Director Francis Ford Coppola Keeps His Dream Alive

Director Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t just want to make movies. He wants to change them. This was true in 1969 when he co-founded Zoetrope Studios with George Lucas, and it remains true today. Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiKqETNujSI&t=1877s. We return to our talk with Coppola upon the anniversary of his modern-day Roman epic fable Megalopolis https://www.megalopolis.movie/, discussing his decades-long process developing the film (6:16) and the inspiration he’s taken from Georges Méliès (17:00) and Jacques Tati (19:07). Then, he reflects on the origin of how he became ‘Francis Ford Coppola’ (23:07), the irrepressible spirit he forged in childhood (26:34), and where he sees himself in films like The Godfather (33:17), Apocalypse Now (35:51), and Gardens of Stone (36:10). On the back-half, we unpack the parallels between the titular city of Megalopolis and Zoetrope Studios (42:35), his capacity to keep dreaming, even in the face of financial ruin (43:30), where he believes America is headed (49:04), and the lasting memory of his late wife, Eleanor (58:08). Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected]. Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarchmoney.com/TALKEASY http://www.monarchmoney.com/TALKEASY. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Lemonada.

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Sam Fragoso?

  Today, legendary director Francis Ford Coppola. He's been making movies for over 60 years, many of which you've probably seen many, many times. The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, One from the Heart, The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, The Rainmaker. At the peak of his powers, no other writer-director had ever had two Best Picture nominations and two Best Screenplay nominations in the same year, which is exactly what happened to Coppola in early 1975 with The Conversation and The Godfather Part II. Then, through Zoetrope, the company he co-founded with George Lucas, he sought to reimagine Hollywood itself, upending the traditional studio system to

• 1:21Sam Fragoso?

  create a pipeline for bold, original work. At every turn, as you'll hear in this episode, his capacity to dream has really defined his career, including, of course, his most recent film, the self-financed epic Megalopolis. Now, a year after its release, a new behind-the-scenes documentary called Megadoc captures the film's tumultuous production. As film critic Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker, director Mike Figgus offers, quote, "an inspiring view of a filmmaker whose methods are as boldly original as his movie." And so, with the release of this excellent new documentary, I wanted to replay my conversation with Coppola.

• 2:05Sam Fragoso?

  It was recorded last fall here in New York City, where we discussed the real challenges Of making Megalopolis, the influence and lasting memory of his late wife Eleanor, the irrepressible spirit forged in childhood that has carried him through today, what he learned from the great Jacques Tati, and where he sees himself in classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The full video of this talk is also now available to watch on YouTube. You can find that at our channel by typing in Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, or just click the link in the description of today's episode. We've also put up last week's episode with Terry Gross, kind of an extended cut of my talk with Terry. I

• 2:47Sam Fragoso?

  think it came in at two hours. You can do that on our brand new YouTube page. So with that, I'll see you back here next Sunday with a brand new episode. Until then, here is Francis Ford Coppola.

• 3:14Sam Fragoso?

  Francis.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:16Sam Fragoso?

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Nice to meet you. What's your first name?

• 3:19Sam Fragoso?

  Sam.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Sam. Oh, that's easy.

• 3:22Sam Fragoso?

  How are you doing?

• 3:23Speaker 02

  I'm good. You know, it's a little sad. I lost my wife of 60 years. This sort of breaks your heart, you know. I mean, you lose a friend, you lose an advisor, you lose it's hard.

• 3:37Sam Fragoso?

  The film is dedicated to her. She passed away in, was it May of this year?

• 3:42Speaker 02

  April 12.

• 3:42Sam Fragoso?

  April 12 of this year.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Her birthday is May 4th, so it was just a little bit before. And she, but she saw the film and she was very proud of me, she said.

• 3:52Sam Fragoso?

  What did she think of it?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  She said, "You're the most courageous man I've ever known to do what you felt that you wanted to do and you didn't let all the reasons not to do it enter into it." She was proud of it. So she told me.

• 4:06Sam Fragoso?

  She was with you on most sets, right?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yes and no. You know, I think, I can remember my father's marriage where, you know, the, my mother always wanted to work and stuff. And my father said, "My wife does not have to work." And there was, you know, it was very different. And I think my wife would have preferred. Being cast less as, you know, the mother and wife and a little more the collaborator.

• 4:36Sam Fragoso?

  She was a very talented artist.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  She was, and she made also beautiful films.

• 4:40Sam Fragoso?

  She did.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  You know, and, and, and some very beautiful art. She was a very, and, and there wasn't anyone who didn't love her.

• 4:48Sam Fragoso?

  It, it's interesting that she said, you're courageous for having gotten to the finish line of this movie because she must have known that this was a film you first conceived of in 1977.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  You know, it was on and off. I was playing with it, but I, I, but I was doing other things too, in terms of trying to find out who the hell I was.

• 5:10Sam Fragoso?

  Right. Yeah. You were a little busy during the seventies, just famously.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Well, after I made The Rainmaker, I sort of quit.

• 5:16Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  I wasn't a, I wasn't a professional, I wasn't getting paid and I was just, and I couldn't take any of my old collaborators like, you know, Dean Tavalleras or Vittorio, so I, I couldn't take that, couldn't afford them. So I went to places like Romania, Argentina, and just worked with students and, and, and was just trying to learn more about who I was and, you know, how to reconcile the fact that I had one foot in theater and one foot in cinema. And what did that mean?

• 5:47Sam Fragoso?

  I want to start with this movie because over the years, I've heard you say that when you write an original screenplay, it's a little bit like asking a question. And when you make the film and finish the film, you get the answers. So you first conceived of the film, like I said, I think in 77, the development of the script began shortly after One From The Heart. And then the first draft was completed March 12th of 1984. Four decades in the making. I'm curious, like, what are the questions you were asking in writing the script? And what are the answers you've arrived at, having completed the film now?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  I was interested in some stuff I had read in the Republic, I think, about the nature of, at first, household provisioning had been a matter of you got what you needed. And the idea that why we ended up with this concept of excess. So in the Republic, he talks about when it was household provisioning, you got just how much olive oil you needed, but you couldn't get too much meat because there was no way to preserve it. And then there was another phase where there were people who were merchants and they were going to travel to places and household provisioning got more handled by them. And they, of course, had more than they needed because they had excess.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  And then that was the beginning of there being people who were of a higher wealth and therefore cast than other people. And there was just the beginning of inequality. I was always interested in why the world was as sad and as, you know, and as tough on certain people and what happened to cause believing that human beings are wonderful creatures. What, you know, even now, when I say, you know, it's obvious that we're a genius species, we're all one family, we're a genius species, there's nothing our creativity can't accomplish. Do you agree?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  And the answer always is, yeah, but we do bad things too with that talent. But that doesn't answer whether we're geniuses or not. That just right away gets to what do we do with the genius? But they don't want it to be known that we're these extraordinary geniuses because they want us to have hubris. And of course, in the church, that was outrageous, if you were saying that.

