Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved.

Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

The great hope is that people who wouldn't normally make films will be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father's camera and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever - and it will really become an art form.

Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it.

I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it.

I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn’t have a lot of friends. Theater really represented that kind of camaraderie.

In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.

Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work.

When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.

I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.

I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better - time, consciousness and the dream-like basis of reality.

Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

We had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane.

When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.

Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.

I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.

My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.

Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

A director is the ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself.

I still think Ned Beatty should've played Don Corleone.

I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I'm no longer dependent on the movie business to make a living. So if I want to make movies as other old guys would play golf, I can.

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, "I learned so much today," that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old.

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I'm all alone where I'm not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I'm dead in the water.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.

Movies are the art form most like man's imagination.

I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'

I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.