Francis Ford Coppola
弗朗西斯·福特·科波拉
American director, born 1939. He made The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Conversation in the 1970s, and founded the studio American Zoetrope in 1969. Apocalypse Now took more than a year to shoot in the Philippines, with the overruns guaranteed against his own property, leaving him in debt for years afterwards. He has received five Academy Awards.
Career
Coppola studied film at UCLA, worked for Roger Corman in the early 1960s and won an Academy Award in 1970 for the screenplay of Patton. Paramount tried more than once to replace him during the production of The Godfather in 1972. The Conversation and The Godfather Part II both opened in 1974; the first took the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Apocalypse Now was shot in the Philippines over sixteen months, during which a typhoon destroyed the sets and Martin Sheen had a heart attack; Coppola guaranteed the overruns against his own property. It opened in 1979 and shared the Palme d'Or with The Tin Drum. One from the Heart lost money in 1982 and bankrupted his Zoetrope studio, after which he took work for years to pay off the debt.
