Coppola post-Apocalypse Now

Noticed a weird flex on tonight's Nightline: The 'Top 5' was the highest grossing J.Lo movies, and JACK was #5 at $58 Mil. Figuring that couldn't be right, I check Box Office Mojo, who report that Jack is in fact her 9th biggest film (not adjusted for inflation BTW) and was distributed by Buena Vista, a subsidiary of ABC's parent company, Disney.

Also: $58 MILLION?!?

that was right after Birdcage and Jumanji, so Robin Williams could open a movie til word of mouth got around.

Yeah, I think this was where his momentum began to slow. Father's Day w/Crystal was the next year, and kind of a cinematic New Jersey.

I remember seeing BILLBOARDS for Jack that summer.

I should really give Tucker a rescreen j/k

it's very good

Not to keep harping on Jack, but owing to only catching bits and pieces on TV, I somehow missed that Bill Cosby's one of the supporting players.

Jack debuted at #1. Robin Williams was yuuuge through 1998-2000. Even goddamn Patch Adams was a smash.

I thought this thread was revived due to the re-edit of Cotton Club to restore footage that got cut at the time because "too many black people"

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/09/francis-ford-coppola-cotton-club-encore-gregory-hines

if you are curious

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-cotton-club-encore-movie-review-2019

Never seen the original release - interested to check this out on Blu-Ray or via Amazon.

“Encore” gives us more of the tap duet between Sandman and his brother Clay (Hines’ real-life brother and dance partner, Maurice Hines) and, in a heart-cracking act of sweet charity, allows Gwen Verdon (who plays Dixie’s mother)

I see what you did there

Watched a couple back-to-back: The Rainmaker and You're a Big Boy Now.

I think it's the first time for both, not 100% sure. The Rainmaker could have been directed by Ron Howard, but I liked it anyway, or at least once Mickey Rourke thankfully made an early exit. DeVito, Voight, Danny Glover, and Mary Kay Place are very good, and I probably like Matt Damon more than most people. His narration reminded me a lot of his narration in Rounders.

You're a Big Boy Now is mostly a dated mid-'60s romp, a young American filmmaker trying to catch up with Godard and Richard Lester. The common observation that it's a precursor to The Graduate has a bit of truth to it, but for me the latter is a quantum leap across the board. Karen Black's first film. I loved one sequence, Elizabeth Hartman's seduction of Peter Kastner to the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darling Be Home Soon." A different song, I wouldn't have even noticed.

did you watch YABBN on TCM? I saw it advertised tonight.

No, I found it on YouTube, which I'm able to watch on the big screen via my cable provider. Clean image, but it seemed a little jumpy now and again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AkcIlt2Yvo

Skip to 1:02:00 for the Lovin' Spoonful. (Off-screen, but Hartman actually puts on a record.)

rumble fish is so dope

Warner Archive did a nice DVD of YABBN.

Anyone see/have memories of the SNL ep Coppola directed? Host George Wendt and musical guests Phillip Glass. 1986.

https://www.onesnladay.com/2019/03/26/march-22-1986-george-wendt-and-francis-ford-coppola-philip-glass-s11-e13/

New One's in Trouble:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/francis-ford-coppolas-megalopolis-in-peril-1235284875/

A truly brilliant paragraph right here:

Sources say Coppola, who has never made an effects-heavy movie, fired almost his entire visual effects team Dec. 9, with the rest of that department soon following. Mark Russell, a veteran whose credits include In the Heights and The Wolf of Wall Street, was leading the team as visual effects supervisor. (Coppola famously fired his visual effects department on Dracula 30 years ago.)

one from the heart got nothing here? all right

Coppola says the everything is fine:

https://deadline.com/2023/01/francis-ford-coppola-no-truth-to-apocalypse-on-megalopolis-1235216222/

3D Stake From the Heart got nothing here?

"You don't think going into bankruptcy's scary? It's so scary that it can make you suck your own blood!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkWIh_IiL0o

Tom Waits wrote an exceptionally good tune for One from the Heart, though the Crystal Gayle version doesn't work as well and his own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYwwpbStHZw

*as his own

this is kinda like choosing a kickball team from a herd of fat kids

I had a legitimate belly laugh at this.

I don't remember if I voted in this but if I did I'd have voted Tetro.

https://thefilmstage.com/francis-ford-coppolas-new-re-edit-restoration-btwixt-now-and-sunrise-arrives-in-february/

I love The Outsiders

Apocalypse Now broke him.

Saw Rumble Fish in a one-off Alamo screening a couple of months back -- never had seen it before, stagey as hell and yet it worked.

Anyone see the revamped Cotton Club?

I thought Rumble Fish would be thought of as a cult classic around these parts but obviously.. not.

Got through One from the Heart over a few nights. Wasn't sure I'd ever give it a go, but the Sam Wasson book made me curious. Such a weird, hollow film. Frederic Forrest is so ill-equipped to handle the lead role (and cursed with a Three Stooges haircut for most of the film). Felt embarrassed for H.D. Stanton (whose hair is worse) and Teri Garr too at different points (not her performance, more that she was dragged into this). I think Tom Waits' score is probably the worst thing about it. I've never seen La La Land: did it take some of its look from Coppola's film?

Ha, pretty brutal review from first line to last. Nastassja Kinski looks great in it though, right? iirc this film, like Bullitt, has one of those airport gate departure scenes that would now be impossible and thus inspire nostalgia.

xxp I actually saw that at the NYFF (having never seen the one that was ultimately released in theaters), and Coppola did explain how the Hines brothers bore the brunt of the cuts because of the racist bullshit the producers threw at him (i.e. the movie's too long and their characters only appealed to Black people). You can kind of tell what was cut because even though they found all those scenes, it feels like they didn't find the original camera negative and had to use inferior quality material to restore them. Not vastly inferior - it still looks like it came from 35mm film - but the picture quality definitely drops down during those scenes. Anyway, I have to say it's probably a massive improvement because the movie really lights up during those scenes - it's ridiculous that they cut them out because the rest feels so stiff in comparison, especially compared to the Hines brothers. Maurice (who just passed away) was at the screening, so at least he got to see it restored.

At least Heaven's Gate has the two great sequences, the graduation and the roller-skating scene. I know it's seen by some as a great film now, but even if you don't share that view, there are those two sequences. One from the Heart has nothing.

I agree that the music doesn’t work at all.

I really really really liked tetro a lot

My intro to the rather hot to Alden Ehrenreich.

to

One From the Heart had a couple of screenings at the local Alamo going and out of curiosity I went to see one and what a weird curio of a film. It's pretty obvious that Garr and Julia just have way better chemistry than Garr does with Forrest, while Kinski as a literal magic pixie dream girl means the only way the film even vaguely works plotwise is to read it as 'an abusive kidnapping hypocritical oaf finally pushes someone who deserves better too far, said person finds someone a lot better after all and flies off with him, while the oaf retreats into an unearned fantasy that probably is a sign of a breakdown.' And my god, when Kazan and Stanton start clicking immediately and then we follow Forrest as he runs off I was almost all "Are you insane? Stick with those two! They're fucking hilarious together!" It almost felt like Coppola was trying to puree several Bogdanovich films into one thing.