Great Throughts Treasury

"I think "The Godfather: Part III" had a lot of good things about it. It had good potential. I think it was made a little too rushed because it was made in one year and they wanted it out that Christmas. It was a big, complex, difficult story. I think if I had spent more time writing it I would have solved or defined some of the issues better, rather than doing it while we were shooting. Also I think the loss of Robert Duvall as a character made a difference. As I look back on it, he was a very important part of that story. Clearly he was the most important character still living from the other movies. So I think ultimately losing the Hagen character was more than I was able to write my way out of so quickly. I could have done it had we not started shooting right away."

"I think for me, the showdown was when my granddaughter's class asked me to come and show the film and I was embarrassed to show the normal version, ... So I cobbled together a version of the whole movie, the whole novel, and I remember looking at it and wondering, `Why did I ever cut this down?'"

"I think people have realized that "The Godfather" was never sequel material. I've always maintained there should have been one "Godfather," though I'm proud of the second one, and I thought the third should have been considered a coda and not called "The Godfather: Part III.""

"I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories."

"I think it was more like the original Francis before The Godfather who just wanted to make personal films and use sensible-sized crews and equipment."

"I think cinema, movies and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made films were magicians."

"I think if there was a role that Robert De Niro was hungry for, he would come after it. I don't think Jack Nicholson would. Jack has money and influence and girls, and I think he's a little bit like Marlon Brando, except Brando went through some tough times. I guess they don't want to do it anymore"

"I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories."

"I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam."

"I wanted to make films like "Youth Without Youth" and the one I'm doing next in my 20s. Instead, I made "The Godfather". In a way, Youth Without Youth is a natural continuation of what I was doing with "The Rain People" and "The Conversation". I made The Godfather and it just totally changed my life. Suddenly I was an important director. I wasn't this young, experimental filmmaker that I'd hoped to be."

"I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book."

"I was offered "Thirteen Days". I said I would do it but I had a very experimental way of doing it. My idea was: what if in that moment of history I got called up and they said, "Listen, Mr Coppola, the President is about to go through an extremely difficult period, he's got to make some terrifying, heartbreaking decisions and he wants you to document it. But you can't go close to him because he's going to be in many difficult meetings through the night. So what you can do is have a 16mm team using very long lenses. We don't want them to know you're shooting." And then make it that way. That's what I wanted to do, but they didn't have the courage to do it. So I said, "Make it like a regular movie." They did a pretty good job."

"I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school."

"I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be."

"If I've met three geniuses in my life, Marlon [Brando] would have to be top of the list."

"I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality."

"If you don't bet, you don't have a chance to win."

"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."

"I'm in a unique situation. I'm like now an elderly retired guy who made a lot of money, and now I can just, instead of playing golf, I can make art films."

"If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes."

"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."

"In many ways, because of "Star Wars", we were deprived of the films that he was going to make and would have made. All the merchandising and financial success of those films aren't one-tenth to what he is worth as an artist and a filmmaker."

"In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer."

"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."

"In the 60s they were four filmmakers who represented cinema and influenced everyone who came after: Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman and Kubrick."

"Ironically, 'Apocalypse Now' was a great, great success and remains to this day a classic -- and really is one of the things that earns the money that supports my family, ... But at the time, when 'Apocalypse Now' was actually about to come out, I was very worried about it."

"It's a parable, it's a fable. It's almost like an intellectual Twilight Zone , ... In a way it's like a Hitchcock picture and Tim Roth is the Jimmy Stewart, the guy who gets caught up in something fascinating and big."

"Initially, the idea of a sequel seemed horrible to me. It sounded like a tacky spin-off, and I used to joke that the only way I'd do it was if they'd let me film 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Godfather'- that would have been fun. Then I entertained some Russian film executives who were visiting San Francisco and they asked me if I was going to make 'The Godfather Part II'. That was the first time I heard the phrase used; I guess you could say I stole the title from the Russians. In short, it seemed like such a terrible idea that I was intrigued by the thought of pulling it off. Simple as that."

"It was a nightmare. It was deceptive. I was sucked in without knowing what was going on. It was like a pretty girl who gets seduced. I didn't realize that the only reason I was getting sweet-talked and enticed by Robert Evans to do The Cotton Club was that he needed me to get the money. It was a terrible experience. I like Gregory Hines very much, Richard Gere is basically a good guy, Diane Lane is a sweet person. But it was Bob Evans again. He was back and trying to take control of it. About 20 to 30 minutes were taken out of the Gregory Hines-and-his-brother storyline, the back story. I'd like to see it as the long version. But I don't think it will ever happen."

"It takes no imagination to live within your means."

"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."

"I've been failing for like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it'll turn. Right now I'm just tryin' to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order."

"My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam."

"One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa is that he didn't make a masterpiece or two masterpieces, he made, you know, eight masterpieces"

"I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do."

"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."

"Jack was a movie that everybody hated and I was constantly damned and ridiculed for. I must say I find Jack sweet and amusing. I don't dislike it as much as everyone, but that's obvious - I directed it. I know I should be ashamed of it but I'm not. I don't know why everybody hated it so much. I think it was because of the type of movie it was. It was considered that I had made Apocalypse Now and I'm like a Marty Scorcese type of director, and here I am making this dumb Disney film with Robin Williams. But I was always happy to do any type of film."

"Marlon [Brando] was never hard to work with. His behavior was a little eccentric on the set. He was like a bad boy and did what he wanted. But as an actor he was never hard to work with."

"Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful."

"My all-time favorite because he embodies passion, emotion and has warmth."

"Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker."

"Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work."

"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."

"Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful. Martin Scorsese, I think, is different. If Exxon went to Martin and said, "Martin, we feel you're one of the best artists in the world today and we're going to finance any movie you want to make because we believe that at the end of your life those will be very valuable movies," he would be making very different movies from what he's making now. I think he probably has scripts that he's trying to get someone to enable him to make and then another one comes on and they say, "Look, we have Jack Nicholson and so on and so on. Would you do it? And of course he says, "Okay. Not that he doesn't like it or they're not good movies, but I think that his heart is maybe in more personal filmmaking."

"People feel the worst film I made was 'Jack.' But to this day, when I get checks from old movies I've made, 'Jack' is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that. If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams."

"The easiest way to make sure a movie is successful is to make a traditional movie very well. If you make a slightly unusual movie or [don't] exactly follow the rules as everyone sees them, then you get in trouble or, like with Apocalypse, wait 20 years to hear that was really good."

"The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy."

"The Godfather changed my life, for better or worse. It definitely made me have an older man's film career when I was 29. So now I say, 'If I had my older career when I was young, as an older man, maybe I can have a young film-maker's career.'"

"The book is inherently difficult to adapt to the screen, and we've never quite found the right combination of director and writer to do it justice until now."

"Roger Corman exploited all of the young people who worked for him, but he really gave you responsibility and opportunity. So it was kind of a fair deal."