• 8:16Sam Fragoso?

  Which church?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Well, the Catholic Church. The trouble all starts with the Catholic Church.

• 8:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I'm a lapsed Catholic, I didn't know this.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Well, then we know. But in other words, I always felt that whoever employs the artists are running the world. And I knew that the Vatican, for a period of time, had all the artists. And so I ask myself today. Who is really, who's really employing the artists and it's the companies that most artists work in commercials and advertising. Advertising is maybe a seven trillion dollar business selling a little bit of happiness to people and therefore they need unhappy people. So are we kept unhappy deliberately so we'll be good customers?

• 9:00Sam Fragoso?

  There's a line in the film, I think it's something like, we're selling things that they don't need to be like people that they don't like.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's been said by, everyone claims they said it.

• 9:12Sam Fragoso?

  Felt like Noam Chomsky to me.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I think it was Will Wright who said it first, but I don't know. But it's true. We, we, we buy things that we don't need with money. We don't have to be like people we don't like. And, and, but there's a million, in other words, are we geniuses or not? That, that's to me very important and, and most people can't get out of the fact that, yeah, there's no creature on earth that has, could, could understand the human genome and be able to figure out how to splice it, can send spacecrafts to Mars to take pictures, can work with particle physics and, and harness the energy of, of subatomic particles. So, so yes, are we geniuses?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  You don't get, the reason we don't ever get that is because those people who do through time come to run the world know that you, if people think they're geniuses, they're not easy to control and to manipulate and, and sell them stuff that they don't want.

• 10:17Sam Fragoso?

  So the film is this Roman epic fable set in an imagined modern America. It follows the rebuilding of a metropolis after it has fallen into decline with these two competing visions of the future. You have the mayor who says, people don't need dreams, they need jobs, they need teachers. And then there's Caesar who seems inspired as much by Robert Moses as he does by the famed Roman soldier that I have a feeling you modeled him after, dreaming up this utopic perfect city. What about this debate between the mayor and, and Catalina? Interested you in this moment in American life?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  I saw that in a book called Twelve Against the Gods by William Bolitho. And what fascinated me was the fact that whoever loses in a conflict like Cleopatra, famously, the alliance of Cleopatra and Mark Antony lost against the power of Augustus Caesar, that the winners write the history. So they portrayed Cleopatra as a, you know, a sort of seductress. And Catalina, who was in the famous debate with Cicero, between Cicero and Sergius Catalina, who was killed as a result of it, is always portrayed as evil. And I said, well, what if he wasn't evil?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  What if that's just the way they, the victor wrote it? What if, what if he had a better idea? What if he was? And so that's the way I took it. If, if, if you could say, well, those two were just Mayor Koch or Mayor Dinkins and Robert Moses, combined with the Walter Gropius, because I want him to be an artist, not just an administrator, as Walter Moses was. What if it's the administrator, it's the Robert Moses, Walter Gropius character was this genius architect who had a vision of a, of a beautiful world that we, we could live in? And, and it was the Dinkins or Cicero character who was more a classicist,

• 12:23Speaker 02

  but more conventional and more wanted more of the same sort of.

• 12:28Sam Fragoso?

  You put all of that into this movie and I rewatched it last night in IMAX. And the scope of the film is just unbelievable. I mean, like you put $120 million into the film. And when it came down to directing the picture, you said, quote, "It was very similar to the making of Apocalypse Now," which I'm interested in because Apocalypse Now featured a lot of helicopters, acid trips, Marlon Brando. I'm assuming those things weren't part of what happened in Atlanta, but what did happen in Atlanta?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Well, I could tell you really what happened is I chose an art department. I no longer had Dean Tavallaris because he's like 90 years old or something. So I saw a film that I really was attracted to, which was Ed Norton's film called Motherless Brooklyn. I thought they did a great job on that. And it also involved Robert Moses a little bit.

• 13:24Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, did, yeah. Alec Baldwin, I think, plays him in that.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what I liked about the vision of Motherless Brooklyn is that movies are always hard into the period because every department, the prop department, the costume department, the hair department, all, they need cars that are right. They need phones that are the right for that period. In other words, it has to conform to the period. And Motherless Brooklyn dealt with that in a very creative way, I thought. So I was attracted to its production designer and the team that had made it. And but but she had two aspects to her career. She did a beautiful job on certain independent films. She had made an independent film with Ryan Gosling that was very creative on her part.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  But she also had hit it big in the Marvel movie. And she was in Georgia making this picture, Guardians of the Galaxy, I believe, which is...

• 14:21Sam Fragoso?

  That's one of your favorite movies, right?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever seen it, but that cost really multiple hundreds of millions than Megalopolis. So what happened was I had sort of signed on for Motherless Brooklyn, but now I was in Georgia with an art department that was immense. There was a production designer, a supervising art director, and five art directors. And they were very hierarchical. If I would go to one of the art directors because I saw she had theater experience, she said, you can't step on toes. You have to go. In other words, it was much more more like the army. You couldn't go talk to a colonel unless you talked to, got it cleared by the judge, which is not the way I ever worked.

• 15:05Sam Fragoso?

  So you dismiss one of the folks on that side?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  No, no, no. What happened was that little by little, a movie always at the beginning of every movie, even my old movies, every department, when there's a budget, say there's a hundred dollars, every department puts in for as big a slice of that hundred, hundred percent.

