Seattle Gay News
Issue 26, Volume 37, June 26, 2009
section 4 Pride Special
Francis Ford Coppola
courtesy Arkansas times
SGN's Scott Rice interviews
Francis Ford Coppola
by Scott Rice SGN Contributing Writer I’m not a guy that gets star-struck. I’ve met a few famous people along the way, and most of the time I find they’re just a person. Maybe an incredibly talented or wealthy person, but underneath all the celebrity, they’re still just a person. This is my midwestern center peeking out from behind my fractured urbane Seattle façade. So I was a bit chagrined to find myself getting antsy as I waited to meet with Francis Ford Coppola and the Robin to his Batman, Alden Ehrenreich, who plays Bennie in Coppola’s new film Tetro. My trepidation was understandable if you consider that I’d been up late rewatching Youth Without Youth and getting my first taste of The Rainmaker (grrrrrr Grisham). The lack of sleep was compounded by dealing with my day job(s), finishing a review of another film, and preparing for the big meet with the legend himself. To top things off, the in-
terviews were running late so I spent a bit more than an hour milling around the Central Library, drinking iced tea, and urinating every 15 minutes. All of my angst was pointless, because once in the ridiculously large room filled with a small round table, three chairs, and little else, I began to chat with Francis and Alden and all of my unease began to melt away. Francis is an unassuming nice guy with a demeanor much less poetic than his films. Alden is an angel-faced college student (perhaps the luckiest one on the planet) who slipped back and forth between fidgety boredom and stabs at eloquent discourse. They are funny together, this odd couple. They obviously enjoy each other’s company and I think they both actually like doing interviews. Whatever the case, these charming men at opposite ends of nearly every spectrum you could put forth melted away my anxiety with grace and charm.
Scott Rice: How’s it going? Francis Ford Coppola: Hey, Scott. How are you? Rice: Excellent. You guys seem fresh. Alden Ehrenreich: We seem fresh? Rice: Yeah, you do. Coppola: That’s because when people ask you questions you don’t expect or that you didn’t have to answer before, you suddenly wake up. Rice: You know that throws down the gauntlet for me. Coppola: Follow your heart. I’m sure if you ask something you’re really interested in, it will be fine. Rice: First question: when did you become a European filmmaker? Coppola: You know, my generation had two traditions to stimulate them. One was, of course, the wonderful American films that we all got taken to the movies to see. But also this incredible new European tradition that was, for me, coming out in the newer scene in the late ‘50s or middle ‘50s. You know art films; Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa, the
New Wave, and Rossellini, who sort of spawned that group with Fellini and Antonioni…. Rice: I never hear you mention Ozu. Coppola: I love Ozu. In fact, this film is shot as if Ozu had shot it because the camera never moves. I love Ozu. Rice: Yeah, I thought of that in the early scenes in the apartment. Coppola: There was a double influence since I was a theater major and I wanted to be a playwright. Of course, there began to be this idea that I could write my own stories and then just go and make it. The question was, who would let me do that? Rice: Even though you bring in a lot of European aesthetics, you’re still distinctly American in your storytelling – until the last two films. Coppola: I think partly because that was the so-called auteur movement where people wrote and directed. In the Hollywood or American film tradition, the idea of the writer/director had not see coppola page 10