocalypse Now, one of my favorite movies of all time, a movie that is much covered in the annals of Hollywood history, in part because Francis Ford Coppola is such an amazing subject.

He's such a showman in the way that he talks about his work and the way that he imagines movies and what movies mean to us and what they mean to him and what they've meant to his life. So when I got this book, which I was really looking forward to, and Sam Watson has written some of the better Hollywood books in the last 10 years. I think this is his eighth book. And I was a very big fan of The Big Goodbye, Chinatown in the last years of Hollywood. I think that's his most exciting book. But he wrote a hugely acclaimed Bob Fosse biography, which was ultimately adapted into Fosse-Verdon on FX. He wrote a book about the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's. He most

recently wrote an oral history of Hollywood with Ginny Basinger, the longtime Wesleyan professor who's one of the most wizened people about the history of the business. Very experienced guy. We come to find out when I open the book that this book is really using Apocalypse Now as the spine

through which to tell the story. Now, on the one hand, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The production of Apocalypse Now was very, very complicated, torturous, and can be seen clearly as a metaphor for the way that Coppola pursued projects. On the other hand, we know a lot about the making of Apocalypse Now. So what did you think when you opened it? What did you think the book was going to be and

what did you think when you started going through it? I was slightly surprised and I remember texting you about it just because, you know, in addition to having worked on that podcast, which Brian Raftery's wonderful podcast, which I hope everyone listened to, you know, I have seen Hearts of Darkness, which is the 1991 documentary co-directed by Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's wife, and someone we talked to, when do we get to when this time, about the making of Apocalypse Now. And I am also a giant fan of Eleanor Coppola's book, Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, and also her second book, Notes on Life, which are both memoirs about, I mean, in the first case, the making of Apocalypse Now and Hearts of Darkness,

the documentary draws on that. She reads excerpts from it, but are about a marriage or about being a creative, a woman and a person in marriage, but also a creative person and career and family. You know, it's really it's, it's really rich, interesting stuff written. I like, I think with a lot, with a lot of insight, um, and also like a, a lovely, like very spare style. I'm, I'm, I really recommend those books. So I was like, I kind of, I kind of know most of this already and the choice to write in what I would call a very close third person, which I think is trying to evoke this style and the grandeur of Francis Ford Coppola, who is like one of the great living characters. And I mean, I, you know, I've only seen video of him speak, but every piece you read about him, everything that you hear him say, even his Instagram account is just, it's like a hoot. He is, he's a force.

He draws you in. He is a rat hunter in like the greatest sense. So that, so it's like trying to communicate that, but not in his voice. I thought that was a pretty difficult task to set up for yourself well so i think that one of the things that i think the reason this book exists and i don't know if it would have made sense for to exist without this is that wasson had incredible access to coppola's archives yeah so that includes all kinds of communications from the production company and studio that he oversaw for many years american American Zoetrope. That includes communiques to family members, to colleagues, to studio executives over the years.

That includes personal diary entries. And that also includes access to and interviews with many, many, many people, reportedly hundreds of people, or reportedly hundreds of interviews with people who are close to Coppola across roughly his childhood through the present day, but for the most part focusing on, I would say 1968 through 1982 is kind of like the primary time of coverage. So in those years, it's really just the most remarkable film career, including Steven Spielberg, including George Lucas, including Martin Scorsese, what Francis Ford Coppola accomplished and the rise and fall arc of his career across those years and what he aspired to and what he was able to pull off. There's no blueprint for it. No one's really ever done it quite in the same way that he did. You kind of wouldn't believe it if someone

tried to do it now. Yeah. He seems like a madman all the time when you hear about the things that he did. And so because he had access to all of these people, all of these, you know, these telexes and these letters and all of this material, the author is attempting to do,

is doing what you're describing, which is almost trying to narrate without subjectivity. It's like there is an all-knowingness, but the all-knowingness is emanating from the same all-knowingness, but the all-knowingness is emanating from the same all-knowingness

that Francis Ford Coppola communicates with. You know, that he is such a, he's so self-aware that when he gives great speeches, he says, some people would say that what

