At this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola sat down with host Ben Mankiewicz for an extensive discussion about the director’s film from the ’70s, during which time he helmed four now-canonical works of American cinema: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation. Primarily centered around the lattermost as it was screening that evening, The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith has now shared the talk in full.
Though the success of these films guaranteed Coppola a comfortable place among the Hollywood greats (before the interview, Coppola was honored by having his handprint and footprint literally cemented outside the TCL Chinese Theatre), his anecdotes indicated that making these films was anything but comfortable. One humorous story revealed that Paramount executives disapproved of Al Pacino and Marlon Brando during filming of the original Godfather, an opinion unimaginable to most film viewers today. Another divulged that the legendary scene in The Godfather where the film cross-cuts between a baptism and a mob hit originated from the need to condense 60 pages of the source novel into four pages of the script.
If there is anything this second story tells us, it’s that trials breed creativity, something that Coppola himself mentioned and that makes sense given that his tribulations resulted in a filmography as accomplished as his. The Conversation, which is at once a paranoid thriller, a character study, and a testament to the power of cinematic sound, exemplifies the best of Coppola’s directorial tendencies.
Stream the podcast below or check it out on iTunes, and see a brief interview with Coppola upon the release of the film, as well as an analysis. One can also see our extensive recent interview with Coppola here.