• 15:25Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  As they can. So the art department puts in for... Fifty percent of that hundred dollars, the DP and the photographer puts in for forty percent, the costume department, if it's got someone as brilliant as Melena Canaro puts in thirty. So basically, you have a hundred dollars, but all the departments have put in four hundred dollars. So you've got to kind of figure out how to get them.

• 15:51Sam Fragoso?

  They're all vying for a larger piece of pie.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Right. And now, in the case of when I had made Dracula, I said, well, you know, I don't need a lot of sets. A very famous production designer was on it. I said, because I have a concept, I want the costumes to be the sets.

• 16:07Sam Fragoso?

  And within two weeks, you fired them and you hired your son, Roman.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Well, that was the effects. The effects people all wanted to do the Dracula effects with the new fangled digital effects. And I said, but, you know, Dracula was written at the beginning of when cinema was, but wouldn't it be interesting to make Dracula as if we were filmmakers from that period, which means effects were magic, because Meliès was a magician. So the special effects people said, that's a terrible idea. We want to do it with digital effects. So I fired them, of course, because if I, if they wanted to do it with digital effects throughout the movie, they were going to always, so better not to do it. Basically, the director's tool, if he has influence as a producer

• 16:56Speaker 02

  too, is to eliminate those people who don't want to go for the concept that he wants to make the picture with. And that's exactly what happened on Megalopolis, that despite the fact that she had done this spectacular job on Ed Norton's movie, she was a kind of different, she had set up a big hierarchy that wanted to do everything in Megalopolis with the art department. And I wanted to do it with art department and the costume department and the special effects being alive.

• 17:26Sam Fragoso?

  You know, the thing I want to talk about when I mentioned the Apocalypse, Megalopolis, how they're linked, one of the ways these two films are linked is that, one, you own them, and two, you own them because you struggled to find support from-

• 17:43Speaker 02

  I own them because nobody wanted them.

• 17:45Sam Fragoso?

  Exactly. But I'm curious, this rejection, for people who don't remember, of Apocalypse Now, came after having made The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II. Like, there's almost no run in the history of cinema that is-

• 17:59Speaker 02

  And five Oscars, and still, they wouldn't let me make Apocalypse Now.

• 18:03Sam Fragoso?

  They wouldn't let you do that. And I wonder, both then and now, do you think that resistance comes back to what your father, who was a great musician, who you hired on both of the Godfather films, to the thing he always told you growing up, which is that, like, kids resisting a new kind of food, it's always tough to get people to try something new.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  I don't remember him saying that, but I'm sure he did. But, yes, that's, that's, oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, it just struck a little bit. That's exactly true. I mean, like, you know who is the filmmaker who really did the closest to what I've done in my career? Jacques Tati. Jacques Tati had this wonderful career. He made these wonderful monuncles.

• 18:48Sam Fragoso?

  Unbelievable.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, wonderful. And he made a lot of money with the success, and he took everything he had, and he wanted to make a film no one wanted him to make. And he took everything he had and invested it in this one dream project that he had, and made it, and it was a big flop. And he lived in poverty, and sort of hung out in the houses of people who loved him because he was Jacques Tati. But he had lost everything and died. And that film was Playtime, which is a magnificent masterpiece. I mean, how do you not get on your knees and say to Jacques Tati, thanks for making us so happy to... For anyone who's

• 19:29Speaker 02

  not seen Playtime, see it, and you'll laugh, you'll laugh yourself silly in a profound way, you know? His comment on modern life is so great. So we wouldn't have had it if he hadn't made that sacrifice. So Bizet wrote Carmen and they booed it. And he had a bad heart and he died of a heart attack at 50. And never knew that Carmen, the opera that is the favorite of people who go to see operas, was made by a guy who thought it was the giant flop. So the history is full of this stuff.

• 20:04Sam Fragoso?

  And did you think of the historical context as you yourself were bumping up against that?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  I don't know ever, you know, I lucked out with Apocalypse Now. But when Apocalypse came out, it was the interest in those days that I was borrowing the money was 20%. I thought it was more, but they say it's 21% during that period. I mean, that's a lot of interest, you know, and it opened so, so, you know, the wonderful Dustin Hoffman movie, what was the one that won everything with Meryl Streep and the divorce?

• 20:36Sam Fragoso?

  Kramer versus Kramer.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was one of all the Oscars, Apocalypse Now. You know, and it got bad reviews from some very important. Frank Rich said it was the biggest disaster of Hollywood and everything. So I was pretty.

• 20:49Sam Fragoso?

  I wonder if he still believes that.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I don't know. I didn't even know, and I think he is alive, but, but a lot of people, I mean, people, there are people who even said bad things about Apocalypse Now that, I mean, Godfather that I remember. I remember someone which particularly annoyed me saying, well, Godfather has great actors and great photography and great art direction and great music. But the direction and my answer was, well, I chose all those people who did all those great things. But I don't know, I'm an old man now. I mean, I've led, lived this, I've seen some wonderful things in my life. I have the most wonderful children you could have. I have a great grandson. I'm okay.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  And I've had this, what is to me the greatest reward of all when a filmmaker that I admire comes to me and said he became a filmmaker because he saw Apocalypse Now or Rumblefish or some. You know, it's always tough to make a film and have people say, what the hell is that?

• 21:48Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  I feel it says what it's trying to say pretty clearly at the end, but I realize it's it's it's an experience that it's not like anything particularly. You could say, oh, you you look at it and you say, wow, what's that? And then I want to see it again, usually is the reaction I get.

• 22:05Sam Fragoso?

  In terms of what films say, you have this quote, every movie has a theme and that the style of that film ought to be something that comes out of this theme. For the Godfather pictures, not unlike Megalopolis, the theme was succession, right?

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Right. I always have one word. I learned that from Kazan.

• 22:23Sam Fragoso?

  One word?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  One word. You have to be able to say one word because the director makes a million decisions a day. Most of them, you just make them fast. But if you if you say, oh, I don't know the answer, check that word and that word will help you.

• 22:37Sam Fragoso?

  I was thinking about the idea of succession, especially with Megalopolis and and thinking of the Godfather pictures, because it's a world that you knew pretty well because of dynasty, Italy, Catholicism, guilt, the things.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Well, I knew more from what Italian Americans' home life was like.

• 22:54Sam Fragoso?

