Godfather (41 page)

Coppola's point, writes Richard Corliss, is that “Hank and Frannie, prosaic souls in a neon paradise, may be seduced by their surroundings into a one-night stand with advertised ecstasy, but that real life must proceed in equal doses of pleasure and accommodation.”
²⁴
Hopefully, in harmony with Coppola's theme, they will regain the family-like sense of community they had lost. At any rate, the paper moon reappears in the night sky and the blue theater curtain swings across the scene to end the movie.

Some of the notices that followed the unveiling of the film at Radio City Music Hall echoed Jameson's judgment from the Seattle sneak preview: Coppola was more preoccupied with style than with substance in the picture. Consequently, the personal saga of Hank and Frannie was overwhelmed by the razzle-dazzle of the Vegas setting and the stunning cinematic
techniques already described. As a result, these critics believe that by film's end the filmgoer has been treated to such a visual display of impressive cinematic techniques that that is all they can remember. In essence, the picture seemed an elaborate frame surrounding an empty canvas. In other words, the lackluster script did not justify a production with a $27 million price tag. As Pauline Kael writes, “This movie isn't from the heart; it's from the lab. It's all tricked out with dissolves and scrim effects…. In interviews Coppola talked about directing the movie from inside a trailer while watching the set on video equipment. This movie feels like something directed from a trailer. It's cold and mechanized; it is a remove from the action.”
²⁵

The minority report was filed by critics who found the movie funny and tuneful and engaging. They paid court to the extraordinary achievements of Tavoularis's production design and Storaro's eye-filling lensing. Jerome Ozer cites Sheila Benson's rave review in the
Los Angeles Times
, which called the movie “a work of constant astonishment…. Its easy to love
One from the Heart
; you just let yourself relax and float away with it.” She did not even mind the “silhouette-thinness” of the characters. Musicals have been far more bereft of emotion than this one, she remarked, “and very few have dared this greatly.” A few critics saw the film as a pleasant, old-fashioned romance, set in a richly colored Las Vegas wrapped in neon, palm trees, and bungalow courts and punctuated with torchy barroom ballads on the sound track.
²⁶
Nevertheless, there were not enough positive reviews to save the picture.

Admittedly,
One from the Heart
is more noteworthy for its sophisticated cinematography and elegant sets than for its routine story line. But even an off-form Coppola film deserves to be seen, and it is a great pity that
One from the Heart
was out of circulation for twenty years. (I saw the film when it opened in Chicago in 1982 and later viewed a tape of the picture owned by a private collector of Coppola memorabilia, but the DVD release in 2004 came too late for me to see it again in preparation for this book.) After all, the cast performs credibly, and Waits's songs are amiable, even if they do not always illuminate story or character to any great degree. Seen today, now that the fuss and fury have long since died down, it is a charming comedy, poetic and funny; and that is all it ever was. The apotheosis of the film would come in July 2003, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would sponsor a screening of the film with Coppola present to lead a discussion. But that was far in the future.

At all events, the picture opened on February 11, 1982, on forty-one screens just in time for Valentine's Day, because Coppola thought of the picture as a musical Valentine. By April 1, it was still playing in only one
theater, the tiny Guild Theater next door to Radio City Music Hall, the site of its gala preview showing months before. The next day Columbia withdrew the picture from distribution with Coppola's consent. “I must admit that when
One from the Heart
was removed from release, I was very hurt. I thought I had done good work,” says Coppola. “With the benefit of hindsight, I realize that having unknown actors in a film that was so unusual was a handicap.”
²⁷
He also felt, in retrospect, that the movie was overshadowed in the minds of the public by press coverage of the money troubles that plagued the production, as he had feared it would be. During its release, the film earned a meager $1.2 million in gross box-office receipts. Coppola could see the handwriting on the wall and decided to sell the studio.

