The Coppolas: Behind the scenes with America\'s great film-making ...

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May 15, 1998, Los Angeles
I am outside having brunch in the courtyard of the Polo Lounge atthe Beverly Hills Hotel. Francis and Sofia are seated across fromme talking intently. Yesterday was Sofia's birthday. She turned 27.She is beautiful in an imperfect way. The bump on her nose isprominent in the light falling on her face. Her brows are pinchedtogether as she concentrates on what Francis is telling her andwrites notes in the red leather agenda he gave her for Christmas.She is going to direct her first feature film starting next month.It is a low-budget production with a script Sofia wrote from a bookcalled The Virgin Suicides. I can hear Francis say, "Sit rightnext to the camera so the actors see you; see you're in control.Remember that the actors' hands are almost as important as theirfaces. Hands are very expressive. If you cut hands out of the frameyou're losing 30 per cent of the performance."
I am very happy for Sofia, happy that Francis is being such a goodfather and mentoring her, but I also feel a hot, aching jealousy inmy chest. I'm trying to just notice my emotions, the way I wasinstructed in Zen meditation, to neither wallow in them nor pushthem aside.
Francis and I married quickly in Las Vegas. I hadn't met Francis'sparents. When I did I learnt he was from generations of Italian menwho believed a woman's life work was caring for home and childrenand supporting her husband's career. Francis knew I had artisticaspirations but expected they could be pursued at home in my sparetime. By the early 1970s we lived in a big house with our threeyoung children.
In Roman's nursery-school car pool, I discovered another mother wasartist Lynn Hershman. She thought my ideas were interesting. We hadintoxicating conversations and created several conceptual artevents together. One of our more infamous was held in 1975 in our22-room Victorian house in San Francisco. Fifty board members fromthe Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Museums of Modern Artcame.
When they arrived, Lynn and I were out of sight, downstairs in thescreening-room with a closed-circuit television connection to theliving-room. We spoke to our visitors over a large monitor. Theycould converse with us but only interact with our electronicimages.
We invited them to take a self-guided tour of rooms in the housewhere we had placed exhibits. I knew the audience wasn't asinterested in our art as they were in coming to Francis FordCoppola's house, where it was known he kept his five Oscars. Inthose days when a man won an Oscar, a miniature Oscar was given tohis wife to wear on a chain around her neck. I had a jeweller fileoff the little loop for the chain at the top of the head of my fivetiny Oscars, then removed Francis's from the lighted glass casewhere they were always kept and displayed my miniature gold statuesin their place. In the kitchen the guests were directed to peel apotato and then read a quote from the artist Joseph Beuys, whichsaid, "Peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is aconscious act."
There were two large cooking pots labelled "Art" and"Not Art". Each guest had to decide whether his or herpeeled potato was art or not and drop it in the appropriate pot.Francis was out of town when Lynn and I staged this event.
From what he heard about it, he saw neither the art in it nor thehumour. His feelings were hurt. He thought I was making fun of him,his Oscars, our house. He worked long and hard on his films, andthought conceptual art was too easy. "So some guy shootshimself in the arm [Chris Burden] or pisses off a ladder in agallery [Tom Marioni] and that's a big deal?" The only thingFrancis finds OK about that period is a Joseph Beuys sculpture Ibought him that he didn't like at the time but is now worth 30times what I paid. I was not a good wife, by his definition ormine.
29 May 1986, Washington DC
My mind keeps jumping back to Memorial Day afternoon; I was at homein my little room on the third floor looking out into the branchesof the giant old oak tree trying to understand why I felt ill forno reason. The telephone rang. Sofia answered it downstairs and Ipicked up the extension. We both heard the strange, strangled soundof Francis's voice, as if he were speaking without breathing:"Ellie, we've lost our beloved son. Gio is dead." Mycries lifted me out of my chair. Sofia went to the other line andcalled Roman, then she came to my room in agony. I pulled her intomy arms. She sobbed, "I never heard Roman cry before."
We learnt that Gio and a friend were in a speedboat crossing theSouth River [in Maryland] late on Memorial Day afternoon with thesun in their eyes. The friend drove between two boats withoutseeing that they were joined by a long tow rope submerged in thewater. The rope snapped out of the water, broke through a railingand knocked Gio with such force against the back of the boat thathe died instantly.
The other young man was unscathed.
That night Sofia and I flew to Washington DC. The next days arememory fragments. I can see Sofia and Roman crying on the rentedsofa in the apartment, Francis doubled over on the floor, the painof seeing the family devastated layered on my own grief, themeeting I had with the priest to arrange a memorial service.
For him it was just another appointment to schedule: "Yes, itcan be in the late afternoon but not later than five. I have adinner engagement at seven". The first evening in theapartment, friends trying to comfort us, the phone ringing...looking in the mirror, seeing my face so changed, no longer lookingvibrant and excited, younger than 50, now seeing an unrecognisableold woman, drawn, red-eyed and frail... suddenly sinking to thesidewalk in front of the Hyatt, sobbing hysterically, having to besupported by two of Francis's cousins... standing in the smallside-room at Arlington Chapel reserved for family... seeing Francisstanding in his grey suit next to a bouquet of miniature whiteroses with a card from Bobby De Niro... sitting in the first pew ofthe chapel filled with family, friends, cast and crew, banks offlowers and afternoon sunlight beautiful enough for a wedding...friends speaking about Gio... Francis's father's music playing onthe organ... the priest reading from Khalil Gibran... a personalcelebration of Gio's life rather than the packaged service I hadfeared.
