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      Cannes Festival Unveils 2024 Lineup, Including a Francis Ford Coppola Film

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      Organizers on Thursday announced a lineup that also features new films from Yorgos Lanthimos, David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader.Movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg and Yorgos Lanthimos will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced in a news conference on Thursday.New films by Jacques Audiard, Paul Schrader and Andrea Arnold will also appear in competition at this year’s event, the festival’s 77th edition, which opens May 14 and runs through May 25.The most eagerly anticipated film on the lineup is likely to be Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — the director’s first movie in over 10 years.During Thursday’s news conference, Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, revealed little about that movie’s plot, but Coppola, the director of “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now,” has been talking about his desire to make it for decades. In 2001, Coppola told the The New York Times that “Megalopolis” was “about the future” and “a guy who wants to build a utopian society in the middle of Manhattan.”Coppola, 85, has already won the Palme d’Or twice: in 1974 for “The Conversation,” and, in 1979, for “Apocalypse Now” (a prize that was shared with Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum”).The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will present “Kinds of Kindness,” starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, who also worked together on Lanthimos’s most recent release, “Poor Things.” David Cronenberg, the Canadian horror movie director, will premiere “The Shrouds,” about a widower who builds a machine to connect with the dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Frederic Forrest, 86, Dies; Actor Known for ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘The Rose’

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      He appeared in a string of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and his performance as Bette Midler’s love interest earned him an Oscar nomination.Frederic Forrest, who appeared in more than 80 movies and television shows in a career that began in the 1960s, and who turned in perhaps his two most memorable performances in the same year, 1979, in two very different films — the romantic drama “The Rose” and the Vietnam War odyssey “Apocalypse Now” — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86.His sister and only immediate survivor, Ginger Jackson, confirmed his death. She said he had been dealing with congestive heart failure.Mr. Forrest began turning up on the stages of La MaMa and other Off and Off Off Broadway theaters in New York in the 1960s. In 1966, he was in “Viet Rock,” an antiwar rock musical by Megan Terry that was staged in Manhattan and in New Haven, Conn., and is often cited as a precursor to “Hair.”In 1970, he moved to Los Angeles and, while working in a pizza restaurant, appeared in a showcase production at the Actors Studio West. The director Stuart Millar saw him there and cast him in his first big film role, as a Ute Indian (though Mr. Forrest had only a little Native American blood) in “When the Legends Die,” starring opposite the veteran actor Richard Widmark. That film, released in 1972, put Mr. Forrest on the map.“Forrest, a husky, strong-featured actor of great sensitivity who probably won’t escape comparisons with the early Brando, holds his own with Widmark,” Kevin Thomas wrote in a review in The Los Angeles Times.From left, Gene Hackman, Cindy Williams and Mr. Forrest in “The Conversation” (1974), the first of several movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola in which Mr. Forrest appeared.via Everett CollectionAmong those impressed with Mr. Forrest’s performance was Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him in “The Conversation” (1974), his study of a surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman. Five years later, Mr. Forrest was on a boat going up a river in search of the mysterious Kurtz in Mr. Coppola’s harrowing “Apocalypse Now.”Critics were divided on the movie as a whole, but Mr. Forrest’s portrayal of a character known as Chef (who ultimately loses his head, literally) was widely praised. The film was shot in the Philippines, an experience Mr. Forrest found grueling.