On April 20, 1982, Coppola announced that Zoetrope Studios (the actual property) was up for auction since he was committed to paying back the loans he had secured from Chase Manhattan Bank, Jack Singer, and others to renovate the studio and to make
One from the Heart
. Spiotta in due course resigned as president of Zoetrope Studios, and Coppola resumed full control of American Zoetrope. Negotiations for the sale of the studio to potential buyers dragged on for two years. It became obvious that Jack Singer was the only individual willing to make a serious bid for the property. Coppola's creditors threatened foreclosure on Zoetrope Studios, so on February 10, 1984, Coppola sold the studio to Singer for $12.3 million—a bid considerably below Coppola's asking price of $17 million, the appraised value of the property—in order to pay some of his debts.

Coppola returned his entire operation to the American Zoetrope offices in the Sentinel Building in San Francisco, which he continued to run as an independent production unit, producing films in partnership with major Hollywood studios. But he no longer owned his own studio. Not surprisingly, Singer changed the name of the studio in Hollywood to Singer Studios, and he rented its facilities to independent producers to make films there—but he produced no films of his own.

The other picture that hastened the demise of Zoetrope Studios was
Hammett
, a Zoetrope production directed by the respected German filmmaker Wim Wenders. It was originally slated to be Zoetrope Studio's first release, but, as things turned out, it was not released until after
One from the Heart
. The script was based on a novel set in 1928 in which Dashiell Hammett, the famed author of hardboiled detective fiction like
The Maltese Falcon
, solves a real-life mystery involving a missing Chinese prostitute.

Wenders collaborated on the script with a string of screenwriters, who complained that he insisted on departing substantially from the original story line. Finally Coppola ordered him to stop the multiple rewrites of the script and to commence principal photography. On February 4, 1980, Wenders began filming, with Frederic Forrest in the title role. But Wenders continued revising the script nonstop throughout the production period. Coppola ultimately decided that Wenders had reworked the screenplay to the point where it involved an impenetrable mystery that was not adequately solved at the end. Wenders had not been shooting the approved screenplay, Coppola explains, “and I could not dissuade Wim from this path…. So I stopped production” and postponed the remainder of filming indefinitely.
²⁸

During the hiatus Coppola had the screenplay totally overhauled by still another scriptwriter, who attempted to steer the story back to the original plotline and provide a coherent ending. The new script entailed the reshooting of eighty percent of the picture. Michael Powell, whom Coppola had appointed Senior Director in Residence, urged him to shelve the picture rather than throw good money after bad. Coppola summoned Wenders back to finish the shoot in the fall of 1981, after Coppola had himself completed the filming of
One from the Heart
. Wenders finished filming in a record twenty-three days. Coppola monitored the reshoot by regularly viewing the retakes done by Wenders and offering him suggestions. But Coppola did not reshoot any scenes himself, as Leonard Maltin mistakenly asserts.
²⁹

Recalling the troubled production period of
Hammett
, Gregory Solmon observes, “Just ask Wim Wenders, who worked for Coppola, the executive producer on
Hammett
, how little the latter values a director's artistic freedom—unless he happens to be the director.”
³⁰
This statement is severely unfair to Coppola when one considers that he had to scrap much of what Wenders originally shot because it departed significantly from the official script—at a considerable financial loss to Coppola. In the end
Hammett
wound up costing $10 million, considerably over schedule and over budget.

Hammett
, which was to be distributed by Warner Brothers, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on June 6, 1982, where it received a poor press. Many of the press corps complained that
Hammett'
s convoluted plot yielded only a murky solution to the mystery about the missing Chinese call girl. She turned out to be embroiled in a complex conspiracy to blackmail some corrupt city officials, which was never adequately explained. In sum, the film was dismissed as an undistinguished detective yarn, mere “private eye-wash.” Warners accordingly gave the film a token release and then shelved the picture.

Seeing the film on videocassette today, one notices an effective performance by Forrest as Dashiell Hammett. And the picture is further enhanced by Philip Lathrop's mood cinematography. With all its shortcomings,
Hammett
is a treat for mystery fans.

