[IMG:L]Always a legendary maverick by conventional Hollywood standards, Francis Ford Coppola is still doing things his way–and fortunately, being something of acknowledged cinematic genius, he’s still getting away with it. His latest film, Youth Without Youth is a puzzling, challenging, even occasionally maddening effort, but it’s also never anything less than visually arresting and features Tim Roth in one of the most compelling and adventurous performances delivered by any actor this year.
Coppola’s celebrated past includes a checkered history of economic ups and downs and creative triumphs and frustrations, and after he found himself suddenly financially flush and able to fund his own film (thanks in large part to his successful vineyard) but stymied trying to get his passion project Megalopolis off the ground.
Discovering Mircea Eliade’s unpredictable, genre-bending novel Youth Without Youth, Coppola was struck by the opportunity to make a film that defiantly but elegantly upturned conventional cinematic storytelling–and because he was making it on his own dime, he could experiment to his heart’s content.
A genuine art film that has the look of a Hollywood epic, Youth Without Youth is unlikely to make any critic’s best of or worst of lists–it’s far too singular an experience to be easily categorized at first glance. And that’s fine with Coppola, whose seen the passage of time fall favorably on his so-called failed films of the past, as “flops” like Apocalypse Now transformed into “masterpieces.”
“All I want from people who see my film is ‘Oh, it’s interesting and I enjoyed seeing it,’ or ‘I didn’t enjoy seeing it,'” says Coppola. “They’re both really important, but I like to make interesting, films because sooner or later, interesting films get their day in the sun.”
Hollywood.com: What attracted you to this very unconventional project?
Francis Ford Coppola: When I read Youth Without Youth I was like “Wow, what a story.” Every time you turn the page, something crazy happens. This guy, he’s an old man like me, he’s frustrated because he can’t do his big work, like me. Then all of a sudden things start happening but that doesn’t stop like “Oh, he gets to be young like Faust.” He gets to be more brilliant. He never could learn Chinese and now he can speak Chinese. He can read books just by looking at the cover. Then he turns into a double that debates him, almost like on moral issues. Then he gets to meet the girl he loved, and he thought she was. I said “What a crazy story. How fun to get to make a movie like this.” At the same time I could make an unusual story like this, and also I could examine some of these ideas. How do you express things related to consciousness and time on a film? It was like I was in love with this woman that didn’t want me, and then I met this cute girl from Romania who said “Run away with me!” So, I ran away with the girl from Romania–the project, of course–and didn’t tell anyone. I conspired making it and by then I was wealthier than I was used to being. I thought I will just finance it myself and I don’t have to show anyone the script, or get their opinion, or get a certain star.
[IMG:R]HW: Why did you choose Tim Roth to play the lead?
FFC: It’s a very hard film to make because it’s like a mystical, Oriental studies, action/adventure epic, so I needed to find a way to focus my resources and do it all–India, impossible stuff. So I decided to make it as a Eurotreaty production and that protected me from it being an American film. With the American films, the costs would have gone insane. I did consider some American actors. I was hoping I’d find a European actor. I felt Tim Roth was an actor who had done such good work so many times but had never had his day in the sun, the way Nicolas Cage, my nephew, was doing good work, good work, and then he did Leaving Las Vegas and suddenly people said “You know, he’s a really good actor.” I felt the same about Tim Roth and I wanted to choose someone who had the potential, who also would give me the time to do all the difficult things the role had, to learn all these languages and try to be old. He had to be 25 and 85.
HW: Why did you choose the Ozu style of still camera [NOTE: Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu was known for his trademark static shots]?
FFC: Well, the choice of a style for a movie, and you think of my movies, they’ve been very different. Godfather was very classical. Apocalypse Now had this very extravagant [look]. The styles are sort of like the stories. In this case, since I knew that it had demanding thoughts, I wanted to be very clear about the chronology. If you notice in the movie, it doesn’t hop around. It’s always going slowly forward and you know you’re in 1939, 1940, 1944, 1947. The only time it goes back is when he remembers his lost love. So I wanted the style to be very classical. There are basically two styles in cinema that you can do and then a million in between them. One is the kind of style of structure where every shot is like a brick that gives you a certain amount of vision. Then when you cut into the next shot, you get what the next shot should give you, so it’s something more in which the shots should be very clearly defined. It’s not like the camera is wandering, and if you get up and walk over here, it walks over there. I feel that this classic style, I used it somewhat in The Godfather, that it’s more dynamic with motion because the frame is still. If you look at the next movie you go to, look in the corner of the frame and you’ll see the camera is always doing this. In Youth Without Youth it doesn’t do it at all. Eight times it moves, but it moves for a reason. So I felt that when you watch the movie, you can enjoy the beauty of the image and also the dynamism of the movement because if the camera does a move every time an actor walks in or walks out, that’s an event, as in an Ozu film. And I always wanted to do it. Since I made this movie just to please myself in a way, I said “I want to shoot it that way because I’ve always wanted to try it and see what that’s like.” I learned a lot doing that.