  Which was which was your life. And I'm curious, growing up as a younger brother, the son of a father who loomed large, did the success of that movie create a similar kind of tension between you and and your your brother and your father?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely, definitely. Because I was the kid, I was the loser in the family, you know, like I can remember my uncle and my father from the kitchen door that was open. I heard them talking, saying, you know, he's obviously not going to go to college. Maybe we ought to consider some sort of a trade like printing or, in other words, they were thinking that maybe I would I would go to a trade school and to make a living because I was not, I did terrible in school. I had no.

• 23:40Sam Fragoso?

  You remember them saying that through the crack of the door?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I remember the door was open. I heard them having that conversation because I had an Uncle Clarence, my my my, I had seven uncles or a bunch of uncles. Uncle Clarence had a hearing aid, I remember, and he was. He was very passionate about opera, but he wasn't a genius at anything like all the other brothers were musical geniuses. And Clarence became a printer. So they were sort of identifying me with the intellectual loser of the family who would have to be a printer or some sort of trade person, typesetter or something.

• 24:16Sam Fragoso?

  In the past, you said, my brother had talent and my father had talent. I was the one that did not.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Well, they used to say, you know, they were also really good looking. My mother used to say, Augie's the brilliant one. He was five years, and he was. No question about it. I didn't argue with that. He was five years older. I mean, he was a wonderful big brother to me. He said, August is the brilliant one. Tally, who was the girl my mother wanted, was the beautiful one. But Francie, he's the affectionate one. That's me.

• 24:48Sam Fragoso?

  Is that true?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I'm a very affectionate person.

• 24:52Sam Fragoso?

  It's funny, the idea of like, I think people listening to this are going, Francis Ford Coppola doesn't have talent? Then I don't think that tracks to people.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm only Francis Ford Coppola because I had an older brother who was brilliant, whose name was August Floyd Coppola. And all his work was signed August Floyd Coppola, August Floyd Coppola. I wanted to be the junior version of whatever he was. So if he was going to be a novelist, then I would try to maybe be a playwright. Or if he was going to be a doctor, I would be an optometrist. I would be always the junior version. So when I started writing stories, I called myself Francis Ford Coppola to copy him. And he was very kind. He once made me a folder that said FFC to put my stories in. But when A Godfather came out, I became so famous as Francis Ford Coppola that he could

• 25:46Speaker 02

  no longer be August Floyd Coppola because it looked like he was imitating me, but I was imitating him. So it caused a strange reversal in my family, which was very, which I tried to deal with in the movie Tetro, but he hated that movie. So I.

• 26:03Sam Fragoso?

  He didn't like it?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:05Sam Fragoso?

  Can we talk about one of the first stories you wrote?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:08Sam Fragoso?

  You're on a music scholarship in military school in 1955. Donald Trump is your classmate.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Well, he was younger. He was, I, I, I'm, oh, I don't know how old he is, but about, he was like 13 when I was 16.

• 26:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. You wrote this romantic musical. And when you finished it, you did what most people do. When they finish writing something, you want to share it with someone. And you shared it with your roommate.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Louis Cohen.

• 26:33Sam Fragoso?

  Louis Cohen.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  He was wonderful.

• 26:35Sam Fragoso?

  Do you remember the night that you showed it to him?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yes, I do.

• 26:38Sam Fragoso?

  What happened?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  He, he, he was a brilliant kid. He was reading Ulysses, this 16 year old. One of only two or three Jewish kids, but he was great. He, he basically, he basically told me that, that it wasn't any good, I think. I, I, now I'm not exactly sure, but I, I know I cried all night. Because I, because I didn't have talent and in my family, you had to have talent.

• 27:06Sam Fragoso?

  You cried about not having talent and yet. You found a way to, to move forward. I mean, you did. You did have some talent. It seemed like the talent was that you wanted it. More than other people. Is that, is that fair?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Well, they, they used to do little skits, uh, where, you know, the military economy, the boys would put oranges and dress up like girls. Typical military school. Behavior and our, our skit. For the band was always the best skit because I was sort of telling them. Uh, how to do it and, and using the fact that some people could play instruments to augment the skits. So. So we did the best skits and that was the first time that I had any recognition for any ability at all.

• 27:50Sam Fragoso?

  How did that feel?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Great. I loved it. I loved, uh. To have some ability to, you know, and that's what made me write this big musical.

• 27:59Sam Fragoso?

  The, the persistence and the enthusiasm that I'm talking about. I heard you say once before that I'm not like Scorsese or Spielberg or Lucas. They were born to do this. I think I have genius, but no talent, really. What do you mean by that? What does that mean to have genius, but no talent?

• 28:17Speaker 02

  I don't know. I've always, another thing I always used to say is I failed upwards. I don't understand myself. I mean, I know that there are filmmakers and that just they're, they can see the movie. That Spielberg is like that. I mean, think of the movie he made with Christian Bale. I mean, one of many movies made, but that movie just amazes me. Or the movie he made that is not so famous, but was AI that he made. I, I think that's the most, that film just made me weep because of my own story of the mother who didn't want, didn't want the, the boy, you know? That's what, my mother didn't want me.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I wasn't handsome like my, my brother and she wanted a girl. And, and basically my mother was very magical, beautiful, silly young girl. And, and she used to make me look in front of a mirror and bite my big lower lip. A big made, big deal was made of my big lips. That's why I have a beard. And she would say, bite your lip. And I would go like that. She said, there, now you look just like your brother. She wanted me to get a lip job. She wanted me to have plastic surgery, you know, when I was a kid. So that's why in Megalopolis, this mother that doesn't love him. Men do crazy things when they feel, do very, men stand out when they think their mother didn't want them.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  I didn't think my mother wanted me.

• 29:45Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, the line in the film.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Crocodile, yeah, alligators had the right idea. They eat their young. That was played by my sister, so she knew my mother.

• 29:53Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  In fact, when I directed her, all, all I did was trick her to be like my mother. That whole thing about, uh, you know, you didn't thank me when you won the Nobel Prize. That was all, you know, although I must say that, uh, you know, and later, my mother, when I, when, you know, the famous story of the when Paramount wouldn't let me do Apocalypse Now, I took all the Oscars. I said, what good are these? And I threw them out the window and they, of course. All smashed and there's they're just dross inside. And my mother took all the pieces and she went back to the academy and she said, oh, my poor son Francis, the housekeeper was dusting and they fell and they're mangled, you know, and she got them replaced.