I'm saying is pretentious, and maybe it is, but here's why it's not. Like, that's the kind of thing that he would be willing to say. And the movie has,

excuse me, the book has the same tone. A little bit of an alienating tone. Yeah. Over it is so if you combine that tone with the apocalypse now coverage i didn't really love that part of it um i would say that almost everything else in the book i thought was fascinating totally and i do also understand why, you know, practically the Apocalypse Now section, which includes flashbacks to his childhood, to making of both Godfathers and the conversation and kind of like all the high jinks up until Apocalypse Now, which includes just like a tremendous amount of like real estate. I mean, it's just absolutely dizzying the number of places that are owned and sold and where everyone's living, especially if you live in Los Angeles and you're like, wow, that seems really nice. The 60s were way different and 70s. But so there's the Apocalypse Now section and then there is the One from the Heart section. And more time is spent in apocalypse now but i understand why because one

is the big gamble and the descent into insanity that paid off and then that fuels the next big gamble that just that does not pay off whatever you think of you know one from the heart artistically or the and we'll you'll talk about the re-release because you got to go see it but i mean the his production company uh was sold and the movie bombed so yeah i think for the listeners at home if you whether you read the book or not it's probably important to put some context around american zoetrope and what it was that coppola attempted which was and we've seen artists do this over the years. In fact, United Artists, the movie studio, was founded on this premise that studios should be run by the creatives and they should be artist-led. They should be led by filmmakers. In the 1970s, American filmmakers,

more than ever, were granted a kind of power to take bold chances. That led to my favorite period in movie history. But in the process of doing that, Coppola, who was a musician's son from Long Island, middle-class family, a guy whose dad never quite was able to accomplish what he wanted to, and that colors a lot of his point of view, has big, big, big dreams and big ambitions in that classical, I will improve upon my father's legacy kind of way. And one of his big ambitions was to start a studio that would operate outside of the Hollywood system, be managed and operated by filmmakers, and particularly by him.

But he has this, because when he went to Hofstra and then later UCLA, where he studied film, has this powder familias style. He's a big guy, big voice, that great rockateur, like you said. People would follow him. So the George Lucases, the John Miliuses of the world, he befriended Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and all the people who became his peers.

He always kind of felt like the older uncle in that crew. And his dream was to make movies with this cohort, with this generation of people at his studio, which would be located outside of the walls of Hollywood and wouldn't operate the same way financially and would just create artistic brilliance. But over time, as he has more success and failure and success and failure, as is the arc of his life, it becomes increasingly about him and about what he's doing. And so the book paints this very complicated portrait of a wild

egomaniac and also an empathy machine and there's like two personas that are at war with each other and they're probably best represented by these those two movies that you just talked about or apocalypse now is the movie that seems like it's the movie made by the egomaniac evil madman, but then was an incredible success and paves the way for a portraiture of love in a complicated time made with a group of people who are desperately trying to hold this company together and that it fails miserably.

And I feel like there's a bitter lesson about what people want from the world and what they're willing to accept. And his ambitions obviously are often beyond his grasp, but it's so cool to watch the details of someone trying. And to me, I wish the book was more of, and does ultimately become about in the second half, what American Zoetetrope was as opposed to the makings of the movie. I love books about the makings of a movie, but I have watched so much about the making of Apocalypse Now in my life. I will say in the defense of it does a lot on American Zoetrope and it does a lot on like the 18 other iterations of a studio or a production company or something that he tried to start before there there are a lot of sections um of francis's just like big idea you know

including like electronic cinema which i i've read a lot about and you're still gonna have to kind of explain to me what that vision really was because he is he's thinking so boundlessly i know i don't i still don't understand yeah no i i i don't either and a really interesting thing about the book and really anytime you're interacting with coppola's work is like just the nature of artistic genius and the nature of creativity and it can seem just really, really out there and unmanaged until the plane lands. And sometimes the plane lands and sometimes the plane doesn't. But I just did read a lot of business plans, you know, and he had many. He had many technological plans.

He had many sorts of things that I don't, my eyes started to glaze over anyway. So I don't know whether I would have wanted to go any further. Well, I think when I say American, I'm more interested in American Zoetrope. Yeah. I think what I'm interested in is what the book is ultimately not that interested in, which is the movies that were ultimately made at that studio. Yeah. And there were a handful of really interesting movies. And there were a lot of movies that were ultimately made at that studio. Yeah. And there were a handful of really interesting movies.

And there were a lot of movies that were made, and we can talk about them because they're all kind of, if not just incidental, critical to the story of this book. But when it was a production company, it produced The Rain People, which is this important transitional movie for Coppola, starring Shirley Knight. And then THX 1138, George Lucas' debut feature.

