Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

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

When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.

I don't go on set with an army of people because the most expensive elements of a movie production are the plane tickets, the hotel rooms, food and gasoline. If you're willing to discover new colleagues in the place that you are, you can save a ton of money.

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

I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In 'The Godfather' it was succession. In 'The Conversation' it was privacy. In 'Apocalypse' it was morality.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

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

The notebook was my anchor through all of it.

By working in the morning, I find a sense of peace; it's isolated peace, but I can definitely be in touch with my feelings, and then I just start.

I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.

The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form.

We do things for good reasons that are bad.

'The Godfather' changed my life, for better or worse. It definitely made me have an older man's film career when I was 29.

Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.

Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.

Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food.

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

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

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

I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.

I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.

I loved it; I was living a dream.

Cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby.

I probably have genius. But no talent.

I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.

I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I'll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone's permission.

You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.

Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.

I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.

They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.

I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

The internet in hotels should be free - and I really resent it when they charge you five dollars for a bottle of water beside your bed.

If I have to be remembered for something, I want it remembered that I really liked children and was a good camp counselor.

There's a hormone secreted into the bloodstream of most writers that makes them hate their own work while they are doing it, or immediately after. This, coupled with the chorus of critical reaction from those privileged to take a first look, is almost enough to discourage further work entirely.

I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast

We teach our boys to firebomb villages, but we won't let them write fuck on the side of their planes because it's obscene.

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.

George Lucas doesn't have the most physical stamina. He was so unhappy making Star Wars that he just vowed he'd never do it again.

We support each other in the Coppola family. We love the idea of everyone getting his place in the sun.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.

Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.

I had to get a job, and of course, the job was 'The Godfather.' That made me be something I didn't know I was going to be. I became a big-shot director.

Art depends on luck and talent.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.

I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.

We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.

Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

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.

I have much to learn from my daughter Sofia. Her minimalism exposes my limitations: I'm too instinctive and operatic, I put too much heart into my work, I get lost sometimes in bizarre things - it's my Italian heritage.

Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.

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 essence of cinema is editing.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

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

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

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, I learned so much today, that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old.

Upon that second reading, much of the book fell away in my mind, revealing a story that was a metaphor for American capitalism in the tale of a great king with three sons: the oldest was given his passion and aggressiveness, the second his sweet nature and childlike qualities, and the third his intelligence, cunning, and coldness.

My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved.

It was the man's dream, and his inspiring attempt to make them come true that remain important.

When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.

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

Work on nothing less than epic scale

The things you get fired for when you're young are the same things that you get lifetime achievement awards for when you're old.

The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

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.

It takes no imagination to live within your means.

The time a movie is made is unique, not only from the talent that is available but if the public was ready for it.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it.

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me.

I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'

I don't see any method at all...Sir

Music is a big factor in helping the illusion of the film come to life. The same way music brings back different periods of our lives.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.

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.

That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.

A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.

When I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film, which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'

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.

Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

My company and people think I'm wacky when I have an idea ... I know if I have an idea, no one will want to go through it. But if I persist, people will go through it.

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.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?