• 30:40Sam Fragoso?

  So what does that mean?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  It means that despite the strange relationship I had with my mother, there was some times that she always came to my, you know, my aide, because she was, she was a magical young, pretty young girl who married young and she, it was her idea that since when I finally said I wanted to be in the theater, that she gave me money to go to see, since we lived in near Great Neck, she gave me money to go see a Broadway matinee every Wednesday. And I saw, I went there alone and saw new plays on a Wednesday and that was very kind of her.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  And, and, and once, when I wanted a car, this dream car, she helped me sort of trade in the old Buick and get a sexy Plymouth convertible. She was magical. I don't know, it was, she, she, she was like a kid and very beautiful.

• 31:41Sam Fragoso?

  You know, we're talking about madness and when you made Apocalypse Now, which is kind of how we, we got back to all of this, your late wife Eleanor made a beautiful documentary.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Fabulous. Well, she was the best handheld camera person shy of Claude Lelouch in the world.

• 31:56Sam Fragoso?

  It was called Hearts of Darkness. And she said something like, Francis is not making the film, the film is remaking him.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 32:09Sam Fragoso?

  In the process of making these movies, thinking, you know, getting, getting our way back to Apocalypse, then One From the Heart, did you find that the act of making it did remake you in some way?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Well, I must say it's pretty, as I think back, I think that when I was working on Apocalypse, on Godfather, I had no power at all, but I had used the sort of Machiavellian ability that I developed to, in the drama school to do what I wanted despite the faculty.

• 32:41Sam Fragoso?

  This goes back to Hofstra.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  So I was sort of becoming Michael Corleone and, and he was me.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Buy me out.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Casino, the hotel. Corleone family wants to buy you out.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  The Corleone family wants to buy me out? No, I buy you out, you don't buy me out.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Your casino loses money. Maybe we can do better.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  You think I'm skimming off the top, Mike?

• 33:13Speaker 04

  You're unlucky.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  You goddamn guineas really make me laugh. I do you a favor and take Freddy in when you're having a bad time, and then you try to push me out.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  Wait a minute. You took Freddy in because the Corleone family bankrolled your casino because the Molinari family on the coast guaranteed his safety. Now we're talking business, let's talk business.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's talk business, Mike. First of all, you're all done. The Coyote family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore. The godfather is sick, right? You're getting chased out of New York by Barzini and the other families. What do you think is going on here? You think you can come to my hotel and take over? I talked to Barzini. I can make a deal with him and still keep my hotel.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  Is that why you slapped my brother around in public?

• 33:59Speaker 05

  Oh, no, that was nothing, Mike. Now, Mo didn't mean nothing by that. Sure, he flies off the handle once in a while, but Mo and me were good friends, right, Mo, huh?

• 34:08Speaker 03

  I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right. We had a little argument, Freddy and I, so I had to straighten him out.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  You straightened my brother out?

• 34:20Speaker 03

  He was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time. Players couldn't get a drink at the table. What's wrong with you?

• 34:31Speaker 04

  I leave for New York tomorrow. Think about a price.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Do you know who I am? I'm Mo Green. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  Wait a minute, Mo. Mo, I got an idea.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  Tom, you're the conciliary. Now, you can talk to the Don, you can explain-

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Just a minute. Don is semi-retired and Mike is in charge of the family business now. If you have anything to say, say it to Mike.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Mike, you don't come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Moe Green like that.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  When I made Apocalypse Now, it was ridiculous. I mean, there was a whole air force that was flying in and out because there was a war going on. And so to hold that together, I had to become like a megalomaniac crazy person like Kurtz. So I became Kurtz. Then later, when I really wondered what was going on, I made a film called Gardens of Stone about a man played by Jimmy Khan who gets very, finds a young boy that he admires and like a son almost, and the son is killed. And my son was killed when I made that movie.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I was making movie about a man who lost his son, and right in the beginning of it, I lost my son. This one beautiful boy I had that I loved and who wanted to be, you know, like a director. And I said, what's going on? Is this my life that I have to live everything that I'm working on? I have to lose my son in order... And that's when I really wonder to this day, that perhaps my whole life is really being written by Charlie Kaufman. You know, that what's going on with me is not what I think. That makes me wonder if in fact I'm, my life is a movie I'm making. And I mean, how can you explain

• 36:46Speaker 02

  that every time I make a movie, I become the person that's in the movie, down to that my son gets killed? That doesn't, that doesn't add up.

• 36:59Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, you know, how, how do you, how, how did you keep making that movie? How have you kept?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  That's all I know how to do. My wife uses it me all the time. She had one line she used to give me. She said, give your brain a rest. But I don't know how to. The only way I know how to give my brain a rest is, is to make another project. So even when I was doing Megalopolis on this difficult movie with a lot of complex relationship with the art department and reconciling it, what I'm always doing. It's like I was, you're always reconciling one big dominant department with another. The art department doesn't want there to also be a big wardrobe department, a big hair department, a big special effects department. They want it all to be under their control.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  And how do you reconcile that with the fact that, you know, all this other stuff is going on? And so what I did is I took a motel and I started to rebuild the motel into this extraordinary, a unique facility. So that when I had to rest from Megalopolis, I would, which had too many problems, I would just think about this hotel project was being built. You could see it, it's fabulous. And then when I had problem with the hotel where it wasn't getting codes, the, the local people would put a red thing on the door. Then, then I would go and I would work on Megalopolis. In other words, I used one project as the rest and comfort of the other project.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  So I had two projects going on. One was the building a hotel and one was making a movie.

• 38:39Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, more from Francis Ford Coppola.

• 38:47Sam Fragoso?

  MUBI is a global film company bringing great cinema to the world and to you. Everything at MUBI is handpicked with an emphasis on visionary filmmakers and movies worth discovering. One new movie is called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, from writer-director Jane Seanbrin, who made- ...the film I Saw the TV Glow. The film stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. It follows a young director tasked with resurrecting Camp Miasma, a once beloved slasher franchise that after years of sequels has fallen out of favor. Looking for inspiration, she visits the reclusive actress who starred in the original film. But what begins at an attempt to revive the franchise soon pulls the two women into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.