And then, of course, The Godfather and American Graffiti and The Conversation and The Godfather 2. And then they started distributing international cinema, sort of like a page taken out of one of his mentor,

Roger Corman's strategies, who famously licensed world classics and found a way to sell them to audiences in interesting ways. But by the time you get to the mid to late 70s, he starts to get interested in platforming Carol Ballard, you know, who made The Black Stallion.

He gets interested in working with Kurosawa. He gets interested in working with Jean-Luc Godard. Like these people start coming to him after the guy who made The Godfather, Godfather 2, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now. It's like, I'm a mogul now. And then he greenlights movies by Fim Vendors. He greenlights a movie by Caleb Deschanel, who's best known as a cinematographer,

but the lone movie he directed, The Escape Artist. And these movies are all like, they're kind of like the A24 neon movies of their time. Right, right, right. They're the cool indie movies. Some of them are good. Some of them are not so good. Some of them are forgotten their time. Right, right, right. They're the cool indie movies. Some of them are good. Some of them are not so good. Some of them are forgotten to time.

But like I wanted pages and pages about that and what the movie industry was at that time. And the book is not interested in that. And so I can't criticize the book

for not being what I want it to be. But I think I expected it to be something a little bit different. And there are even like glimmers of it even, you know, because they would throw

huge parties on the studio lot every Friday night, even though they owed millions of dollars to like eight different conglomerates. And as you said, everyone like wanted to be there and wanted to hang out with him, you know, like Goddard and like Gene Kelly, who is an advisor on like One From the Heart. Like they're just like wandering around all the time and you get little glimpses of what a magical place it seems like, even though it also seemed like just absolute. It's just not how I make decisions. It's financial chaos. It is financial and also like efficiency. There is no efficiency chaos.

I'm glad you brought this up because I want to talk about this. I think you and I probably do not relate to Francisis for coppola at all no um obviously we don't have his talent that goes without saying i i do have a copy of the telex that he sends um asking for supplies to the philippines and i really demand a coded okay please read it okay so one case of ruin our champagne one case of witch hazel one case of osium parentheses a bug repellent one case of specific cigarette papers i mean i can go this is like four pages long and this is the kind of primary sourcing i want you know like which canned tomatoes and which champagne do you need shipped to you um because you can't get them in the philippines so that i relate to

there are times when he seems like a demanding tyrant and there are times that's called having taste sure um and then there are other times where he seems like uh a very sweet shipboat captain you know where everyone's sort of working towards what the captain really wants to get us to safe harbor whether it be through the production of a film or the execution of a large company yeah one copy of Hemingway short stories in our time or any of the quote Nick stories, complete set of all Bob Dylan records, Jackson Brown, Grateful Dead. Tom Sternberg might be able to get all of those for you for free by calling those people really good copy of paperback Shogun. Like what a legend. These are all just things that he wanted whilst

making apocalypse now in the Philippines. Yeah. I mean, this is the upside of having access to Shogun. Like, what a legend. These are all just things that he wanted whilst making Apocalypse Now in the Philippines. Yeah. I mean, this is the upside of having access to all of those documents is that we know the true details of why he needed every Bob Dylan recording, which frankly, shout out to Francis Ford Coppola for having tremendous taste. The book itself has a very unusual structure in that it kind of pings around chronologically. And I would say sometimes it's very successful and sometimes it's not. The ways in which it is successful is that you do get this long and deep exploration of the production of One from the Heart and the failure of American Zoetrope as a company. All of that was fascinating to me, especially just having seen One from the Heart reprise.

Reprise, reprise. That's like the new cut of the film, which has just been reissued in theaters around the country. It's not so successful when we get like two-thirds of one chapter on the making of The Godfather, which is also a story that I don't need an entire book on based on how much I've consumed around it. But to just tease out, like, Watson is really good at understanding the thematic correlations of how Coppola is choosing to tell stories at a certain stage of his life. And during The Godfather, the reason that movie is unlocked is because he sees this potboiler that is a very clear metaphor for America, but also a very clear metaphor for what he's going through as a family man at this point in his time.