“Because we were creating a surreal, dreamlike war, nightmare personal things began happening. Sometimes we would think we were losing our minds,” he told The New York Times in 1979. “I became almost catatonic in the Philippines. I could think of no reason to do anything.”Less taxing was “The Rose,” in which Ms. Midler played a Janis Joplin-like singer who self-destructs. Mr. Forrest portrayed a limousine driver and AWOL soldier who became her romantic partner.Mr. Forrest, Janet Maslin wrote in a review in The New York Times, “would be the surprise hit of the movie if Miss Midler didn’t herself have dibs on that position.” The role earned him his only Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor. (Melvyn Douglas won that year, for “Being There.”)Mr. Forrest might have seemed poised at that point to become an A-list star. Yet even though he worked steadily throughout the 1980s and ’90s, he landed only a few leading roles, and those movies didn’t do well. His next project with Mr. Coppola was “One From the Heart” (1981), a romance in which he and Teri Garr play a couple who split up and try other partners. Critics savaged the film.Mr. Forrest and Bette Midler in “The Rose” (1979). His performance in that film earned him his first and only Academy Award nomination.Everett CollectionHe next played the title role in Wim Wenders’s “Hammett” (1982), a fictional story about the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, but that movie had only a limited theatrical run. His later films included “Tucker: The Man and His Dreams” (1988, another Coppola project), “Cat Chaser” (1989) and “The Two Jakes” (1990), the ill-fated sequel to “Chinatown,” directed by Jack Nicholson. He was also in numerous television movies, as well as the 1989 mini-series “Lonesome Dove.” His most recent film credit was a small part in the 2006 Sean Penn movie “All the King’s Men.”“This is a fickle town, no rhyme or reason to it,” he said of Hollywood in 1979. ”By the time you go down the driveway to pick up your mail, you’re forgotten.”Frederic Fenimore Forrest Jr. was born on Dec. 23, 1936, in Waxahachie, Texas, to Frederic and Virginia Allee (McSpadden) Forrest. His father ran a large wholesale greenhouse operation. Young Frederic played four sports at Waxahachie High School and was named the most handsome boy in the senior class.He graduated from Texas Christian University, with a degree in television and radio and a minor in theater, in 1960, the same year he married his college sweetheart, Nancy Ann Whittaker, though that marriage lasted only three years. He moved to New York shortly after graduating and worked odd jobs while studying acting with Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and other noted teachers.Mr. Forrest in 2007. Although he worked steadily throughout the 1980s and ’90s, he landed only a few leading roles, and those movies didn’t do well. Stephen Shugerman/Getty ImagesHis early stage roles in New York included a hunky guy in Ted Harris’s “Silhouettes,” which was staged at the Actors Playhouse in Manhattan in 1969. He reprised the role in Los Angeles the next year, after his move to the West Coast.“Frederic Forrest is perfect as the lazy stud in what may be one of the sleepiest roles ever written — he never gets out of bed,” Margaret Harford wrote in The Los Angeles Times.A second marriage, to the actress Marilu Henner in 1980, stemmed from a screen test that year for “Hammett” that included a kissing scene.“Someone almost had to throw cold water on us,” Ms. Henner told The Toronto Star in 1993. “The tape is pretty wild.”They married six months later, but that marriage, like his earlier one, lasted only three years. A third marriage also ended in divorce, Mr. Forrest’s sister, Ms. Jackson, said.Barry Primus, an actor who worked with Mr. Forrest on “The Rose,” recalled his skill both onscreen and as a raconteur.“Working with him was a treat and, for me, a learning experience,” he said in a statement. “It was absolutely enchanting to spend an evening hearing him tell stories. So much fun, and in its own way, a kind of performance art. There was a love in them that made you feel how crazy and wonderful it was to be alive.”In a phone interview, Ms. Jackson said her brother was particularly pleased to have been able to bring their mother to the Academy Awards ceremony in 1980, when he was nominated for “The Rose.”“It was so wonderful for her to be able to see that,” she said. More

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      Tom Luddy, a Behind-the-Scenes Force in Cinema, Dies at 79

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      Known for his association with Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog and many others, he was also a founder of the Telluride Film Festival.Tom Luddy, a quietly influential film archivist and movie producer who was also a founder of the idiosyncratic Telluride Film Festival, died on Feb. 13 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 79.