• 39:31Sam Fragoso?

  It's a world-expanding, genre-bending movie for one of the most distinctive filmmakers working today. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now streaming exclusively on MUBI. You can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com/talkeasy. That's MUBI, M-U-B-I dot com slash talkeasy for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 39:55Sam Fragoso?

  I think a lot of us are gonna spend the next few weeks looking for gifts online. And while I like finding something thoughtful for the people in my life, the process can get a little ridiculous. You've got a dozen tabs open, you're comparing prices, and you're trying to remember which store had that one thing you saw that has a deal, and you flagged it, and you saved it, and now you can't find it. Anyway, that's what I like about Shop. Shop brings all kinds of stores together in one place, so you can search for what you're looking for across different brands while discovering new ones along the way, plus tracking all your orders without jumping in-between websites. And just in time for the holidays, they're celebrating the all-new Shop.com with a pretty extraordinary giveaway.

• 40:36Sam Fragoso?

  1,000 shoppers will win $1,000 in Shop Cash. That's $1 million in total, which you can put towards gifts for other people, or maybe something you've had an eye on for yourself. And you don't have to buy anything to enter the giveaway. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win, and that's shop.com, shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 41:28Sam Fragoso?

  At the beginning, we mentioned how this after the madness of Apocalypse Now is when you really dug into writing Megalopolis in earnest. And this was also after One From the Heart and the fallout of that picture, which forced you to sell Zoetrope Studios and temporarily pause this, what sounds like a utopic-like film studio.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  It was. It was wonderful, but I made some big mistakes. In other words, when I had this wonderful place, if I knew you at that time, I would have given you an office. I gave my brother an office. I fully, 100% occupied the studio with my friends and family and stuff. And what I should have done is I should have just occupied 20% of the studio and rented the 80%.

• 42:16Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Because I lost the studio because I couldn't make the mortgage payment.

• 42:20Sam Fragoso?

  Which was the Chase Bank, right? It was like $31 million, something like that.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  That was outrageous. And they came to me at 11 o'clock at night, when I had just a big argument with my wife. And I was told by my president of my company that they were going to stop funding the picture unless I signed a personal guarantee.

• 42:41Sam Fragoso?

  That was One From the Heart.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and all I had to do was say, "Fine." Because the only collateral they had on the picture was the picture. So if I said, "Do what you want. If they don't want to fund it anymore, fine." But I want to, as they well knew, that all they had to guarantee the money that had gone in so far was the movie. So they would have had to finish the movie. But I was so concerned about my personal situation. And I didn't realize that that person had a gambling problem and that the bank knew it and they were giving him some money. So I was improperly induced to signing a personal guarantee that I could have... Basically, I mean, it was, it's illegal what they did.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  You, you understand the difference, but they said, we will stop funding this movie unless you give us all your assets.

• 43:34Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Against it and, and because all they had was the movie. So it was absurd.

• 43:40Sam Fragoso?

  And that movie came out of what seems to me as your truest, most idealist sense of self and, and, and the way you wanted this studio to be, how you imagined movies could be made.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  And it was Hofstra College in the movie business.

• 43:57Sam Fragoso?

  And the parallels between this studio and the city at the heart of Megalopolis to me are, are just striking. And I have here a page from five volumes of notes that you had amassed in the process of making Megalopolis. And I thought if you wouldn't mind, you could read from this page of notes.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  You want me to read it?

• 44:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, read what you like.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  What little fortune they had, Catalina lost in those tempestuous years from 1972 to 1979. No, that's, that's me. That was when the design authority was at its most ambitious. There was a school interconnected with the design studio and architectural firm. Catalina had modeled on Walter Grobius's Bauhaus, except the students' garden and cafe and the screening rooms and library got to take up more of his time, energy and money than the jobs that theoretically were going to pay for it all. He ran the company like a summer theater company where everybody loved everybody and loved working with everybody. There were no friends now. Oh, there were those architects doing well, they, he'd run into them at Mortimer's or

• 45:05Speaker 02

  the Oyster House and they'd be an obligatory brace, extra hand, so hard, so he'd feel how much he meant to them. They were all trading on his association, outraged and written about everywhere while he was scratching in the dirt for a job. How exotic the feelings they produced in him. But the more they consoled him and treated him as though he was not a has been, the more he felt like one. Ten worthless stub debt bank was cooling bank credit, but he could endure the insults and the boos and bad reviews. What he couldn't stand was the drying up of the money. This is, did I write this? But in these terms, you translated to being, I guess this is me looking at the,

• 45:46Speaker 02

  at the character. You know, I did do something that I really did, which is a wonderful memory, is that I went to the junior high school across from that studio. And I was in there and I had no friends. And, and there was a redheaded boy who was in the theater department. And, and I wanted to go to the play. And he said, Well, you can go to the play. And after the play, there was gonna be a big party for, you know, the play. Pretty much all the families were gonna go. And I wanted to go. And then the redheaded kid said, No, you can't go, because you're not really in the play. And I just was heartbroken. I couldn't go. And I went to the studio, which

• 46:29Speaker 02

  was faced the thing with the gates. And I said, Someday, I'm gonna be the one who gives the party and say, who can go and who can't go. And later, I bought that studio. And I went into the same junior high school and spoke to the kids at auditorium. And at one point, I took the whole auditorium. I said, Kids, come on, we're gonna go into the studio. And I led the kids in through the gates of the studio and all through the studio and made them all apprentices. Kids came every afternoon. And some were apprentices in the art department, some, or the ones who were interested in acting became apprentices to the actors on my picture. I've always loved kids being as apprentices. And that school had, it was the only studio that

• 47:14Speaker 02

  had apprentices.

• 47:15Sam Fragoso?

  It's also your love of collaboration, of dreaming with other people side by side.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you know, in, in Megalopolis, you know, those kids working with him in there, those are wonderful filmmakers. They were my apprentices, boys and girls, from different countries, from France, from Sweden, and, and really, the talented filmmakers of the students. And they, they had their total run of the picture. And they could ask me any question, or make any suggestion. They were the only ones who could just, well, everybody could make suggestions. It's easy to hear. But I really took the young filmmakers' suggestions doubly, doubly serious.

