Coppola, Francis Ford
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Coppola, Francis Ford
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See biography by M. Schumacher (1999).
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Coppola, Francis Ford (1939–)
(pop culture)Francis Ford Coppola, director of the 1992 motion picture Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was born on April 7, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan. In 1962, three years after completing his bachelor’s degree at Hofstra University, he went to work for Roger Corman at American International Pictures. He served as co-director and co-screenwriter for The Playgirls and the Bellboy before directing his first horror films The Terror and Dementia 13 in 1963. That same year he married Eleanor Neil. In 1964 he became the director at Seven Arts and while there also completed a Masters of Fine Arts degree at UCLA (1967). His film You’re a Big Boy Now was accepted by the school as his master’s thesis. He would become the first major American film director to come out of one of the several university film programs that had arisen in post–World War II America. Three years after his graduation he won his first Oscar for his screenplay for Patton.
In 1972, he founded the Directors Company with Peter Bogdanovich and William Franklin. That same year he had his first major motion picture, The Godfather, for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay (with Mario Puzo). He also won two Oscars for The Godfather, Part II: one for best director and one for best screenplay (again with Puzo). His 1979 production Apocalypse Now was the first major picture about the Vietnam War. It won the Palme d’Or and the Fipresci Prize from the Cannes Festival. He moved on to do a number of notable films, including Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and The Godfather, Part III.
Coppola thus emerged in the early 1990s as the most acclaimed director ever to turn his attention to the Dracula theme. The production began with a screenplay by Jim Hart and with Winona Ryder (who gave Coppola the screenplay) as Mina Murray, the female lead. There were budget limitations, and a decision was reached to film the picture entirely at Columbia’s studios in Los Angeles. It took 68 days. A basically youthful cast was selected along with Anthony Hopkins, fresh from his Oscar win for best actor for Silence of the Lambs, as Abraham Van Helsing. His goal was to take the old theme, return to the novel for fresh inspiration, and produce a new movie that would stand out from the prior Dracula versions.
The screenplay not only relied upon the Bram Stoker novel, but the extensive research on the historical Dracula, the fifteenth-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler by historians Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu. In order to integrate that new historical material, a rationale for the actions of Dracula (based in part upon unresolved personal issues from the fifteenth century) was injected into the story line from the novel. The movie was also helped by changing guidelines concerning what could be shown on the screen. For example, it was not until 1979 in the Frank Langella Dracula that the vital scene from the novel in which Dracula and Mina shared blood was incorporated into a film.
Though Coppola had available to him the high-tech special effects developed in the decade since the previous Dracula, he chose not to use them. Instead, he returned to some older tricks of cinematic illusions. Elaborate use of double exposures was employed and miniatures were used instead of matte paintings to provide more depth.
The finished product quickly took its place among the best of the Dracula films, though Dracula aficionados were divided on it. The initial response to its opening surprised many, grossing double the original expectations for its first week when it played on almost 2,500 screens. The movie provided Columbia Pictures with its largest opening ever, surpassing Ghostbusters 2 (1989). It has proved equally popular on video. A rumored sequel, Van Helsing’s Chronicles, that would have continued the story of the vampire hunter with star Anthony Hopkins was never filmed. Coppola has not revised the vampire theme in subsequent films.
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