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride festival, a half-century-old gathering of cinephiles held in a tiny former mining town in Colorado.A transplant from the East Coast, Mr. Luddy landed in Berkeley in the 1960s, just in time to join the radical political activity that was afoot there, notably the Free Speech Movement that dominated the University of California campus in 1964. He worked at the Berkeley Cinema Guild, a two-screen art house that had once been managed by the film critic Pauline Kael, after which he ran the Telegraph Repertory Cinema, another art-house theater, and joined the Pacific Film Archive, part of the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum, which he turned into a vital resource for film devotees and scholars.By the early 1970s he was organizing as many as 800 programs there each year, from Preston Sturges retrospectives to programs of Russian silent films, new German cinema and movies from Senegal. He presented the United States premiere of Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” a Conradian tale starring Klaus Kinski as a Spanish conquistador who sets out to find a lost city in Peru, after it had been rejected by the New York Film Festival.As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated documentary about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.In an email, Mr. Schrader described Mr. Luddy as “the big bang of film consciousness.”Mr. Luddy at the Pacific Film Archive in the 1970s. He turned it into a vital resource for film devotees and scholars.UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film ArchiveHe had a capacity for connecting artists to ideas, and to one another, that went beyond mere networking; it was a kind of vocation. The New York Times called him a human switchboard.It was Mr. Luddy who suggested that Agnès Varda, the French New Wave filmmaker who was in Berkeley in the late 1960s, document the Black Panthers’ efforts to free the Panther leader Huey P. Newton from prison in 1968; her sobering portrait of the activists and their mission captured in two half-hour films is an urgent record of those fractious times. When Laurie Anderson set out to make “Heart of a Dog,” her 2015 meditation on love and loss, and wanted to learn how to make an essayistic film, Mr. Luddy asked her to phone Philip Lopate, the film critic and essayist, for a tutorial.It was a measure of Mr. Luddy’s influence, The Times noted in 1984, that he showed “The Italian,” a 1915 film that is considered a model for the immigrant-gangster epic, to Mr. Coppola before he made “The Godfather,” and “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”And it was Mr. Luddy who introduced Alice Waters, his girlfriend at the time, to the work of Marcel Pagnol, the French filmmaker, in particular “Marius,” “Fanny” and “César,” the trilogy he produced in the 1930s about a group of friends finding their way in Marseille. That inspired the name of Ms. Waters’s restaurant Chez Panisse, the Berkeley institution that ignited the farm-to-table movement.Mr. Luddy with the restaurateur Alice Waters in 2011. He encouraged her to name her restaurant Chez Panisse after a character in a French film trilogy.U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive“We saw the films on three consecutive nights and I cried my eyes out, they were so romantic,” Ms. Waters recalled in a phone interview. “I knew I wanted to name the restaurant after one of the characters. We talked about Marius, Fanny’s lover, and Tom said, ‘Oh no, it has to be after that kindly man who married Fanny, and that was Panisse. And besides, he was the only one who made any money.’”Chez Panisse would go on to global fame, but it remained Mr. Luddy’s dining room, where he could collect like-minded artists and watch the sparks fly. He and the restaurant also figured largely in a footnote to the moviemaking ethos of that decade, or at least of Mr. Luddy’s cohort, captured in an affecting short film by Les Blank called “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.”As the story goes, Mr. Herzog challenged his fellow filmmaker Errol Morris to a bet, which was either a publicity stunt organized by Mr. Luddy or a genuine goad from Mr. Herzog: Mr. Herzog told Mr. Morris that if he succeeded in his seemingly quixotic mission to finish his first film, “Gates of Heaven,” a quirky, Gothic documentary about pet cemeteries, Mr. Herzog would eat his shoe. The movie was completed by 1978, and Mr. Luddy, Ms. Waters and Mr. Herzog set to work to honor the bet.Mr. Luddy was the master of ceremonies in 1979 when Werner Herzog honored his promise to eat his own shoe if his fellow filmmaker Errol Morris completed his documentary “Gates of Heaven.” Telluride Film FestivalMs. Waters decided, she said, that the best way to get the job done was to treat the shoe (a leather desert boot, actually) like a pig’s foot or a duck and braise it for hours in duck fat and herbs, which they did in her kitchen. Later, at a screening of “Gates of Heaven” in 1979, Mr. Luddy played master of ceremonies as Mr. Herzog, with the aid of a pair of cooking shears, tackled his meal, which was laid out on a table on the theater’s stage. He bravely choked down a few bites, as did Mr. Luddy. Mr. Blank’s film is a touching, and very funny, ode to art-making, and also to the skillful machinations of Mr. Luddy.In 1974, Mr. Luddy and a group of friends, Stella and Bill Pence