• 47:56Sam Fragoso?

  But that desire to want to work with people, to want to invest in young people, is at the heart of Megalopolis. And you said in Rolling Stone, That you have three gifts, a good imagination, a fantastic memory, and Cassandra-like ability to see the future. Last night in the Q and A, in reference to the upcoming election, you said, "America is Rome. It's gonna happen again in a few months." What did you mean by that?

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, we, this movie is coming out right at, when we're about to have this very daunting test of our, of our republic and our democracy, and, and, and for some reasons similar to Rome. Rome had been, of course, conqueror of the world, so there are a lot of money flowed into Rome. People don't realize it, but America, when you hear the politics, America has inflation, but the whole world has inflation. And, and America is considered the admiration of the world on how they've handled the, the inflation. In other words, we have done a better job than Europe,

• 49:10Speaker 02

  and, and, and our economy is in fabulous shape. So it's, it's really, somehow this election is like Rome's election, because those senators in Rome, there was a lot of money pouring into Rome. And so they were, quite a few of them were wealthy and powerful. And so their concern was more their wealth and their power than governing the country. So the, the parallel between Rome and America is stronger now. And at a right, at the same moment when, when Rome lost its,

• 49:47Speaker 02

  lost its, became ultimately a dictatorship and then, and then a monarchy. I mean, Augustus was, was an emperor.

• 49:57Sam Fragoso?

  You said you have a great ability to predict the future. Do, do you lean either way where we're gonna go?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yes. I lean, I, I lean towards the greatness of the human family. And, and at the end of the movie, which is they stop time, but the baby goes on. And I think that, yes, I, I view, I, I view a beautiful future. And is that a problem we can't solve with the, with this ecology? I mean, there are, if we weren't involved in these idiotic wars, which, which, which, how that can even be going on is beyond me. I mean, how? You know, to me, every human baby is our human baby. And they, if you said, you know, everyone agrees, children should not be killed. They'll all say, yes, children should not be killed.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  But I mean, there's thirty, forty thousand young kids being killed every week in Sudan and in parts of Africa and in Palestine. These are potential geniuses. These are new Archimedes and new Beethovens and new Einsteins and new, and think of the gifts they could give. So, so I am, I have profound hope and faith that the genius of the human being will prevail and, and, and we'll make a, you, you of course don't have children.

• 51:21Sam Fragoso?

  How do you know?

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Well, I shouldn't say that because you're so young, but you're, you're.

• 51:26Sam Fragoso?

  You can see the long hair.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  No, you're twenty, you're twenty seven?

• 51:29Sam Fragoso?

  Thirty.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  And do you have children?

• 51:31Sam Fragoso?

  I don't, no.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Kids are the best. I mean, I have wonderful kids and, and as you know, I mean, my kids are sort of famous. Now, even my little granddaughter, Giancarlo, just did a wonderful movie for that premiere that, and I have a great.

• 51:47Sam Fragoso?

  She's been working since Palo Alto.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, Palo Alto was a good, yeah. And then there was more to her second film. Her second film got trashed because the actor didn't like it, that she had it. You know, it's dangerous when a young director works with a very powerful star.

• 52:03Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about the future by talking about the past for a second. You've told reporters you only have two regrets. First is not making One From The Heart.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  The way I had planned it, which was a total live experience because Victorio came to me and, and said that he would be rather do it where he could stop and stuff. And I loved Victorio Storaro. So what I should have said to him was, you know, Victoria, if you don't feel you're going to do it, I'm going to fire you and bring on someone who knows how to do it. Who I, I knew who it was, but I didn't do it because I cared too much for him. And that was a big mistake to plan a movie to be made a certain way and then not do it that way.

• 52:44Sam Fragoso?

  And then the other regret, you said, isn't mine alone. But my amazing generation, which didn't leave the cinema in better condition for the next generation.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Well, didn't leave not the cinema because my generation did many wonderful things, but if you're a young filmmaker and you want to get money to do a project, there's no, it's not easier than it was when I was looking to get it. And I think I would have been happy. I haven't died yet, so maybe I can figure out a way if I, if I have luck to make it easier for someone to get. That's what the American Film Institute was supposed to be.

• 53:21Sam Fragoso?

  Right. But I want to hold your quote seriously, which is, the future of film, not to mention your history in it, is something you've spent a lot of time thinking about. You devoted large chapters of your life with Zoetrope, American Zoetrope, then Zoetrope Studios, to change the industry. Are you any closer to understanding why your amazing generation, which is what you call them, didn't leave the movies in a better condition for the next generation? Why do you think that happened?

• 53:51Speaker 02

  They, they didn't leave the opportunity for young people to get funded easier. I mean, what Marty did with his work, with his preservation work and, and, and everything. He's the greatest film teacher who ever existed. He did a lot, everyone did a lot. But I, I think if, if some person here is, wants to make a film, there, there isn't anywhere to go to get a subsidy in our country. I mean, they have it in Europe, they have it in, in other places. I, I, I meant that the AFI was supposed to do that, and that was its intention. So I, I feel badly that, that if, like, I know all these wonderful apprentices, if they want to make a movie, where are they going to go to get a little help, you know,

• 54:36Speaker 02

  to, to get some sort of a subsidy or a way so they can make the movie? When I wanted to make the conversation, there was nowhere I could go to get a little bit of money to make that film. I was turned down by every possibility.

• 54:53Sam Fragoso?

  The parallels between One From the Heart and Megalopolis are, you know, the way those two speak to each other. You owed, like we talked about Chase, some money and the fallout forced you to sell the studios. And in that period, you did a New Yorker profile where you said, "If you don't bet, you don't have a chance to win. It's so silly in life to not pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine, even if you run the risk of losing it all. Because if you don't pursue it, you've lost it anyway. You can't be an artist and be safe." At 85, having put 120 million into this movie, do you still feel the same about that? That you cannot be an artist and be safe?

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You know, making art without risk is like making babies without sex. It's the way I feel. Risk is part of it.

• 55:48Sam Fragoso?

