Top 100 Ford Coppola Quotes
#1. There's a story that during the filming of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola had a sign on his trailer: Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick Two.
Maria Semple
#2. I'd love to work with Francis Ford Coppola. I met Coppola on an airplane.
Paul Reubens
#3. My existence was never a Francis Ford Coppola existence.
Victoria Gotti
#4. Francis Ford Coppola - A man climbs a mountain and they call him a hero. I climb mountains that aren't even there.
Madeline Moore
#5. Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.
Al Pacino
#6. We finally settled on Francis Ford Coppola's version of Dracula, which, unfortunately, Gabriel seemed to think was a comedy. I think it was the combination of Keanu Reeves's British accent and Gary Oldman's elderly Count Dracula hairstyle. They're just misleading.
Molly Harper
#8. I grew up on film sets and I had a ball. It wouldn't have had nearly as much fun if my dad had been working behind a desk somewhere. I remember being on the set of 'The Godfather: Part III,' and all the kids were running around and doing crazy things, and Francis Ford Coppola just embraced that.
Dominik Garcia-Lorido
#9. Francis Ford Coppola observed, "The way to come to power is not always to merely challenge the Establishment, but first make a place in it and then challenge and double-cross the Establishment.
Adam M. Grant
#10. You'd get on the plane; and every single person is somebody really, really famous. It just killed me. On one flight you'd have Linda Gray, O.J. Simpson, Robert De Niro, Carol Burnett, Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds ... and Francis Ford Coppola.
Paul Reubens
#11. Just personally, I've been attached to 'On the Road' since 2007 and it was the greatest thing in my life when I got cast in it. I couldn't believe it. When I was 17 and read the book, I looked it up on IMDb and it said that Francis Ford Coppola was going to direct it.
Garrett Hedlund
#12. Bill Gates recently picked up the ukulele. And Warren Buffett is a huge ukulele fan. I even got to strum a few chords with Francis Ford Coppola. It blows my mind that these people, who have everything in the world they could want, have picked up the ukulele and found a little bit of joy.
Jake Shimabukuro
#13. When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.
Francis Ford Coppola
#14. 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
#15. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#16. 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
#17. We support each other in the Coppola family. We love the idea of everyone getting his place in the sun.
Francis Ford Coppola
#18. 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
#19. Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.
Francis Ford Coppola
#20. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#21. 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
#22. As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work.
Francis Ford Coppola
#23. 'Godfather' was very classical - the way it was shot, the style - the whole driving force of it was more classical, almost Shakespearean.
Francis Ford Coppola
#24. I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'
Francis Ford Coppola
#25. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#26. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#28. '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
#29. 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
#32. It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.
Francis Ford Coppola
#33. The only TV I would be interested in exploring would be live television. There's no substitute for a team of artists performing at their peak live when failure is possible. It's a high-wire act. That excites me.
Francis Ford Coppola
#34. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.
Francis Ford Coppola
#35. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.
Francis Ford Coppola
#39. 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
#40. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#44. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#45. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#46. 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
#50. I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.
Francis Ford Coppola
#51. 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
#52. I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.
Francis Ford Coppola
#53. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#60. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#61. Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.
Francis Ford Coppola
#62. I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.
Francis Ford Coppola
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#67. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
Francis Ford Coppola
#68. 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
#69. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#74. 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
#75. 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
#77. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#78. 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
#79. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can't steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that's how you will find your voice.
Francis Ford Coppola
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#85. Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.
Francis Ford Coppola
#86. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#91. 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
#93. Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker.
Francis Ford Coppola
#94. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#95. 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
#96. I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
Francis Ford Coppola
#98. 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.
Francis Ford Coppola
#99. I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.
Francis Ford Coppola
#100. 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
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