and the film historian James Card, conceived a film festival to be held over three days in September in the picturesque former mining town of Telluride, Colo. (Bill Pence died in December.) There would be no prizes, no angling for distribution, no marketing, no paparazzi and no red carpets — just an almost inconceivable amount of screenings, talks and shenanigans. They would show old films and new, local films and foreign, and art films as well as more popular fare, the offerings curated according to the organizers’ own appetites and interests. There would be guest curators from outside the film word, too, like Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Rachel Kushner and Stephen Sondheim.You might find Louis Malle at the bar, Robert Downey Sr. declaiming in the town’s plaza that plots were dead, Mr. Herzog and Barbet Schroeder playing table football. Mr. Lopate recalled that during the festival’s first year he found himself on an elevator with Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi propagandist, and Gloria Swanson. The two women were trading health secrets involving sesame seeds.“It mixes new directors and old ones — the venerable King Vidor is here this year — actors, distributors, scholars and the bristly and ardent society of film buffs,” The Times wrote in 1976. “Everyone is available to everyone else — names and no‐names, young and old — up to the point of exhaustion and past it.”In 2016, A.O. Scott of The Times described the festival, then in its fifth decade, as “a gathering of the faithful, consecrated to the old-time cinephile religion,” adding: “The local school gym and a hockey rink on the edge of town are temporarily converted into what screening M.C.s unironically refer to as cathedrals of cinema. Everyone is a believer.”Mr. Luddy might have been cinema’s most fervent believer, as well as its main officiant. The festival reflected his tastes, which were, as David Thomson, the San Francisco-based British film critic and historian, said, “both catholic and universal.” But, he added, “friendship was Tom’s art, really. He was unlimited in his wish and ability to help people in the broad area of film, and he did it without any ulterior motive, which is not common in the movie world.”Mr. Luddy at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. The festival became a gathering of devotees to the religion of filmmaking, and Mr. Luddy was its most fervent believer and its main officiant. Pamela Gentile, via Telluride Film FestivalThomas William Luddy was born on June 4, 1943, in New York City, and grew up in White Plains, N.Y., raised by staunch Democrats in what had been a monolithically Republican community. His father, William Luddy, who had worked in newspaper advertising and founded a national merchandise reporting service, was campaign manager for various candidates and, finally, chairman of Westchester County’s Democratic Party. His mother, Virginia (O’Neill) Luddy, was a homemaker and political volunteer.At the University of California, Berkeley, Tom studied physics and then literature, graduating with a B.A. in English. He also ran a film society and played on the varsity golf team.Mr. Luddy is survived by his wife, Monique Montgomery Luddy; his brothers, Brian, James and David; and his sister, Jeanne Van Duzer.Although Mr. Luddy spent most of his time behind the scenes, he did appear in one movie: Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which he played to the creepy hilt one of the first humans to metamorphose into a pod person. “Ah, the ubiquitous Tom Luddy,” The Times quoted a member of a film crew as saying in 1984. “It always seems like there were three or four of him!” More

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      Wayne Wang Still Isn’t Satisfied

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      On the 40th anniversary of his breakthrough drama, “Chan Is Missing,” the auteur says a new generation of Asian American filmmakers must make more challenging work.Sitting in a booth in a dive bar in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the same one where he shot scenes for his 1985 gem, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart,” Wayne Wang was still frustrated. We had spoken five years earlier, when he expressed dismay at how little had changed in Hollywood and the indie scene since the 1982 release of “Chan Is Missing,” his seminal neo-noir that was the first Asian American film in modern cinema to gain widespread distribution.Now, things are a little different — for Wang’s own legacy, for a new generation of Asian American filmmakers, for the state of movies. And yet, the elder auteur, whose journey since that breakthrough took him across art-house avenues into Hollywood studios and back out, is still unsatisfied. When it comes to Asian American directors, “none of the filmmakers have really dug in to say these are our own stories and these stories are on one level universal, another level, very