Geekscape Reviews: ‘The Director’s Chair’ with Francis Ford Coppola is a Must-See
“The things they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give you lifetime achievement awards for when you are old.” That’s one of the best lessons to take away from at the end of the next hour of The Director’s Chair on the El Rey Network, featuring Robert Rodriguez interviewing the godfather of modern cinema, Francis Ford Coppola.
A popular hypothetical question I hear asked occasionally is who, living or dead, would you invite for dinner? It’s a fun question I have legitimately thought hard about, which is ridiculous because one of my go-to answers is Bruce Lee which renders the effort of thinking this hard makes me question my priorities.
But the rest are almost always artists or filmmakers. A few leaders, sure — if I could sit with Bruce Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. I wouldn’t even chew my food — but, almost always, my choices are the visionaries behind the most intricate art that humans have created.
The Director’s Chair is not the most unique thing to ever happen. There are such a thing called podcasts, after all, and Inside the Actor’s Studio. But that doesn’t discount the series or its merits in the slightest. It’s not just filmmakers talking, it’s Robert Rodriguez — the guy who inspires all film students to pick up a camera, like yours truly — talking to giants of the cinema in an intimate setting with a conventional four-camera set-up.
The attraction in every episode is clearly watching Rodriguez speak to filmmakers as a pseudo-journalist, resulting in very different episodes individually, but all aesthetically unified. (What a distortion of the auteur theory.)
This Monday’s episode of The Director’s Chair on the El Rey Network sees Robert (“Roberto?” Coppola asks at one point) speaking to Francis Ford Coppola, and it’s a can’t-miss. There are no scandals or juicy inside information to learn from here, because fuck all of that noise. This is purely Coppola speaking as an artist who had his struggles both before and after his name became household. It’s sentimental and sweet, and shortly afterward it just made me want to watch Apocalypse Now, of which they go into rather heavily.
The arc of the episode is not unfamiliar with similar docu-talk programs. There are the early years, when Coppola was a theatre director in college, and before you know it (because they have commercial breaks to consider) they’re talking about Coppola and Lucas on the set of Warner Bros.
The Godfather is the first film they really speak of, and they go rather in-depth. Once again, it’s nothing new if you’ve binged on the special features of your umpteenth Godfather home release, but with Rodriguez steering the conversation it’s still refreshing to watch and listen.
Of most depth they go into is Apocalypse Now. I don’t know if I can really “spoil” anything here, but you need to listen to Coppola being “scared stiff” during production. To say it was a risky production is a terribly obvious statement, but hearing Coppola himself talk about the stress he felt during production reduces this giant into a human. Our current celebrity culture puts people on a pedestal, whether they deserve it or not. Coppola is a commanding name, among the few that even those who aren’t film buffs immediately recognize as a near immortal auteur. To see Coppola be just human is a remarkable moment.
I read The Outsiders like every middle schooler in 21st-century America, and I honestly enjoyed that film of his. I know it isn’t a stand-out work in his ouvre, but I have a personal connection to it. Coppola also confesses it as “saccharine,” which might disappoint a lot of people.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the one Coppola movie I express the most fascination with due to its stark contrast against the rest of his filmography, is discussed but not nearly enough as I hoped. He and Rodriguez, an SFX guy himself, dwell mostly on the very interesting and thematically-rich special effects work and complications and is worth listening to. But I wanted to hear more about the film overall.
As a dumb millennial of the YouTube age, I’m trying to make of what Coppola thinks of indie filmmaking today. Towards the end of the program, he’s asked what he thinks about the evolving technology in cinema. That has become a standard question to ask all filmmakers today, and you often hear the same answers over and over. There are those who lament the labor of old school techniques, others are optimistic about shooting and editing and distributing an entire film with the device in your pocket. I won’t repurpose what he said because this is a special you need to see, but Coppola speaks of his excitement for “live cinema.” Live shots, montage, but “being performed for you.”
“Someone’s gonna do it,” he says. I’ll fool myself into thinking I’ll be that guy.
The sprinkles on this filmmaker’s dessert are the personal touch Rodriguez has towards Coppola. Rodriguez clearly would not feature a filmmaker he doesn’t care or know about, but he has known Coppola for years. There’s home footage of the two of them speaking with their kids running around or falling asleep on their shoulders. It really underscores the conversation as intimate, but it never feels like you’re intruding.
The last remarks of Coppola subverts what we know artists to be. Rodriguez reinforces that filmmakers need to be thick-skinned, but Coppola almost opposes that. “The good ones are insecure,” he says. “You naturally beat yourself up, but that’s part of the personality.” As someone who has been VERY insecure about his work, it’s something I’ve taken to heart that is slowly shedding my shyness towards my own art.
Thanks Coppola. Because of you, the world will get to see my next music video I’m directing for my friend’s band. It’s gonna have skeletons and demons and Satanic sacrifice. I’m not kidding by the way. I can’t wait!
Robert Rodriguez speaking to Francis Ford Coppola was going to be a must-see even if it were just an hour of them talking about doing laundry. These are two remarkable artists of our generation with critically divisive work whose contributions to the cinema are boundless. You can’t miss this hour of television.
The Director’s Chair with Francis Ford Coppola airs Monday, March 2 at 8 PM EST/8:30 PST on the El Rey Network. It is immediately followed by Francis Ford Coppola’s Academy Award-nominated film, The Conversation, which lost to The Godfather Part II, which was also directed by Coppola. How many people in our industry can say that happened?
