-
2. Francis Ford Coppola
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Francis Coppola is an ardent advocate of new audiovisual forms and technology . While he directs such mainstream films as Peggy Sue Got Married [1986] and, more recently, Gardens of Stone [1987], Coppola nevertheless proceeds to invest time and money in promoting video and, ultimately, in an entirely new, largely electronic means of production for storytelling. And he makes no bones about it—if he could revolutionize the film industry and all current means of popular entertainment and mass communication, he would do it. Not only that, he sees such an opportunity as one that would thoroughly revamp society and the prevailing political structures, both of which he is eager to do. Yet, as grandiose as these aspirations are, Coppola is clearly not interested in power and influence for its own sake. As this interview shows, Coppola is nothing if not a humanitarian and an idealist. Coppola was able to realize his ambition of directing drama with video as the medium of record, as well as to direct specifically for television, after he met with Shelley Duvall, executive producer and the imaginative force behind the highly acclaimed Faerie Tale Theatre, produced for cable’s Showtime. The result was the twenty-sixth and, at least tentatively, final episode of the Faerie Tales, “Rip Van Winkle,” televised on March 23, 1987. This conversation was conducted in Coppola’s office just as the postproduction editing and sound were being completed for “Rip Van Winkle.” 쵧 C H A P T E R T W O 쵧 Francis Ford Coppola RIC GENTRY 33 34 FIGURE 2. Francis Ford Coppola shooting The Cotton Club (1984). Courtesy: Jerry Ohlinger Archives. [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:36 GMT) RIC GENTRY: In your work, are you more interested in the form and the technology than in the content? FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: I am. In particular, I’m interested in what kind of content the technology can produce. I’ve been trying to find a way to create new narrative patterns based on the times and the technology for a long time. It’s also very difficult for me to maintain an interest in the traditional stories of old that get recycled into things we see today. The climate of our times is very tired. It’s not that we have fewer ideas so much as something in the culture that doesn’t allow itself new approaches. Technology is delivering new values that have yet to be tapped. We’ve got all this new stuff and people aren’t looking at the obvious, which is that something totally new in terms of stories can come about. Instead, we use the advances in technology to reproduce and reiterate what we’ve already seen, what’s been done in terms of form for centuries . I think it’s time we catch up with the tools that have been invented. The truth is I am interested in a content that I cannot get at. I yearn to be able to move into a world where my ideas connect into a pattern that could be identified as a story. But I truly cannot get there. It’s equally difficult for me to recycle the old stories of the past as most movies do today. RG: So in a way you’re saying that advances in technology are synonymous with new ways of seeing and thinking, and therefore our traditional stories, structurally at least, are sort of culturally redundant and, in every way—sociologically, psychologically, artistically—unvitalizing. FFC: What I’m saying is that technology, if used in new ways, might break up the monopoly certain imagery, certain icons, have on our attention. I think we could see a less homogenized view of things, and we’ll have to if there’s going to be a shake-up in our current political thinking. There’s something in our politics as old, as dated, as those stories from ancient times that get endlessly recycled. With a new technology comes a tidal wave of new givens, new ideas, new beliefs, and most important, a new group of rulers. I hate to use such an archaic word for it but that’s what they are—rulers. Whether they are the high priests of the powerful and entrenched world religion, or the lords who control the land and the agriculture, the merchant seamen, conquistadors, the captains of the Industrial Revolution, they are our rulers. They and their ideas move out when progress moves them out by...