Francis Ford Coppola (May)

"I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be under-ambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!"

Francis Ford Coppola is a difficult filmmaker to write about in the scope of this project. Going into 2015, I had already seen The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Conversation. They happen to be three of my favorite and most-respected movies. With this in mind, I had very high hopes for Apocolypse Now (which I had seen parts of here and there) and didn't really know what to think of Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, and American Graffiti (which Coppola only produced).

I watched Apocolypse Now first and loved it. Loved it. It's the best movie I've watched this year with astonishing performances throughout. When you read about the turmoil behind the scenes, it's even more amazing that such a wonderful polished product came out the other end. This film easily could've never made it to print, like another Lost in La Mancha. I haven't gotten my hands on the making-of documentary Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocolypse that Francis' wife Eleanor directed, but I'd like to. In fact, I was so smitten with the movie that I grabbed the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and read it within about 36 hours of finishing the movie. I might catch flak for this, but I preferred the film to the source material.

Anyways, after watching that triumph, I turned to American Graffiti. What can I say about this film? It's a classic, and it always makes me smile to know that teenagers have been doing the same stupid things for about 75 years. The back story to this one (and honestly, the whole story of the Coppola-Lucas-Spielberg friendship) is also quite fascinating, and led directly to the production of Apocolypse Now. I doubt I'd ever need to re-watch this one, but I'm glad I've seen it the whole way through now.

Which leaves us with the two S.E. Hinton adaptations, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, released in the same calendar year. I don't really know what to make of these movies. They're both decently well-liked, and the former has a truly stellar ensemble cast. I'm glad I've seen the "stay golden, pony boy" line now with my own eyes. But frankly, I found these movies odd, scatterbrained, and often dull. The denim-gangs-getting-into-trouble story was similar in both films, and I was thoroughly confused by the chemically-colored fish in the otherwise black and white Rumble Fish. Mickey Rourke was quite good-looking in his day, though. That's about the highest praise I can shell out for these movies.

• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocolypse Now (1979) - 9.5
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5

The Coppola name/family is now basically an entire industry in Hollywood, but the patriarch who started it all hasn't made a well-liked movie in about three decades. After making some of the most beloved movies of all time, that's a pretty tough break- sorry Francis. Anyways next up are the fantastic films of Pedro Almodovar!!!