Author Sam Wasson (“The Big Goodbye”, “The Oral History of Hollywood”) returns to the podcast to discuss his latest book, “The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story” (Harper Collins, 2023).
Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of movie making. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, “Megalopolis”. As Wasson makes clear, the story of Zoetrope is also the story of Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola, and their children, and of personal lives inseparable from artistic passion. It is a story that charts the divergent paths of Coppola and his co-founder and onetime apprentice, George Lucas, and of their very different visions of art and commerce. And it is a story inextricably bound up in the making of one of the greatest quixotic masterpieces ever attempted, “Apocalypse Now”, and in what Coppola found in the jungles of the Philippines when he walked the razor’s edge. That story, already the stuff of legend, has never fully been told, until this extraordinary book.
Ep 803: Karen Allen & William Sadler • Maren Poitras
Ep 802: Stephen Ujlaki & Anne Nelson • Matthew Penn
Ep 801: Mick Lynch
Ep 800: Larry Fessenden & Alex Hurt
Ep 799: KIM’S VIDEO with Ashley Sabin, David Redmon & Mr. Kim
Ep 798: Brian Mitchell
Ep 797: Tony Fletcher
Ep 796: Mario Van Peebles & Mandela Van Peebles
Ep 795: Celebrating Veselka • Katja Esson
Ep 793: Rachel Beth Anderson & Amanda Mustard
Ep 792: Wim Wenders
Ep 791: Lasse Lyskjær Noer • Josh Karp
Ep 790: Eszter Bailint Returns
Ep 789: PJ Raval • Simon Kilmurry & Susan Margolin
Ep 788: Richard Edson & Nick Ebeling
Ep 787: Lara Hope & Laura Wilson Crimmins
Ep 786: Mark Barden • Ray Nowosielski & Dave Cassidy
Ep 785: Natalia Leite • Bill Sage & Travis Burgess
Ep 784: Nick Broomfield • Gail Merrifield Pap
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