Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola

2. Going Hollywood: You're a Big Boy Now and Finian's Rainbow

2 Going Hollywood You're a BigBoy Now and Finian's Rainbow Hollywood is a surreal place. The first time I saw a crane planting a full-grown tree in a garden, I realized that Hollywood is not organic; nothing grows or develops naturally there. —John Schlesinger The making of a motion picture is an endless contention of tawdry egos, almost none of them capable of anything more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion. —Raymond Chandler The collapse in the 1960s of Hollywood as the center of mass entertainment in America was precipitated by the advent of television, which became America's principal source of entertainment for the mass audience. The big Hollywood studios became aware that they must make an effort to present audiences with fresh material, not just a rehash of old commercial formulas long since overfamiliar to moviegoers. Coppola had written a screenplay while he was still working for Seven Arts that was a fresh and inventive take on the usual "coming of age" movie, and he thought he could interest a studio in the property. The script was based on David Benedictus's novel You re a Big Boy Now, about a nineteenyear -old male working in a London shoe store. The book was brought to Going Hollywood 37 Coppola's attention by Tony Bill, a young actor who hoped to play the lead if Coppola made the movie. "But I also suggested Peter Kastner to him," Bill remembers, "because I had seen a little Canadian film he was in called Nobody Waved Goodbye (1965) about a troubled teenager. As it happened, Bill did not play the lead but, instead, the hero's buddy.1 Coppola had optioned Benedictus's novel for a thousand dollars and set about transplanting the story to New York City because he had always wanted to portray the life of a teenager living in New York, where he had grown up. Coppola had actually written his screen adaptation in his spare time in Paris while he was collaborating with Gore Vidal on the script for Is Paris Burning?—in order to "stay sane," as he quipped. When Seven Arts got wind of the fact that Coppola had composed the script while he was in their employ, they claimed, quite rightly, that they owned the rights to any material Coppola had written while on their payroll as a screenwriter. He shrewdly pointed out to the front office that he owned the rights to the novel from which the screenplay was derived and they owned the script: "Therefore, I own one half and you the other. So let's do it together."2 Vou're a Big Bay JVow C1967) At this time Seven Arts was merging with Warner Brothers, and Phil Feldman, business manager at Seven Arts for the past four years, had decided that the time was right for him to break with Seven Arts and become an independent producer. Feldman had faith in Coppola, and Coppola convinced him to produce You re a BigBoy Now. Theybegan the preproduction phase for the film before they had obtained financial backing for the project. "We were shelling out our own money," Coppola recalls, "using credit cards and what have you."3 Feldman finally negotiated a deal with Seven Arts that would resolve the dispute over the ownership of the screenplay: Ray Stark, Coppola's former boss at Seven Arts, would pay Coppola no fee for the script (which technically belonged to Seven Arts), but he would pay Coppola $8,000 for directing the movie on a twenty-nine-day shooting schedule. Stark, in return , got the newly formed Warner Brothers-Seven Arts to make the picture . "Why did I make Big Boy for just $8,000?" Coppola comments. "I would have done it for nothing."4 Coppola explains his strategy with Warners-Seven this way: "I don't ask anybody if I can make a movie." He simply informs a studio that he is ready to go into production, "and if they're wise, they'll get in on it." In the motion picture business very few executives can resist getting in on a project 38 Part One: Hollywood Immigrant that is already a going concern. So he and Feldman advised Warners-Seven that they were going ahead with the picture and that it was almost too late to get in on the ground floor. The moguls simply said, "Well...