Those characters are so rich because he's Michael and his older brother, who we learn about in the book, is Sonny. And so when you get that kind of psychological clarity about a person or, you know, assumed clarity, because I don't know, Francis Ford Coppola officially co-signed every word that Wasson wrote here. But he seems to have a real insight into the psychology. And then to just jump back to something, you know, again, like more than a third of the book is about apocalypse now. Fair to say? Yeah. So

sometimes it's helpful to go to the childhood but not spend too much time in the childhood, but as soon as you get away from it, you're going back to something, or at least I felt like I was going back to something that is well-covered ground. And I don't know that I necessarily have a note about how I would have adjudicated this, but it didn't feel totally right to me. No, I agree. And some of that is just when you're reading a book about a filmmaker who you really admire and whose films you really admire, like, yeah, you want some more stuff on The Godfather,

you know? Like, Rumblefish, I think it's like one paragraph yes it's like not even talked about as a movie it's just kind of which i understand why you know you have to make decisions as a as a writer but it basically elides 1984 all the way till 2023 yeah there's nothing, and that's okay. It's okay because I think this is very purposefully a, you know, a time capsule of that era. But, if you wanted to hear

the way that he like took paycheck jobs in the 80s to then rebuild and then help build up his winery over time and why he was directing Jack with Robin Williams

in 1996, like none of that is here. That's not what the book is about. It's not interested in that. It's only interested in the madman building his empire

and that of course has come back because the book is being released and it clearly was approved by the coppola estate because of megalopolis this movie that is in theory coming out later this year starring adam driver that reportedly francis ford coppola has put 100 million dollars of his own money into and the book kind of ends on this cliffhanger of sorts about the production of this movie. But yeah, I think I would have liked an entire chapter about the making of The Conversation.

And that's not here. Godfather II, possibly the greatest American film ever made. Not a lot of time spent on that one in this book. And I do also, I'm sorry to say this on a film nerd podcast, but like Coppola the man, this book is interested in certain aspects of Coppola the man, but I am certainly interested in Coppola the person and that person talking and, and his grandeur and his, you know, flights of fancy and wild associations. I mean, every profile of him, including one that my husband, Zach Barron, wrote.

That was 2021, I think. Yeah. Was it that long ago? Yeah, it was. It was because it was right before my son was born. And Francis was like, please let me know when he's here because I really like babies,

which is just an incredible thing to tell a stranger. That is in the book. It is in the book. And I was very excited to see that. He loves kids. He talks about that a lot. The other thing that he told my husband was that he was just gonna like roll down to the local napa um like movie theater and introduce steven spielberg's west side story like no one asked

him to do that he was just gonna show up on friday night and be like let me tell you about my friend steven which is awesome you know that is that's just legendary one of one stuff and you do want a sense of that person like that is part of the myth too right and that's infused into the movies and it's certainly infused into that's part of the reason that so many people stick around at zoetrope studios even when they're like literally not being paid i thought that you know that entire segment about everyone who's just like sure we'll stick around through financial ruin because we like working here was a testament to the power of his person like a cult of personality so you want a little bit of a sense of that i think that one thing that is clearly communicated is that he was very good. He's always been very good

since college at getting people to believe in his vision and to getting on board. And for a couple of like burned out cynics like us, that's a skill. To get people

who are in workaday jobs to follow you to the ends of the earth to make one from the heart, which is a perfectly fine movie, is remarkable. And that is communicated really well over and over again in the book. There are times where, again, I felt like Lawson is incredibly good at clarifying the unique psychological tension between Francis and his father Carmine who's you know an aspirant composer and their uneasy relationship and and Francis's kind of adulation for his older brother

but also realizing that he is very much kind of the runt relative to his older brother who's this aspirational figure and we get that you know roughly a third into the book it starts to go back to his childhood and then it kind of goes and we get like call you know, roughly a third into the book. It starts to go back to his childhood. And then it kind of goes. And we get like callbacks to it time and again. And of course, like Carmine plays a really significant role in The Godfather, co-composing with Nina Rota. And he later composes a new score for a screening of Abel Gantz's Napoleon in 1980, I think, which becomes like a big movie event of the year, according to Vincent Canby. But I would have liked to have known what were the conversations like between Carmine and Francis in 1980.