specific to our culture,” he said.On the 40th anniversary of “Chan Is Missing,” Wang, sharply dressed and sprightly at 73, is experiencing a belated moment of wider recognition. He’s celebrating two retrospectives, in Berkeley and Los Angeles, a restored director’s cut of his audaciously experimental “Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper Is Expensive” (1989), and the Criterion Collection releases of “Chan” and “Dim Sum.”One would be hard-pressed to find any filmmaker who not only daringly chronicled Chinese life in a time when it was unthinkable in American cinema, but also parlayed all that into one of the more eclectic careers in Hollywood, that includes two entries (“Chan” and “The Joy Luck Club”) on the National Film Registry. There are the Hong Kong films (“Chinese Box”) and the New York films (“Smoke”); the near career-ending erotic picture (“The Center of the World”); the pure Hollywood period (“Maid in Manhattan”); and the return to his culturally specific indie roots (“Coming Home Again”).“It comes from the fact that I was born and brought up a mess,” Wang said, explaining the zigzagging. After immigrating to the Bay Area from Hong Kong in 1967 at 18, he was suddenly enmeshed in an America of Quaker families, counterculture figures, the Black Panthers, and urgently political-minded folks in San Francisco’s Chinatown.Wang, who is working on an adaptation of a short story by Yiyun Li and a small-screen series about a Chinese American family, spoke about his career, going to Francis Ford Coppola for advice, and working with Jennifer Lopez. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Victor Wong in “Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper is Expensive.” a 1989 Wang film that has been restored. Forever Profits ProductionsPeter Wang in “Chan Is Missing,” which largely used its actors’ feelings about Chinese American identity.Nancy Wong/Wayne Wang ProductionsForty years later, “Chan Is Missing” still feels timeless in how it reckons with Chinese American identity politics. Did you intend to make a film that put a stamp on Chinese American identity?I didn’t think like that. I just wanted to make an interesting, complex film. More what the Chinese and the Chinese American community is, which includes the new immigrants. It was more that than identity. Because mainstream America had no idea who we were.And yet the film is adamant about not trying to offer a neat depiction of who or what the community is. It feels unencumbered by the idea of making a political statement.Because everybody around me who was Asian or Chinese or Japanese wanted to make a film about how badly we were treated. There was always a message. That gave me a clear picture of where I didn’t want to go. I wanted to do something a little more complicated, a little more questioning rather than saying, “We were really badly treated on Angel Island” [the immigration station in California].I only had a script for the structure of the film. Most of the time, what people are saying came from themselves. I would maybe ask them, What do you think Americans really think of the Chinese? [The lead actor] Mark Hayashi always said, “Oh God, this identity [expletive] is old news, man.” I said, “Then put it in the movie!”You then made a string of films about the Chinese diaspora that eventually led to “The Joy Luck Club.” Did you want to bring your sensibilities to the mainstream?It was a pretty conscious step.It was a studio film with an all-Asian cast in 1993. Did it feel like a breakthrough at the time?Absolutely. People were calling from Hollywood, and I knew I had to grab that energy pretty quickly. And that energy wasn’t so much “Chinese American films are really going to do well for us.” But that was also when I said, between “Chan,” “Dim Sum,” “Eat a Bowl of Tea,” “Joy Luck Club,” I’ve got to do something else. Otherwise I’m going to get locked into this one box. I’d been working on a script with Paul Auster, “Smoke.” Miramax said, “What do you want to do next? We’ll just give you the money.”It’s striking that with your success, you did a small movie. You didn’t seem to be trying to climb the ladder.I wasn’t trying to climb the ladder. I just saw Francis Ford Coppola in [an interview], talk about how the thing that drove him was basically fear and not knowing what he was doing. I was kind of functioning in that same way. I wanted to get into a film that I don’t completely understand.You and Coppola were both San Francisco-based filmmakers. Were you friends?My office was in his building, and we would run into each other and have little talks. When I shot “Smoke,” I was working with Harvey Keitel and Bill Hurt. I went to him [Coppola] and asked, how do you work with actors? I hadn’t worked with big Hollywood stars, and I was freaked out by it. Francis basically said, if you find the right person, you give them something to do, and they’ll be fine.I really respect [Hurt], but he’s a nut case in some ways. Throughout the first half of the shoot, we got to be pretty good friends. Then we had three days off, and he came back and had a football helmet on. I went to put my hands on his shoulders, and he said, “What are you doing? Are you trying to push me down the stairs?” So he turned like that. And the football helmet, he said, “I need to protect myself today, you’re going to hit me.” [Laughs] But he [was] one of the greatest actors, so subtle and so sensitive to everything.What led you to eventually do a full-on studio film like “Maid in Manhattan”?