Francis Ford Coppola describes his experience working with controlling producers onIs Paris Burning?Released in 1966,Is Paris Burning?is a war film that chronicles resistance groups forming to fight against the Germans during WW2 France.Is Paris Burning?was directed by René Clément and featured a leading cast including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, and Jean-Pierre Cassel. While Coppola did not direct the film, he was involved in writing the screenplay forIs Paris Burning?
PerKorbini, Coppola explains how he got around the word of a controlling producer while working onIs Paris Burning?According to the screenwriter,Is Paris Burninghad a producer named Paul Graetz who was “very domineering.“As part of this act of control, Graetz did not want director René Clément to have anything to do with the script ofIs Paris Burning?When the original screenwriter died and Coppola took over, however, he took matters into his own hands to get the director’s opinion. This did not work out well for Coppola, as he describes in the story below:
This is a movie that of course, I don’t think is very good. Is Paris Burning? It is made by René Clément. René Clément is a wonderful director. But this was produced by a German named Paul Graetz. And Paul Graetz was very domineering. And he hired René Clément with the provision that René Clément could not work on the script. He didn’t feel that René Clément’s talent lay with the script, so he was prohibited to work on the script, he just had to direct the script that was given to him by the writers. And this guy, Paul Graetz, there were a bunch of writers. And since it was financed by Paramount, that had American components with the Americans, they sent me as a young writer to work with Anthony Vellier, who was a famous American writer who worked with John Houston for years and years and years.
And Vellier was, I guess he was sick. And they told me, if the pencil falls from his hand, my job was to pick it up. So I was here in Paris with my young family, my wife and my three kids, uh two kids, one was more in Paris. And Vellier did die. And I thought it was wrong that René Clément not have the right to tell me what he want. He’s the director, I wanted to serve the director. So I wrote the script in English, and I had it translated into French. And every morning I made the page, it was English on the top and French on the bottom. And I gave it to Clément and I took Clément’s notes. I did what he asks, he said ‘oh, I think this, I think that.’ Well one morning I’m in bed and there’s a knocking on the door. And two motorcyclists were outside, all in black. And they said, you must go see the producer, Paul Graetz. I get in a taxi, and the taxi follows the two motorcyclists, and they take me to this German Paul Graetz, who is a big German guy with a bald head.
And standing next to him is the director, René Clément, and Graetz says to me ‘you have RUINED my script!’ How do you say that? He said, well I can see what you’re writing here, and it’s ruining the script. I said ‘well, I’m doing what your director wants.’ And he looks the the director, and says to René Clément, ‘is this true?’ And René Clément says ‘absolutment pas.’ Because René wasn’t supposed to. So he said to me ‘you are ruining my script, I was making films 20 years or 40 years before you were born.’ And I said ‘I will be making films 40 years after you die.’ And he died a week later. So I wish I had said 60 years. But that is the story of René Clément. I saw the film, I didn’t like it at all, but I was embarrassed, it said my name, it said screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal.
What This Experience Meant For Francis Ford Coppola’s Career
Coppola Went On To Write Most Of His Own Films
At the time thatIs ParisBurning?was released,Coppola was only 27 years old.He had directed a couple of films, but he was not nearly the filmmaking giant he is now.Is Paris Burning?was released six years beforeThe Godfather, which would catapult Coppola into a newfound respect for filmmaking. But at his young age, it makes sense why he could not have gotten the same level of respect on the set ofIs Paris Burning?To Graetz, Coppola was but a young writer with less industry knowledge than a producer.
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Looking atCoppola’s career, it isreasonable to guess that his experience working on the Clément film influenced how he went about his filmmaking.Unlike the set ofIs Paris Burning?, Coppola often writes and directs his movies. This is true for all three ofThe Godfathermovies, as well asApocalypse NowandThe Conversation. Doing both jobs allows any director more creative control, and the screenwriting credit is likely one he held onto even more after hisIs Paris Burning?experience.
How Coppola Has Gained Even More Control Over His Projects
Coppola Is More Fully Involved In Megalopolis
Looking at the director’s story aboutIs Paris Burning?, I’m fascinated by how far Coppola has come since these early days. Now, the director’supcoming film isMegalopolis, a movie thatCoppola wrote, directed, produced, and largely self-funded.WithMegalopolis, Coppola has gone to the other end of the spectrum in terms of creative control, exacting fairly complete control.Megalopolis' reviews are already mixed, so exactly how this control will work out for the director remains to be seen.