I don't really have a feel for that. You know what I mean? So it is very, it picks and chooses where to dive deep and where not to dive deep. And so it is still, it's a refracted portrait. It's not the definitive account. I'm not,

I'm not sure. How do you feel about that kind of like a biography versus this approach? It, it is upfront about that as well. And I think even like the subtitle is, uh, Francis Ford Coppola story because it is such a life and, you know,

so many rises and falls and you have to, I mean, you have to make choices when you're doing anything. Well, but if you're Sam Watson, your last book was 600 pages. Yeah. Why not the 750-page doorstop definitive biography of Francis Ford Coppola? He doesn't want to do it? Because you couldn't get it done by the time Megalopolis was going to come out? Hmm. No offense.

I mean, like, and that's fine. It's possible. You know, it's important to... That's banking hard on the... Hit your deadlines. The meaningfulness of Megalopolis. Well, the book does. I mean, it really sets up that third section, which is very short, but it's like, you know, 40 years ago, he started writing Megalopolis. Yeah. yeah. Which is like, again, I haven't seen or read the Megalopolis, but it's like the text of Megalopolis and also the text of how he's financing it. And he's building a whole new thing in Peachtree City, Georgia. Yeah, so Coppola's big concept, and American Zoetrope is defined by this, is effectively community oriented that what he does is he looks at the building of social structures

societies cities as pathways to a more convenient efficient and meaningful life for people and that can mean a lot of different things it can mean the proliferation of the family it can mean a robust arts experience it can mean you know commerce and and making money and being employed it can mean a lot of different things for his, it's about making movies, but he's always very community-oriented. Megalopolis, you know, of course, is a megacity. And the idea of that movie is the megacity. And One from the Heart, in its way,

with its crafted soundstage approach to one of the most iconic cities in the world, Las Vegas, is about this kind of recreation outside of the experience of a normal city of a normal movie going experience and so that movie is such an there there are a lot of movies that are like this but not not so many with the same level of mythology where the conception and the idea and the person talking about the making of it is inherently more interesting than the movie itself. And the movie itself is almost a rebuke to its ideas.

Yeah. Because of how stripped down it is. And it's just a simple love story about a man and a woman. Who don't seem to have a lot of chemistry. Who are like in love or at least together. And then they decide to break apart and they're away from each other for a little while. Then they come back together. that's basically the whole story it's a sort of jukebox musical entirely soundtracked by songs written by tom waits it stars frederick forrest and terry gar

and it takes place in this sound staged las vegas environment it is created sort of electronically as you suggested i don't totally understand some of the filmmaking methodology that he was applying, though it is described in detail in the book. But it comes on the heels of that mega bet that he makes on himself to make Apocalypse Now, which pays off because, you know, effectively the rough cut of the movie plays canon, wins the Palme d'Or,

and then goes on to be a mega financial success in one of the most remembered American movies. And then One from the Heart comes out a couple of years later and flops as hard as a movie can flop after he's poured over $20 million into a movie that when you see it you will have a hard time locating $20 million.

So I saw the reissue of it which carves about 15 minutes out of the original and it is significantly more light on its feet, so to speak. Some really good performances. Raul Julia is magnificent in this movie. Um,

Terry Gar, an even better like screen presence, dancer, um, romantic figure than I had remembered. Uh, it's, it's a,

it is like to your, to use your phrase. It is a flight of fancy of a movie. It's not an event. It's a pretty small movie. An intimate movie. Sincere. Almost achingly sincere.

But for his dream to have kind of died on this movie's hill is the weirdest, bitterest possible ending. And I guess he's haunted by it. I don't really know. what do you think when you get to the end of the production of this movie which we hear about in great detail in the book i still don't totally know how he feels about it i don't i don't either and i think the missing piece from it which like and i and i don't blame wasson for this because it comes in bits and pieces. But One from the Heart is also very clearly inspired by or is Coppola trying to get his arms around some aspect of his marriage as well. And it's made during one of like what seemed to be and what Eleanor Coppola says as well with like many fraught times in their marriage and the book does kind of get at that um and it uses I guess you know I don't think that Coppola was particularly faithful nor was that a secret and so it makes reference to

that but it's never like the main text and Eleanor Coppola's books also talk about that, about the difficulties in their marriage. So it's not like it's avoided, but marriage that they're still in amazingly. However, many years later, you know, people come to all sorts of, whatever's between two people is between two people. But I don't know if you can get them to, you as a third party can get them to face it and be able to articulate it. And if the movie's so tied up in that

