Francis ford coppola quotes

They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.

In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

I still think Ned Beatty should've played Don Corleone.

The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me.

I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.

Work on nothing less than epic scale

I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.

Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work.

Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.

'Godfather' was very classical, the way it was shot, the style, the whole driving force of it was more classical, almost Shakespearean.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.

I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In 'The Godfather' it was succession. In 'The Conversation' it was privacy. In 'Apocalypse' it was morality.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

By working in the morning, I find a sense of peace; it's isolated peace, but I can definitely be in touch with my feelings, and then I just start.

The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.

Movies are the art form most like man's imagination.

I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I live near San Francisco in the most beautiful spot on earth and enjoy myself in many ways. Yes, I love to work, which for now is to think and read and write, so it's all a dream come true.

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.

The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.

I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn’t have a lot of friends. Theater really represented that kind of camaraderie.

I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.

Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.

I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.

People feel the worst film I made was 'Jack.' But to this day, when I get checks from old movies I've made, 'Jack' is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that. If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams.

Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent.

I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast

You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.

Art depends on luck and talent.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.

The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.

One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes.

I probably have genius. But no talent.

If I have to be remembered for something, I want it remembered that I really liked children and was a good camp counselor.

You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.

Of all the human evils, of which we have thousands of years of record and our own contemporary experiences, the most horrible evil of all is hypocrisy. It's this idea that there are those who do bad and there are those who do good, when, in fact, even the people who supposedly do good are saying they do good to mask the fact that they do evil.

It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.

A director is the ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself.

I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.

My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something

I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.

Death is what makes life an event.

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

I don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money.

Wine is so much more than a beverage. It's a romance, a story, a drama-all of those things that are basically putting on a show.

I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.

I was a pretty shy, lonely kid. I blossomed about age 17, when I went to college.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

I've been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films. I didn't make that money necessarily from the film business, but I eventually made a lot of money and that's what I do. Of course, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate, and I'm pretty content with my life.

Roger Corman exploited all of the young people who worked for him, but he really gave you responsibility and opportunity. So it was kind of a fair deal.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.

If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.

The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work.

The essence of cinema is editing.

Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.

I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.

I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.

I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.

My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.

Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.

The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form.

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it.

Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker.

Cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby.

Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.

Collaboration is like the sex of creativity.

Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food.

Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.

Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way.

I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I'm all alone where I'm not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I'm dead in the water.

We had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane.

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.

I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be underambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!

I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.

Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.

My film isn't about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane.

Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.

I have much to learn from my daughter Sofia. Her minimalism exposes my limitations: I'm too instinctive and operatic, I put too much heart into my work, I get lost sometimes in bizarre things - it's my Italian heritage.

I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can.

When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater - how at first it's alright and you can handle it, and then as it gets closer and closer to the time when you must breathe, how urgent the need becomes, the lust and the hunger to breathe. And then the panic sets in when you begin to think that you won't be able to breathe - and finally, when you take in air and the anxiety subsides...that's what it's like to be a vampire and need blood.

Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives.

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.

A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.

The internet in hotels should be free - and I really resent it when they charge you five dollars for a bottle of water beside your bed.

The things you get fired for when you’re young are the same things that you get lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.