“Center of the World” got such bad reviews and everybody hated what I did that I couldn’t get a meeting in Hollywood. One bad film, especially an edgy sex film, you get written off. And the producers of “Maid in Manhattan” came calling. It was probably the most difficult thing I ever did. First day, the executives said, [Ralph Fiennes is] losing his hair in the front — it’s not very good. What can we do? They were more concerned about Ralph Fiennes’s hair.Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in “Maid in Manhattan,” which Wang shot at the height of the paparazzi frenzy over the actress’s initial relationship with Ben Affleck. Barry Wetcher/Columbia PicturesHow was it working with Jennifer Lopez?It was difficult. She went out on dates every night with Ben Affleck. And in New York [where filming took place], there’s a law where the paparazzi could be in your face shooting stills. The only time they could not do it is when we’re doing a real take. So during rehearsals, they were literally right here, and there were a lot of them.During this period, were you at peace with doing purely studio films?There’s always that question. I knew in the back of my head, I could always leave and go back to what I did before. It just got a little difficult to get off that Ferris wheel.As you’ve returned to indie films, the landscape for marginalized voices like yours has changed.I don’t disagree, but not to the degree that I feel they should be. There’s a lot more Asian American films. I mean, anything from Ali Wong to “The Farewell” [from Lulu Wang].Did you like “The Farewell?”I like it better than the other films, maybe only because it’s more similar to mine. I’m prejudiced that way. It’s about family. But I don’t see anybody trying to do something in a more brave way. They’re still trying to please executives and then to please an audience more, rather than going out there with whatever budget they have to do something that’s challenging.The director and actor Justin Chon was in your most recent film, “Coming Home Again.” What do you think of his films?I think “Gook” was the most challenging film out there. Justin has got it in his heart to do it. And I feel the pain every time I talk to him working on something. Because the producers want a certain thing, and it’s really hard for him.But do you empathize with Asian American filmmakers trying to appease studios or audiences to break through?I talked to [the “Fast and Furious” franchise director] Justin Lin about this. He said, every year the studios make maximum 15 films [each] or something, and if one is made by an Asian American, that is progress. I tend to agree. But at the same time, was there another film completely outside the system that’s challenging the system or doing something really different? No.Not just Asian Americans, it’s across the board. Formally interesting and challenging films are just not being made. All the films are dumbed down to what I would call a Disney level. [Laughs] That’s all dangerous in the long run.The way “Chan Is Missing” happened — made for less than $25,000 on weekends by a crew with day jobs — could a film like that be made now and find an audience?If you get a grant or an independent investor, I think it could still happen again. When you are dealing with interesting characters and a certain kind of humanity, and it’s written well, you can get there. I have a strong belief in that. I have to. Otherwise I would probably just cut meat or something and be a butcher. [Laughs] More

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      A ‘Godfather’ Guide: How Francis Ford Coppola’s Trilogy Has Evolved

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA ‘Godfather’ Guide: How Francis Ford Coppola’s Trilogy Has EvolvedThe newly re-edited version of “Part III” is the latest in a string of editions of the sprawling Corleone tale. Here’s a primer.Michael (Al Pacino), right, and Fredo (John Cazale) in “The Godfather Part II.”Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesDec. 