on top of everything else, it's like a, you know, I don't know whether anyone's ever going to get there. Well, the book is simultaneously very direct and circumspect about the nature of the infidelityism, what happens between Eleanor and Francis. And you can understand why because of what you just said. People are not going to want to go on the record and talk about how they worked through the challenges of their marriage. But when you have an artist who is so clearly working through, you know, Wasson talks about how when Francis was a kid, he was like a bit of a technological problem solver. You know, very much like his friend Brian De Palma, kind of a gadget kid, understood how things worked. And you can see the conversation and its concepts of surveillance and kind of the tools we use to track each other you can see himself in that story

you know godfather 2 where you're kind of becoming the great leader and what does the dark side look like and who do you betray in the face of that after you've had this extraordinary success you can feel francis in the movie one from the heart is a movie where like it's very clear that someone was unfaithful in the relationship and then the other person can't forgive him until they do yeah and then they get back together spoiler alert for one from the heart which is 41 years old at this point um and so it's a tricky thing like it's a tricky thing. Like it's a tricky thing to write. So mythologically and esoterically while also including telexes about how many crates of champagne should be delivered to the Philippines.

You know, they're, they're in contrast with each other to have such amazing detail, but then for him to just very quickly say, and on the set of apocalypse now, Francis Ford Coppola had an affair with a playboy bunny. And that's the last we ever hear of that ever again. And you know why? Because he has respect for the artist, respect for the man, doesn't want to exploit that memory, doesn't want to hurt Eleanor Coppola. But if you're going to say it, then your mind starts racing and you're like, I want to know

more about this. And the elision of those things is really complex. So it's a weirdly, incredibly satisfying and deeply unsatisfying book at the exact same time which is actually how a lot of francis for coppola i was gonna say it's like at the end it it does deliver on the experience somewhat like it of just there's so much here but i don't know if we like totally wrapped our arms around it, but it's what we got was invigorating and fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you.

Was there something you wanted more of? Something you wanted to hear more about? Well, I always want more Sophia. Some cute cameos. Yeah, that's okay. It's mostly about how she got to stay up late, like run back and forth between stuff. And obviously, like, she has her own career that reflects everything that went on

in this book and everything that goes on in her mother's books. And... She has an archive of her own now. Exactly. Yeah,

and she has an archive of her own. So, you know... Is that the book for you? What do you mean? Would you write The Path to Paradise 2,

Sophia's story? Sure. You would? But, it would be, I would have to do so much filling in because she is such the opposite of Francis where he, I mean, you know, it's like that thing they say about the younger children that don't have to like learn to talk until much later because the older siblings just did all the talking. Like her father has done all the talking for her entire life. So she does other things. Interesting. Would you like

to meet that challenge of trying to interpret her silence? Again, I don't like to meet anybody that I admire. You've met her. Yeah, over Zoom and it was like

very stressful. She's very nice. No, I mean, she's really nice. She's great. I just would feel self-conscious and like wouldn't

feel cool enough it's weird that in these environments that are portrayed in the book that she's not insane yeah because these are

very stressful environments that their family has been exposed to and everybody raises their family differently I don't really know the right way to do anything

but I would say the making of Apocalypse Now seems unhealthy in a variety of ways. Right. Sure. Yeah. So she's come out great. I think she learned to adapt. She went to a lot of different places. You know, she talks about how they, you know, were like a circus. They went everywhere because he didn't want to be away from his family. So I don't know. You get put in a lot of different situations. You learn how to talk to people. Do you feel that at this stage that we no longer need to mythologize these 70s filmmakers anymore? I mean, who are we going to mythologize instead?

John McTiernan. I think he mythologized himself right into federal penitentiary. That's true. That's true. That's true. Also, Coppola's still going. Like, that's what's amazing, you know? He took a long break, but yeah. Well, but I mean, I think, like, the megalopolis of it all, I mean, it could be completely mystifying. But there is just something about taking this big swing and extending

his own mythology that is exciting. Where does he sit for you among those guys who are featured so prominently in this book? So just within this book? Yeah, I guess among his generation, his cohort. Not like of all time.

I mean, you have to respect the game, you know? respect the game you know like the godfather godfather to the conversation something i'm forgetting an apocalypse now that's the 70s that's those are the movies in the 70s i mean i mean he wrote patent which came out right of course right and won the oscar that's that. Yes. Like, who will ever... And so, you know, I feel like I'm about to be Bill making up some sort of rubric or something.

