Can't Coppola come up with something original?

I honestly don't care if he comes up with something original--I just want him to make something watchable. That hasn't happened since Gardens of Stone back in the late 1980's.

Coppola's is an interesting career.

The two "Godfathers" are his greatest legacy (though the second one grossed half of the first.) Then there's "The Conversation," a tight little art thriller Coppola had been plotting for years and got to make on the strength of the Corelones.

Then, the second half of the seventies: "Apocalypse Now." A bid for greatness, with epic-mess results all over the map (I'll offer Brando's campy non-performance at the end as fatal to the whole enterprise; everything is heading towards HIM, and he's just not there.)

"The Godfather" took Coppola up; "Apocalypse Now" took him down -- whatever its critical support, it cost too much and took too long -- and since then, we've had the works of a man on the financial edge, sometimes for hire, sometimes trying to recapture his art-film early career.

I'm partial to the wacky "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and the perfectly workable Grisham legal thriller "The Rainmaker" (Mickey Rourke stole that thing as a sleazy lawyer with a heart of gold and a surprisingly Old School legal mind.) That's about it. "Jack"? Fugeddaboudit.

Of the pre-Godfather work, "The Rain People" (1969) has the reputation, but I'm rather partial to "Finian's Rainbow" (1968) a rather hip and sexy late 60's musical with a fine score and some nice attempts by Coppola to fuse New Wave with Hollywood Backlot. Fred Astaire could still dance, and Petula Clark could sure sing.

Coppola's IS an interesting career. It's also a vastly over-rated one.

As a young savant he directed Godfather 1 and 2. Then ego, money, booze, and Zootrope lead him to Ap. Now, his personal Heart Of Darkness. (Now THAT film - a documentary of the making of the film, and Coppola's personal unraveling ie, "it's out of my control - I don't have a movie here" is well worth seeing)

Aside from that, the list is an erratic, eclectic group of stinkers. Dracula? Rain People? "Jack" (OMG - even Robin Williams fans puked at that one) - and you didn't even mention the stinker of all stinkers, One From The Heart.

One From The Heart. A musical to turn an audience full of musical lovers into musical haters. One From The Heart - a muscial starring two unknown, untried, untalented actors who couldn't sing, and couldn't dance in a film made up of singing and dancing tableaus. One From The Heart Of Darkness.

One From The Heart tried for a resurrection a few years back, and was re-premiered in a restored "Driector's Cut" (ie, longer and even more boring) at The Castro theater in San Francisco - that wonderful art deco jewel of movie greatness and Gayness. The audience was full of appreciate middle aged queens who should have LOVED this movie and put the buzz back out on the street.

Unfortunately, the movie remained such a dreadful BORE of a mess, that the only buzz was the sound of people sleeping in the theater. Literally. One from the Heart has once again sank into the depths of its well-deserved celluloid oblivion.

As for this latest mess, I'm sorry but WTF?!?! Coppola is not, and has not sought to be a director of "art-films". His game is entertainment. Well written, well directed entertainment to be sure, but Hollywood none the less.

This latest, very sad, prolix mess is a disturbing finale to the career of Hollywood's greatest "might have been" in its history. Well, maybe after Orson Welles.

There was some article around 1972 about three hot new young directors in Hollywood, who would soon join their forces together in a production company called "The Directors Company":

Peter Bogdanovich (Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc)

William Friedkin (The French Connection, and soon: The Exorcist)

Francis Coppola (The Godfather)

The three men were both box office successes and rather instantly embraced (by a critical community anxious to annoit new auteurs practically every month) as "the future."

By 1980, all three of them were effectively "over."

Its hard to say why. Certainly all of them got hit with heady "superstardom" and had big trouble dealing with it. Its also possible that none of the three was quite the talent they seemed to be. Though in retrospect, Coppola seemed the one who "had the goods" and blew it.

Looking back, "The Godfather' demonstrated how well Francis Coppola functioned with a studio breathing down his neck every day, on his budget, on his schedule, on his casting (he won on that, but had to fight for what's right.)

"Godfather II" was well-reviewed and won Best Picture (over "Chinatown"?), but that film already evidenced what Coppola was going to be like with no constraints. It is more arty and less coherent than the first film. The regal Brando and the volcanic Caan are sorely missed. The DeNiro historical flashback was actually from the novel -- the most boring part of the novel. Coppola's "new" material oversold Michael Corleone as a Nixonian cold fish paranoiac -- we saw that in the first movie. "Godfather II" drew less than half the audience of the first film.

But with two Best Pictures in two years, Coppola could do no wrong, he was given all the money and time in the world to make his next movie, and the Apocalypse began....

Given his track record in the years after "Apocalypse," one has to wonder if Coppola's career was perhaps solely based on his being a "component part" of one of the greatest movies ever made: "The Godfather." It's Coppola's baby, but also Mario Puzo's, Brando/Pacino/Caan/Duvall's; Gordon Willis', etc.

Everything after that was indulgence, both good ("Godfather II," "The Conversation") and bad (pick. but let's not forget "The Cotton Club." Some nice shots and scenes, but ultimately, dullsville and nowhere near "The Godfather" in power.))

Sidebar: Coppola won a Best Screenplay Oscar for co-writing "Patton," (including the stitching together of actual Patton speeches into Scott's opening barnburner), so again: for hire and under control, Coppola had it going.

And then there's "John Grisham's The Rainmaker," which is notable for being so UNnotable: it looks like any competant journeyman director could have made it.

Sad thing is, Bogdanovich has done some good work since 1980, particularly his film version of Noises Off, which is pitch-perfect farce and full of wonderful performances.

Thanks for mentioning Finian's Rainbow, one of the few 60's SuperMusicals that isn't completely cringe-inducing. Mind you, Coppola hadn't the slightest idea how to shoot the musical numbers properly (full body, no inserted shots of feet, please), but he gave the film a nice, otherworldly atmosphere, and not only could Petula Clark sing, but she was a darn good actress on top of it (she had a film career back in England that most people in this country don't remember that stretches back to the 1940's--want to see her in another young man's early film? Check out Vice Versa sometime. Peter Ustinov was all of 25 when he wrote and directed it, and it's an absolute howl). And the support cast was full of such nicely-cured hams as Keenan Wynn, Dolph Sweet, and Tommy Steele, who played the leprechaun Og. The film wasn't a huge success, but I'm quite fond of it. As for The Rain People, the script is a mess, but Shirley Knight and James Caan were wonderful in it, although the ending is just awful.