  That's gonna be the headline from the podcast. You know, you said that you're living a life that you feel Charlie Kaufman is writing, but that you're directing.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he's, I mean, his kind of mentality, because you know, you live from left to right, you live from young to old, but the only way to understand it is to look from old to young. And like if I, if I put eyes on what I was like when I was 16, 17, or even 13, or, I mean, I understand it better from this, from this vantage point, but it's very hard to do what, to view it the other way. But we know that our brain interprets everything for our survival, so that we're not getting a real impression of what the thing out there really is, you know? So I know that, so, you know, who knows?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I mean, that's why I mentioned Charlie Kaufman, because he's an extraordinary person and his mind is so unusual that I think someone of that type of creativity is, I would better understand my life through his lens than I can my own.

• 57:00Sam Fragoso?

  My last question for us, when we started the interview today, I asked you how you were doing. And you immediately mentioned your late wife, Eleanor, who was a tremendous talent, a great writer, a great filmmaker. And

• 57:16Sam Fragoso?

  The two of you met, my understanding, the two of you met on the set of Dementia 13. It was one of your early movies. It was funded by Roger Corman. And she wrote, "I remember him with his pajama pants on, his shirt off, sitting in a circle of script pages on the floor." She had said then that she knew you were, quote, "a risk taker and commanded a vision of what he wanted. You had the sense, too, of his dedication and commitment to go forward, ready or not, into this production." She said that same man appeared before her on Apocalypse Now as she was making Hearts of Darkness. What that film captured, what I think Megalopolis demonstrates, and what I think she's getting

• 57:59Sam Fragoso?

  at, is that you lived there, mind racing, as you said. You lived there first and foremost in the movie. And I wondered, as we go, at 85, I know she's no longer with us, but is this movie, is the movie the place you still long to live in?

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Well, I know I'm done with Megalopolis because I am, just finished a new script of something I want to begin that I will live in London. And I want to live in London because I never lived there, which means I never lived there with her. And I won't wake up every morning and say, "Where is she?" Because I've never been there with her. But I have the script and I'm hoping I can find financing for it because I can't just keep borrowing money to make movies. But that's where my mind is. If I, I also hope that I survive that so I could maybe, as a last film, make my film Distant Vision, which is my live movie.

• 58:57Sam Fragoso?

  So you still want to keep going?

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you have an electric toothbrush?

• 59:03Sam Fragoso?

  I do.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you know how you set it and you do it, it times the thing and then all of a sudden it just stops?

• 59:09Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  I think that's what it's like when you die. I think you're just doing it. I mean, and then it just stops. Or as Epicurus said, "Why worry about death? Because where there's life, there is no death. And when death comes, you don't exist."

• 59:24Sam Fragoso?

  Francis, I know you said earlier that you hope to have inspired young filmmakers, and you know that you have. And I just want to say, it has meant the absolute world to me that you have sat down with me for this and have been as open as you have. And I thank you for the time.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Thank you. Can I ask you a question?

• 59:42Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Are you gonna make movies?

• 59:44Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Great. You know what the secret of it is of life? Do what you love.

• 59:50Sam Fragoso?

  And I love doing this with you. So, thank you. Francis Ford Coppola.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Good luck to you.

• 1:00:38Sam Fragoso?

  I think the best clothes you own are probably the ones you spend the least amount of time thinking about. They're just there when you need them. The sweater that goes with everything. The perfect pair of pants or the tee you always reach for first. That's what I've always liked about Quince. They focus on everyday staples made with premium materials like organic cotton, merino wool, and 100% Mongolian cashmere. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, and everything is designed to be versatile enough to work with what you already own. And now that the temperatures are starting to drop, they also have premium down jackets and classic wool outerwear. Easy layers that can carry you through the fall and into winter. I've had a few of their merino wool all-season

• 1:01:19Sam Fragoso?

  tees for just over a year now, and they've really become my go-to in my wardrobe. The quality was the thing that surprised me when I first tried them out. They're comfortable, easy to layer, and after a year of wearing them regularly, they've held up remarkably well. I use them all the time and would absolutely recommend them. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, which allows them to price everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands. So you're paying for the quality of the materials rather than a big brand markup. It's not just clothing. Quince brings that same approach to hotel-quality bedding and bath, kitchen essentials, and thoughtfully-designed furniture, well-made pieces for everyday living. Find your next fall favorites at Quince.

• 1:02:02Sam Fragoso?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Talk Easy. It's really the best way to support the show. Enjoy.

• 1:02:40Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode with Francis Ford Coppola, be sure to share it on social media. You can also leave five stars on Spotify, review the program on Apple, whatever you can do. It really helps us continue making this program each and every Sunday. To learn more about Megalopolis, or Megadoc, or Sam Watson's excellent book, The Path to Paradise, visit our show notes at talkeasypod.com. For more episodes with other filmmakers, I'd recommend Ari Aster, Eva Duvernay, and Steven Soderbergh. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium

• 1:03:22Sam Fragoso?

  for exclusive bonus content and ad-free listening. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple or head to lemonadapremium.com. To watch more episodes of Talk Easy, visit our YouTube page. Just type in Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso and it should pop right up. If you want to purchase one of our mugs that come in cream or navy, you can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Matt Sasaki with assistance from Lindsay Ellis. It was mixed by Andrew Vastone. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Kritcha Shanaw. Photographs today come from Maria Alvarez. Research assistance, Pierce Harvey.

• 1:04:06Sam Fragoso?

  This episode was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media, and I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with a brand new episode featuring writer Aron Doty-Ro. Until then, stay safe and so long.

• 1:04:49Speaker 06

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:04:57Speaker 07

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:05:03Speaker 07

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:05:06Speaker 06

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:05:12Speaker 06

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be. History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating, so you know how much weight to give the source,

• 1:05:53Speaker 06

  and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it. The Nobel Peace Center called it An excellent way to stay informed. Avoid echo chambers and expand your worldview. So go to groundnews.com/rz. That's G R O U N D N E W S dot com slash R C for 40% off unlimited access vantage plan. Get it yourself or gift it to someone who'd rather know than not. Use my link, groundnews.com/rz, so you get the discount and they know I sent you. If you're a fan of learning all sides of history, then Ground News is for you. One more time, groundnews.com/rz.