But nobody's had a run like that in that way. That's amazing. I agree. What is your favorite post-apocalypse-now Francis Ford Coppola movie? Probably Rumblefish.

You're not an outsider's person. Well, I mean, I guess I am, but... Rumblefish is the more stylized of the SC Hinton adaptations. Black and white, a lot of Dutch angles, a lot of shadow and light. Yeah.

I don't know. I think I saw it at a time when slightly more pretension appealed to me, you know? You can always tell something interesting about a filmmaker when you look at the distributors of their various movies. And he's worked with them all.

What if I said The Rainmaker is my favorite? Some people might say that. I haven't seen The Rainmaker in some time. I will tell you I acquired a Japanese import of the Blu-ray because it was the only way I could get my hands on a Blu-ray. Oh, wow. Okay. I haven't revisited it. Is it available on DVD? It is, yes. Okay, but you needed a Blu-ray. I like Blu-ray because it was the only way i could get my hands on a blu-ray oh wow okay i haven't revisited is it available on dvd it is yes okay but you needed a blu-ray

i like blu-ray yeah it's a much better format so but will you have like regional format issues no i have a region free player oh i can play how much more does that cost 20 bucks what so why is everyone getting the region only one wonderful question. Don't have the answer. People get really mad about that. I know. I know. I used to before I realized how easy it was to acquire a region-free player. Okay.

But I've got one. All right. It takes five minutes of Googling to figure out how to get one. Not very hard. Okay. You can't just go on Amazon? Well, they can be acquired there, yeah. You got to figure out, make sure you're getting the right one, though.

Okay. What's your favorite post-apocalypse now Coppola movie? I don't know. I have a similar place in my heart for The Outsiders that you have for Rumblefish, meaning I saw it at a young age. It obviously introduced us to a lot of young actors who I really love quite a bit. I've got a little a little corner in my heart for Gardens of Stone

which is like his least seen movie yeah stars my guy James Caan in a very very interesting and complicated performance very quiet very slow movie

kind of the anti-Coppola in a lot of ways but clearly a very personal one for him I mean Dracula still rips pretty hard you know that's like a paycheck movie

that he absolutely crushed and was a huge hit. And... I think that's how Sophia meets Keanu Reeves. Yeah, sure. Makes sense. And then they dated. So that's cool.

Okay, that's your lasting memory. I don't know. The 90s are important. I'm also team Godfather 3 is kind of good. Yeah. I was listening to that re-Wash recently and it's like nobody's wrong about sofia's performance but the the venom you know cr's venom it's like it was his decision to put her in it you know like we need to blame him as much as we blame Sophia. I don't disagree. Yeah, that's all.

Imagine that movie though with Winona Ryder. Yeah. It's a significantly better film. It is. I'll tell you what. Most of the movies are good. I think the Tetro Twixt era is interesting. I think those movies are worth seeing. Seems like they'll be more influential on the look and style of Megalopolis than say Gardens of Stone or Godfather

3. But it's been pretty checkered. That's why when you say the 70s is so remarkable and then you look at the 80s and the 90s, which has movies that people like. People certainly like Peggy Sue Got Married. I think that's a real sentimental favorite for people. We're gonna do

a Hall of Fame when Megalopolis comes around. It's kind of weird because like, can you get to 10? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Yeah. You could.

Kind of right on the line there. Yeah, you could. It's not like doing Scorsese where you're like, what the fuck am I going to do? Yeah. Which is interesting because he's, you know,

obviously George Lucas has even fewer than that. But what he contributed, you could argue, is more seismic. How do you feel that George Lucas comes out in this book? The same way he does in every book. Yeah, it's true. That he is a geeky, reserved, but very principled person who feels that he's right about a lot of things, but also is willing to be the kind of like maitre d to his heroes all the way up

until the moment when he was not yeah and then as soon as he doesn't have to be that anymore he's not he's on his own yeah um but i you know i love that thing about you know i'll direct apocalypse now and if i die george lucas will take over and if george lucas dies john millius will take over you know i love that coppola can never not see Lucas in that way, even though Lucas is just about to release Star Wars. Which will literally change movies forever. And he has that, you know, paternalistic approach to his friends, which is good and bad. And I wonder against whom it chafes, you know, because you've got to imagine that some of these guys are like, all right, Francis, you haven't made a good movie in 25 years. Yeah.

