The first celebrity to take to the Dolby Theatre stage to celebrate filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola becoming the 50th recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award was an actor that has actually never worked with the iconic director. Still, Morgan Freeman, himself an AFI Life Achievement Award winner in 2011, set the tone for what the rest of Coppola’s colleagues and family members would highlight from his storied career.
“Francis Ford Coppola is still the independent filmmaker, believer of dreams on a dime, teller of tales that cost and lost millions,” said Freeman. “But tonight, fuck the bankers and the backers. We’re here to celebrate art.”
Though she was not at the event in person, his daughter Sofia Coppola, an Oscar-winning filmmaker in her own right, filmed a retrospective interview with the AFI honoree that served as a framework for the event.
One of the first films to get its own segment was actually “American Graffiti,” which Coppola only served as a producer on, but still gave star Ron Howard a priceless story to tell about the experience. “After a very early screening, a studio executive said to Francis and George [Lucas], ‘You should be embarrassed of this movie. It’s too long. We hate the way it looks. It seems unprofessional,’” said the former actor, now director. “Francis, with unblinking authority, pulled out a checkbook and said, ‘Alright, listen. If you don’t want the picture, I’ll buy it back from you right now. I’ll buy it back from you today.’ Well, nevermind you didn’t have the money. It worked.” Making over $100 million, “American Graffiti” became the highest return on investment a film had ever had at the time.
Talk of risk and reward being part of the Coppola experience took on another form in what “The Godfather Part II” stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino had to say about the director. “This is a quote from Francis Ford Coppola: ‘The things you do when you’re young that you get fired for are the same things that years later they give you lifetime achievement,’” said the latter actor, who played Michael Corleone throughout “The Godfather” trilogy. After they spoke more on how casting just about every actor on the project was a battle, De Niro also mentioned that not booking the role of Sonny Corleone in the first film “was the best job I ever never got.”
Later speakers like Harrison Ford and Diane Lane expanded upon Coppola’s ability to spot talent, and foster a productive creative community, with the former actor explaining the director’s role in getting him cast as Han Solo, and the latter actress explaining how she ended up in “Rumble Fish” after Coppola finished “The Outsiders” and said “Let’s keep going. Let’s use the same crew and the actors and make another movie.”
Speakers Spike Lee, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell took a more sentimental route in their speeches addressed to Coppola. Director Lee mentioned that he still has his “Apocalypse Now” ticket stub, which he saw when he was in film school. And while “The Outsiders” star Macchio revealed he left five dollars under the centerpiece of Coppola’s table as a way to repay him for the lessons he learned on the film’s set, Howell told the story of how Coppola decided to make “The Outsiders” after a California librarian wrote him a letter with the suggestion. Said librarian then stood up from her table at the event to tell the filmmaker to “Stay gold.”
After a segment on Coppola’s “Dracula” screened, another one of the director’s children, Roman Coppola, who got his filmmaking start doing visual effects on the 1992 film, and has since become an Oscar-nominated screenwriter alongside Wes Anderson, once again reiterated what has made his father such an inspiring artist over the years. “We all know one of his greatest attributes is his daring and his comfort with risk, but not just the big bets he’s made, but his willingness to support, encourage unproven talent, spotting some special quality in someone, entrusting them with big responsibilities,” he said.
Dustin Hoffman, who had never worked with the AFI Life Achievement Award recipient up till his most recent film “Megalopolis,” echoed that idea, telling Coppola, “You are what actors call an actor’s director. Having launched the careers of so many incredible actors, you not only saw their potential, you fought for them,” he said. “And it was early in your career when one’s career depends on every choice you make that day. You did this at a time when you had no clout, just chutzpah and taste and foresight. Where the studio wanted stars, you fought for actors.”
Throughout the night, Coppola could be described as aloof whenever the camera flashed to him. Whether he was having a positive or negative reaction to the speeches was not discernible until “Megalopolis” star Adam Driver actually got a laugh out of him when joking that they had differing views on how much humanity should be celebrated. He also moved forward the idea that Coppola is the prime example of a director “not letting the money dictate the content of the film,” dispelling the idea that he ever welcomed talk about making his latest film “more commercial.”
“The Last Showgirl” filmmaker Gia Coppola, the last of the director’s family members to speak at the event, called her grandfather an “O.G. influencer” who has been dedicated to uplifting the next generation of directors. Her speech was followed by a musical performance from Josh Groban.
When it was time to finally bring Coppola to the stage to accept his award, it was presented by both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two of his oldest friends in the industry. Going first, Spielberg called Coppola “a warrior for independent artists,” recalling the time when he sat in awe after the director accepted feedback from his fellow filmmakers after screening them a five-hour cut of “Apocalypse Now.” Spielberg also called “The Godfather,” in his opinion, “the greatest American film ever made.”
Lucas, who Coppola took under his wing as a UCLA grad, was the last to pin how Coppola’s innovative approach to filmmaking changed the entire industry. “We moved to San Francisco hoping to beat the system, and we did,” he said in reference to their company American Zoetrope. “We had no rules. We wrote them, with you holding the pen.”
In the end, Coppola spoke little of filmmaking, and more on how he has processed change over time, realizing that “my home isn’t really a place at all. But you, friends, colleagues, teachers, playmates, family, neighbors, all the beautiful faces are welcoming me back because I am and will always be nothing more than one of you.”
In lieu of the emphasis on community, and what it means for AFI to have handed out the Life Achievement Award for 50 years, finally giving it to Coppola, who has worked with the institute from the beginning, it seemed all the more fitting for the event to forgo giving out the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal, usually given to a newly notable AFI alum, and instead spotlight its very first winner: the late David Lynch.