During the time that shooting on
Hammett
was suspended, Wenders returned to Europe and made
The State of Things
(1983), a movie about a hapless German director named Friedrich (clearly modeled on Wenders), who is making a picture for an eccentric American producer who is short of funds. Gordon, the producer, who is played by Allen Garfield (
The Conversation, One from the Heart
), seems to be based on Coppola. Adding credence to this theory that is widely held in film circles is the fact that, like Coppola, Garfield has a stocky build. In addition, there are parallels between the movie that Friedrich is making for Gordon and
Hammett
, the picture that Wenders was making for Coppola. When Friedrich's film goes over budget, Gordon shuts down the production. “I never thought Gordon had it in him to leave us stranded,” Friedrich moans.

Friedrich confronts Gordon about abandoning the production in the producer's mobile home, which obviously recalls Coppola's Airstream trailer, the Silverfish. While arguing with Friedrich, Gordon exclaims in exasperation, “I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be working with a German director!” He then explains that the investors would not put up more funds to keep the picture afloat because the script was too muddled—precisely Coppola's complaint about Wenders's much-rewritten screenplay for
Hammett
.

Wenders maintains that the producer in
The State of Things
“is really not Francis Coppola. I don't think you can find any traces of
Hammett
or Coppola in
The State of Things
.”
³¹
On the contrary, given the many references in
The State of Things
to Coppola's dealings with Wenders on
Hammett
, enumerated above, it seems slightly disingenuous for Wenders to maintain that he did not have Coppola in mind when he created the character of Gordon. After all, when Wenders made
The State of Things
Coppola had suspended filming on
Hammett
, and Wenders had no guarantee that it would ever be finished.

In any case, Zoetrope Studios collapsed into bankruptcy under the combined failures of
One from the Heart
and
Hammett
. Coppola's debt was estimated to be between $40 and $50 million. “That was a kamikaze attack,” he says. “I went down in flames by myself.”
³²
Still, he never regretted gambling on running his own studio. “Why was it so bad that I wanted a little studio to turn out films?” he mused.
³³
“If you don't bet,” he told me, “you don't have a chance to win. You can't be an artist and play it safe.”

History has a way of repeating itself in Hollywood. Coppola's experience with Zoetrope Studios recalls that of silent filmmaker D. W. Griffith (
The Birth of a Nation
), who opened his own studio at Mamaroneck, New York, in the early 1920s. As an independent producer, Griffith had to handle the overhead expenses of maintaining the Mamaroneck facility, which included meeting the weekly payroll. Unfortunately, Griffith was no more of a businessman than Coppola proved to be. He lacked the business acumen to budget a production in a way that would make possible a reasonable return on the financial investment that had been made in the picture. Similarly, Coppola lacked the know-how to manage a motion picture studio on a profit-making basis. When Griffith's movies did not make money, he inevitably lost his studio, just as Coppola did half-a-century later. In conversation with Griffith's second wife, Evelyn Griffith Kuze, it became clear to me that Griffith's decline was ultimately the result of his failure to reckon with the fact that the movie business was just that—a business. That was a lesson Coppola likewise had to learn. After Zoetrope Studios closed down, Coppola became what he termed “a cinematic hired gun,” steadily directing pictures to shore up his faltering bank account and pay his debts.
³⁴

In fact, by the time
One from the Heart
and
Hammett
had tanked, he was totally immersed in the production of
The Outsiders
, a movie about juvenile delinquents to be shot entirely on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I decided I would work continuously until I paid off my debt,” Coppola stated stoically. “I sure put in the hours.”
³⁵
The
Los Angeles Times
declared at the time that, despite all the guff Coppola had taken for the failure of Zoetrope Studios, “Francis Coppola is, without question, one of the giants of the American cinema.”
³⁶
Coppola's efforts to operate his own studio added to his image as a Hollywood maverick in the minds of younger filmmakers. They respected him for risking his own capital on
One from the Heart
. He was not reckless with other people's money. Moreover, if Coppola could produce a flop like
One from the Heart
, George Lucas, his contemporary, was just as capable of producing a turkey like
More American Graffiti
(1979). As a matter of fact,
The Outsiders
would prove a box-office bonanza for Coppola, which would put him on the road to financial recovery.