Settle down. No one checked with Steven Spielberg to see if Francis wanted him to introduce West Side Story at the local Napa Theater. No. But it's nice that he's supporting Steven. I like that they could do that for each other. Is there a filmmaker that you would want to see this kind of book about? I mean, the first person who jumped into my head, and this is, I mean, the import is not the same, but I'm just really waiting for Nancy Meyers to write a book. Yes.

I feel like she will, right? I don't know. I don't know what she's doing. Okay. big studio era, which she was a major part of from Private Benjamin on, and her marriage, and working with her husband and then ex-husband. And, you know,

that one is important to me. I'm trying to think of, you know, respected old-timer people because I feel like everyone's going to be like, oh, of course she said Nancy Meyers. Yeah, but I understand why you said it. I don't think it's a bad... I mean, I'm course she said Nancy Meyers. Yeah, but I understand why you said it. I don't think it's a bad... I mean, she's...

I'm sure she's got great stories. Yeah. She's also a writer. So I'd like that. I think I would like a first person. Like a memoir or a... Yeah.

I know that they're unreliable. Yeah, they just... They withhold way too much. Way too much. Yeah, but just, they withhold way too much. Way too much. Yeah, but they also give on the other side, you know? Yeah.

You need to have lived an interesting life. Like, you don't have to be a good person either. Like, John Landis has had a very controversial career. Right.

He's also been at the helm of some of the most memorable movies of the 70s and 80s. And, like, the Sam Watson approach to the john landis story would be really interesting obviously it wouldn't be as met as kind of iconograph iconographically as coppola is right but it's interesting i don't know i mean obviously like i do i want this kind

of thing for the qts of the world sure yeah and the soda birds and the yeah of course but i also feel like i've been reading them in real time very closely for the last 30 years. This is one where I was like, I wasn't there when one from the heart flopped. So it's fun. Yeah. To understand everything that went into it. I wasn't there when they sent telexes. Do you wish you were?

Do you wish you lived in a different time? I mean, I kind of feel like we did for the first 20 years of our life because we didn't have cell phones and the internet. Do you think we are the last great generation for that reason? Yeah, I kind of feel like we did for the first 20 years of our life because we didn't have cell phones and the internet. Do you think we are the last great generation for that reason? Yeah, I do. You do? Mm-hmm.

Because we were not born with the internet. It's over for everyone after us. I don't believe that. I believe in the future. That's really beautiful. Yeah. I believe in my young child. Yeah. And your young child.

Thanks. And everything that they'll make. Do you think they have a bit of the madman philosopher in them? Maybe together they do. Knox has the madman and Alice has the philosopher. So that's good for one of them. I'd love to see their film. Any closing thoughts on Francis Ford Coppola?

I'm excited for Megalopolis. Of course, I am too. I'm excited for the people of Peachtree City. I don't understand. So he's taking over the city? No, but it's just like a suburb of Atlanta. Like an exurb, I guess. And it used to be its claim to fame was that you just drove everywhere in golf carts.

It was like one of those cities. Yeah. That's like the retirement community in Florida. And then I don't know, he took over some hotel and is purportedly building like his own production facility with like everything you need for post and places for everyone to stay and sort of like a whole, because there's a lot of production in and around atlanta now because of the georgia tax credit so he's like bill it's like his field of dreams but in atlanta for filmmaking would you recommend path to paradise to movie fans yes if you're a coppola fan yes absolutely yeah i would too it's very interesting it's my own personal perspective that I think has shaped a little bit

of some apprehension around certain aspects of the story but it's really well done and it does capture a couple of moments in movie history that have never been

seen quite through this prism so it's worth checking out well thanks to Adam Naiman thanks to you Amanda thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Next week, we'll be back.

We're going to break down the SAG Awards, the Producers Guild Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards. Oh, and we're going to do Oscars. We'll do one last Best Picture Power Rankings. Remember what I told you right before DriveAway Dolls started? What did you tell me? About the dream I had that Coleman Domingo won the Oscar. Yes.

That was so weird. It's a real dream I had. So... We haven't even been doing Oscar episodes. I know, but it's just it's on my mind. It lives inside you.

Yeah. So that's what people have to look forward to on our next episode. Do you think that's going to happen? No. But what if it does

what if i'm madame webb okay now we're talking we'll see you next week you