Francis Ford Coppola
The Times Magazine, June 2009
Petula Clark was so good to me, so encouraging and supportive. Three years before The Godfather and as a rookie, I directed a musical for MGM, Finian's Rainbow, in which she starred alongside Fred Astaire. I've never forgotten her kindness and would love to see her again.
My father was a talented if egotistical man (a flautist) who unfortunately never had the success he yearned for. Much of our family life was coloured by his sense of disappointment and frustration.
Making a film based on your own history, like Tetro, can be an uncomfortable experience. But if anything, it's made me want to be less afraid in future and to risk more.
Like the character Bennie, I ran away from military school and had this older brother whom I idolised and wanted to be just like. Making the film helped me understand my own personal story better.
Family is where you learn what love it, hopefully. Family sets you up to engage with the world.
How come infants have no problem drawing beautiful pictures, whereas we adults struggle to do so? It's like they know something we don't, something we've forgotten or unlearnt.
I work like an amateur film-maker these days and it's been transformational, almost a new beginning. The closer the conditions in which you work are to those of a young person just starting out in their career, the fresher the results will be.
Starting out, I had the privilege of being Roger Corman's assistant. He was by training an engineer and applied that mindset to making films guerilla-style on a budget of pretty much nothing at all. There's a purity to working that way.
A script is like dough. Taste it while it's raw and you'll hate it. But after the yeast works and it rises and is baked, you hope to have good bread.
I've learnt to write in the mornings and not care if it seems good or bad. It's the hardest process of all for me. It's when I feel at my most exposed (Tetro is his first original screenplay in 35 years).
Much of what comes out of the big studios these days is like Coca-Cola. It's like they figure, 'The audience knows the taste, they like the taste, so of course they'll want more of the same.'
I've never had great acclaim or success in the present time. What I get is people telling me they love stuff I made 20 or 30 years ago. The Godfather films and Apocalypse Now all got better reactions years later than ever they did upon release.
People have said to me latterly, 'Do you think you've lost the thing that enabled you to make those movies?' My honest answer is no, I don't think so. But then, I never really though I had ''it' in the first place.
Making my early films, I felt stressed out and like I had no talent. That's why, to someone new in the game, the support offered by established people means such a lot.
In this job, you've got to be able to stick to your guns. Other people can't wait to tell you their opinon so you've got to be able to hang on to your own.
Young people teach you as much - if not more - as you teach them. I've a three-year-old granddaughter and I learn something every time I watch her.
I'm a grandfather. I've been married 48 years. You're matured by all the experiences, joyous and tragic, you accumulate over a lifetime. I have a better understanding of myself with every passing year.
If I could have given any advice to my younger self it would have been, 'Don't worry. Be happy. It'll all work out in the end.'
Copyright © 2020 Alan Jackson