In December 2021 Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola sat down with GQ to talk cinema. Steven Spielberg was about to open his newest film, West Side Story, in theaters across the country. Coppola had not seen the movie but he was so excited to watch it that he was planning on not just going to his local Napa movie theater but also speaking in front of whoever was there before the film, to tell the crowd about his enthusiasm.
“To remind them of the thrill about going to a movie theater,” Coppola said. “I want West Side Story to do incredible business, to remind people that the theater debut is much more important than the so-called streaming. Streaming is just home video.”
“There used to be studio films,” he said. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different. Even the talented people—you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve (who recently had criticism for MCU films himself), an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die, directed by…Gary?”
Cary Fukunaga.
“Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films, and the talented filmmakers.”
Coppola concluded, “I’ve said before, making a film without risk is like making a baby without sex. Part of it is risk, and that’s what makes it so interesting, that’s why we learn so much when it’s made.”