9, 2020, 4:41 p.m. ETThe director Francis Ford Coppola is releasing his reimagined version of “Part III” of the “Godfather” saga this month, now called “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” It’s hardly the first time he’s returned to the iconic series. From the 1972 drama that started it all to sequels and restorations, Coppola and audiences alike couldn’t help but revisit the trials and tribulations of the Corleones as the years unfolded. Here’s a guide to the films and their different cuts:1972‘The Godfather’Based on the runaway best seller written by Mario Puzo (it was the first paperback to ever sell six million copies), the movie that changed both filmmaking and perceptions of gangster culture was an instant hit. “Francis Ford Coppola has made one of the most brutal and moving chronicles of American life ever designed within the limits of popular entertainment,” Vincent Canby, the New York Times chief film critic, raved when the film was released in 1972. The drama became the highest-grossing film of the year and, at that point, ever. Largely considered among the best movies of all time (the American Film Institute ranked it No. 2 behind “Citizen Kane”), it garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, taking home three: adapted screenplay, picture, and actor for Marlon Brando’s performance as Don Vito Corleone.1974‘The Godfather Part II’No movie ever had “Part II” in the title before, a renegade concept added at the behest of Coppola. And its sprawling story, ranging across the 20th century from Italy to New York, California and elsewhere, transcended the mere gangster film and lives as a uniquely American epic, complete with a re-creation of an immigrant’s journey through Ellis Island. A box-office hit that successfully turned Robert De Niro into a Hollywood star, the sequel collected 11 Academy Award nominations and won six, including supporting actor for De Niro, along with director and picture. It was the first film follow-up to win the top prize, effectively cementing the allure of the movie sequel.1977‘The Godfather: The Complete Novel for Television’As the first two films reverberated throughout popular culture, their impact was bolstered by the power of television. NBC originally shelled out a reported $10 million in 1974 just for “Part I,” resulting in the biggest TV audience for a theatrical release at the time. Coppola, in need of money to help bankroll what would become his next masterpiece, “Apocalypse Now,” brainstormed an entirely new “Godfather” experience in 1977, recutting the first two films with the editor Barry Malkin. They toned down the violence, added scenes originally left on the cutting-room floor, and presented the story in sequential order in lieu of the epic’s time-shifting narrative. Later released on VHS, licensed by HBO, AMC and Amazon Prime throughout the years and marketed under numerous titles (“The Godfather Epic,” “The Godfather Saga”), this version, too, was acclaimed. “The chronological rejiggering works extremely well,” The Times’s television critic, John J. Connor, wrote in his 1977 review, adding that the reimagining, “in some ways, constitutes a pronounced improvement.”1990‘The Godfather Part III’Coppola has readily admitted that he was strapped for cash when Paramount Pictures coerced him into orchestrating another installment of the Corleone chronicles. While its story is just as grand as the others, including an art-imitating-life subplot about a Vatican in debt, the production was rushed, its over-the-top action scenes were reminiscent of the recent hit “Die Hard,” and when Winona Ryder dropped out at the 11th hour, the infamously inexperienced Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s 18-year-old daughter) stepped in to play the ill-fated Mary. The movie received mixed reviews from critics and posted lackluster box-office results. And while the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, it walked away empty-handed.2008‘The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration’With Coppola’s gold signature on the box, Paramount released this strictly technical restoration of the theatrical versions of the series for home video. Spearheaded by the film historian and preservationist Robert A. Harris, this refresh further showcased the work of the cinematographer Gordon Willis and his distinctive, stunning visuals, whether in dim interiors or the shimmering Miami sun. It’s this version that Paramount subsequently released in various special home-video box sets, like a 2017 limited “Omérta” edition and a 2019 “Corleone Legacy” edition for Blu-ray.2020‘Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone’Coppola took the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the third installment to vent his frustration in the editing suite. He shuffled and snipped the derided original cut and even retitled the picture, which became available Tuesday in digital and Blu-ray formats. “It was really our intention to make it a summing-up and an interpretation of the first two movies, rather than a third movie,” he explained in a recent Times interview with Dave Itzkoff. The result? A less-convoluted film tweaked to pack a bigger emotional punch. Then again, fans of “The Godfather” don’t need much prodding to spend more time with the Corleones.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More