Top 100 Francis Ford Coppola Quotes
#1. I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.
Francis Ford Coppola
#2. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#3. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#4. Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.
Francis Ford Coppola
#5. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#6. As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work.
Francis Ford Coppola
#7. I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'
Francis Ford Coppola
#8. 'The Godfather' changed my life, for better or worse. It definitely made me have an older man's film career when I was 29.
Francis Ford Coppola
#9. I was always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school.
Francis Ford Coppola
#11. It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.
Francis Ford Coppola
#12. I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, I learned so much today, that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old.
Francis Ford Coppola
#13. George Lucas doesn't have the most physical stamina. He was so unhappy making Star Wars that he just vowed he'd never do it again.
Francis Ford Coppola
#14. There's a hormone secreted into the bloodstream of most writers that makes them hate their own work while they are doing it, or immediately after. This, coupled with the chorus of critical reaction from those privileged to take a first look, is almost enough to discourage further work entirely.
Francis Ford Coppola
#17. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#21. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#22. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#24. My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something ...
Francis Ford Coppola
#25. You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.
Francis Ford Coppola
#26. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#27. Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.
Francis Ford Coppola
#29. Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.
Francis Ford Coppola
#31. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#32. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#33. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
Francis Ford Coppola
#34. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#35. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#36. Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up.
Francis Ford Coppola
#37. I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I'll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone's permission.
Francis Ford Coppola
#38. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#39. Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.
Francis Ford Coppola
#41. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#42. 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.'
Francis Ford Coppola
#43. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#44. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#45. I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.
Francis Ford Coppola
#46. Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.
Francis Ford Coppola
#47. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#49. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#50. The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.
Francis Ford Coppola
#52. I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.
Francis Ford Coppola
#54. I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast
Francis Ford Coppola
#55. I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
Francis Ford Coppola
#57. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#59. I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.
Francis Ford Coppola
#61. Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.
Francis Ford Coppola
#62. If I have to be remembered for something, I want it remembered that I really liked children and was a good camp counselor.
Francis Ford Coppola
#63. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#64. 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
Francis Ford Coppola
#65. When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.
Francis Ford Coppola
#66. I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.
Francis Ford Coppola
#67. Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
Francis Ford Coppola
#68. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#70. A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
Francis Ford Coppola
#71. I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.
Francis Ford Coppola
#72. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#73. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#74. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#75. Movie-wise, there is nothing I wouldn't do again. It's not possible to make one perfect movie every time.
Francis Ford Coppola
#76. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#77. I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn't have a lot of friends. Theater really represented camaraderie.
Francis Ford Coppola
#78. Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.
Francis Ford Coppola
#79. I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while.
Francis Ford Coppola
#81. We teach our boys to firebomb villages, but we won't let them write fuck on the side of their planes because it's obscene.
Francis Ford Coppola
#82. If you're a person who says yes most of the time, you'll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.
Francis Ford Coppola
#83. I was a pretty shy, lonely kid. I blossomed about age 17, when I went to college.
Francis Ford Coppola
#84. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#85. I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality.
Francis Ford Coppola
#86. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#87. I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.
Francis Ford Coppola
#88. I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.
Francis Ford Coppola
#89. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#90. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#92. I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director.
Francis Ford Coppola
#94. I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.
Francis Ford Coppola
#95. I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.
Francis Ford Coppola
#96. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#97. I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.
Francis Ford Coppola
#98. When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.
Francis Ford Coppola
#99. Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.
Francis Ford Coppola
#100. My company and people think I'm wacky when I have an idea ... I know if I have an idea, no one will want to go through it. But if I persist, people will go through it.
Francis Ford Coppola
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