25 December 1989, Rome [Francis Coppola is filming The Godfather: Part III at theCinecittà studios, staying with his family in a run-downapartment]
It is cold. There is a fire in the fireplace. The Christmas tree isshedding needles on the grey carpet.
Francis is in bed listening to news in English on his short-waveradio. Roman and Sofia are asleep on the scruffy leather sofa. I amso completely happy they are here. Around noon, Tally [Francis'ssister, Talia Shire] and her family arrived. We were 20 peoplespending Christmas Day together in our two-bedroom apartment.
At 1pm, I put the 12kg [25lb] turkey in the oven. There was nobaking pan. Our friend Paula told me to set the turkey on theindented floor of the oven. Her advice has been so helpful to me, Idecided to cook the turkey in the Italian way. After several hoursof roasting, the grease overflowed and caught fire. When Francislifted the turkey from the flaming oven it slipped out of his handsand slid in a pool of grease across the kitchen floor. I wiped upthe grease with paper towels but the floor was still dangerouslyslippery so I mopped it by hand with a cloth and hot soapy water.
With a bottle of our wine from California under my arm, I went outto a local restaurant and asked the owner to lend me a lasagna panin exchange for the wine. Finally, I got the turkey back in theoven. By four in the afternoon all the sodas had been drunk and thecarpet was a sea of nut shells, Christmas candy and wrappings.
Members of the family pitched in to clean up a bit now and then,but there was a continuous messy chaos to the day. Somehoweverything got done, more guests arrived and 25 of us sat down toChristmas dinner.
28 December 1989
I woke up with little fingers in my hair and the faint acrid smellof wet diapers. [Gian-Carla Coppola was born seven months after thedeath of her father, Gian-Carlo] Gia was standing next to my bed.She had stayed overnight.
Francis left for work early. He seemed relieved to have Christmasover, with all the relatives and guests, and go back to work. Iplayed with Gia for a long time in the bathtub, making dessertswith foamy bubbles in her plastic dishes.
Sofia got up late. Around noon the phone rang. She answered it andsaid it was for me. I took the phone in the kitchen, standing in apatch of sunlight on the tile floor. I was surprised to hear thevoice of the assistant director [AD] calling in the middle of ashooting day. He said very quickly that the production doctor hadjust returned from seeing Winona Ryder: "She is too sick towork and is being sent home. Francis has decided to cast Sofia inher part." Winona was cast as Mary, the daughter of MichaelCorleone [played by Al Pacino]. Francis had read Sofia for the partof Mary. He thought she did well and looked like a real Italiandaughter rather than an actress, but the studio pushed for abox-office name.
The assistant director asked if Sofia could come to the studioimmediately because a scene with her character was scheduled toshoot in a few hours and there would be a costume-fitting rightaway. I told Sofia as evenly as I could, but tears of emotionwelled in my eyes. She was very excited at first; then as it sankin, she became anxious. I said, "I know Dad would never castyou if he didn't believe you could do the part really well." Icould see how worried she was; she didn't want to let him down.
While Sofia got dressed, I tried to feed Gia and find her shoes.The AD had asked us to come the fastest way. The traffic was so badI thought it would be too slow in a taxi. We took a bus to thesubway. Gia's stroller got caught in the bus door. Sofia held Giawhile I struggled to get it out. The subway took us to the stationin front of Cinecittà and we fast-walked to the costumeshop.
10 January 1990
The last few days have been exhausting. Francis and Sofia are underenormous pressure, which I feel acutely. A number of people on theproduction think Sofia is too young and inexperienced for her partin the film. They have been very vocal about their opinions.Francis has been shooting a difficult scene with Sofia. Everymoment she isn't on the stage she is taken to costume fittings, thehairdresser, or to a diction teacher.
Several times she has burst into tears. Well-meaning people tell meI am permitting a form of child abuse, that she is not ready, nottrained for what is being asked of her and that in the end she willbe fodder for critics' bad reviews that could scar her for years. Iam told that Francis can't afford to take a chance on a choice thatcould weaken his work at this point in his career.
The night before last, Francis went to sleep in a cold sweat andgot up at five in the morning to go to the studio. By the time hisnew production manager arrived at eight, he had made a plan to hirean editor immediately and put a scene with Sofia together and madea final decision based on what was actually on the screen. Duringthe day his lawyer called to tell him that in his contract, he hasfinal artistic control.
I took very seriously the accusation that I was being a negligentparent. I could see that at times Sofia felt courageous and excitedand wanted to do it and at other times she was tired and utterlymiserable. But she wasn't asking me to help her get out of it and Iwasn't ignoring her or pushing her on.
17 November 1992, Guatemala [Francis's first film since completing the Godfather trilogy, BramStoker's Dracula, was released in the US on 13 November]
Francis didn't want to be at home caught up in tension, waiting fornews about what the film grossed on its opening weekend. To get faraway we travelled to Antigua in Guatemala and stayed with JohnHeaton, an expat friend who has an extraordinary house decoratedwith fine antiques and textiles from the region. Francis thought wewould have relaxed days out of touch with US news but he discoveredJohn had CNN and of course a telephone. So we drove further to thetown of Panajachel and stayed in a little cottage overlooking LakeAtitl