US director
Francis Ford Coppola: “I was convinced I would fail”
Francis Ford Coppola often felt insecure. Photo: Ian Langsdon / EPA / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Francis Ford Coppola wrote film history with “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”. But the director is no stranger to major doubts.
Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola (82, “The Godfather”) did not previously have great confidence in his work as a director.
When his films were made, “there was more of a feeling of failure,” said Coppola in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “I was convinced that I would fail, I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be. Some people loved it, others thought it was all terrible. In my head I had failed and then I was offered opportunities to fail even more dramatically. That’s roughly my memory. “
Remembering Tom Cruise
Coppola has just released a new version of his 1983 film “The Outsiders”. It is the newly cut film adaptation of a youth novel that tells of two rival gangs. Tom Cruise, who Coppola noticed even then, plays a supporting role. “From my experience with the young Tom Cruise – later in life I never met him again – I can say that he really wanted to be the best.”
Even back then, Cruise did physically dangerous things in front of the camera: “For example, rollover a handstand over cars. At the end of the film there is a big fight between the two warring gangs, and then he knocked out an incisor himself because he thought that it was otherwise not authentic enough. As a total supporting actor, for a few seconds of film. “