HW: So do you aim to make another landmark film–is that something you can even control while you are making it? You once thought Megalopolis might have been that film…
FFC: I don’t know whether landmark film, it seems to be what everyone agrees is a landmark film, after it’s made. Back in those days, a lot of people said “My God, you were young. You made The Godfather, you made The Conversation, you made The Godfather: Part II, you made Apocalypse Now. Why did you stop?’ I didn’t stop, it’s just that at that time nobody was saying these were landmark. Godfather, sure, it was a big hit in my life, but Apocalypse Now was a very controversial movie. It was unusual, and, as I say, with a controversial movie you have to wait 20 years for them to really make an opinion. Maybe Rumble Fish is a landmark film–for me it is. Just because it’s big or makes lots of money, that doesn’t necessarily mean, although they often go together. Even a film like Youth Without Youth, which is unusual, could be discussed for a few years. Maybe when I am dead they will say “That was a landmark film.” Making a landmark film is like saying “I’m going to make a film that makes money.” Once you do that, you are doomed, because you have to make films because they interest you, and you love them. You can’t make them because you may be successful at that.
[IMG:R]HW: Audiences may have a difficult time deciphering or understanding Youth Without Youth. What do you say to them about it?
FFC: I don’t think that is true. Granted, it’s different than other movies that they are now being given–movie after movie after movie, Pretty much, I think, you go to the movies today and I think you come out saying “Haven’t I seen this before?” then you go see something like Punch Drunk Love and you say “Oh, I’ve never seen anything like that, but I like it because it’s different.” I don’t think the story of Youth Without Youth is at all hard to follow. What’s demanding is that at the same time that it tells this fable story, like a Twilight Zone…It’s true that the story starts to take interesting levels that most stories don’t choose to go there, but that’s the Eliade story. I would rather that we all read books that we all find fascinating. Why do films have to be a subject matter less fascinating than books can be is basically the question. You may disagree, I don’t think that it has to be deciphered. What has to be deciphered is just as your life, you probably understand your life very well but also there are parts of your life you don’t understand like why are you here? What’s going to happen when you die? What’s the difference between what you dream about and what you experience? Those things do have to be deciphered but that’s another level and you can think about that in private. I think you can see a movie and enjoy the movie, the beauty of the film, the photography, the sound, the acting, what have you. Then also later on see it again, as people have with The Conversation or Apocalypse and get more out of it just in private thought but I didn’t want to make a movie that the audience the first time through wouldn’t enjoy. But I also knew that I was making a film that was more adult than what’s made, obviously because I financed it myself. If I had not financed it myself and I gave this to a film producer, they probably will say “Well, okay, can you do this to it? Can you do that to it? Can you make it less ambitious and blah blah blah.” I didn’t have to because I financed it myself.
HW: How do you see yourself at this point? Do you accept the label of being a master of cinema?
FFC: Anyone I know who makes films knows that you don’t work in it without learning so much. I absolutely am not a master of film, but I don’t think anybody is. Film is a medium that’s only existed 100 years and it just keeps unfolding and there’s just more aspects to it. Look at Apocalypse Now, When that came out, a lot of you were very young, but that was considered really weird. Well, when you see Apocalypse Now, it’s not really weird anymore because partly it’s changed our perceptions of what a movie- – in fact, when I saw it before I did the Redux version of it, one of the reasons I even added more scenes is I said, ‘Gee, we cut all these scenes out because we thought the movie was so weird for the audience, we’d better go slow and make it more like a war film. But now it doesn’t seem so weird 15 years later. Let’s put those scenes back in and make it more weird.’ So I think art is a process that is always bringing audiences along with it. Some people might think some painting, Jackson Pollack: “Wow, my kid could paint that. That’s weird. That’s not art.” Then 30 years later, there’s wallpaper that looks like that. I think this is a good and actual- – artists should be the avant-garde of what’s going to happen. Very often they’re punished for it. You read history about what people thought of certain musical works or paintings or things, what trash this is and yet, 30, 40 years can change their opinion about it. It happened in my lifetime with Apocalypse. That was never considered a landmark film because who won the Oscar the year that Apocalypse came out?
[IMG:R]HW: Kramer Vs. Kramer…
FFC: Exactly, so that sort of says where the tastes are when the movie comes out. I hope I’m not being defensive but I’ve debated this a lot in my life. What do I want now at age 68? Do I want to win an Oscar? Do I want to become famous? I’m already famous. I already won an Oscar. So now I’m in it a little more for my own love of it and to want to make beautiful things. I hope that I have a big audience that will see it but I know I’m not going to have all the kids in Dayton, Ohio, are not going to rush to see my film, but maybe someday they’ll see it.
HW: That said, what was it like for you, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to give the Best Picture Oscar to your friend Martin Scorsese for The Departed?
FFC: Well, we were happy for him, of course, because he had made such great movies that certainly deserved the Oscar in the past. But you know, the Oscar is what it is. It’s a contest of stuff and we were very thrilled for him because we knew it was a relief to him because although he wanted to be included in all the other people who ever won Oscars.
