It looks interesting enough, but I can't help but wonder if Coppola still has it in him to save the career that by now has more embarassments ("Jack", "Captain EO") than highlights. I also noticed that IMDB has "On the Road" back in pre-production, but with Walter Salles directed and FFC serving as producer. I remember seeing flyers in New York 10 years ago announcing auditions for it and wondered why the project had been abandoned.

R, as Ray Pride points out, Coppola's aware of skepticism like yours and has written about it in the diary pointed to in this entry.

My hopes for this one are high, obviously. The elements seem right for a fresh start for FFC: Eliade, the cast, Murch, Bucharest - not too close to ground he's tred before, yet not too far, either.

Oh, and he could make a dozen more Jacks and not even begin to dim the highlights of his career.

In 1998, Orion published a book of mine called Francis Coppola, the Making of his Movies. It ended with the very ordinary The Rainmaker, which followed the awful Jack. I recently updated my Coen Brothers biography (Orion, plug!.plug!) which was difficult because I hated their last two movies. However, as suggested by David Hudson above, film history is kind to its participants and always highlights the successes rather than failures. The opposite of the 'you're only as good as your latest film' ethos. 'After all Billy Wilder will be remembered for Some Like It Hot when Buddy Buddy is forgotten, and the final judgement on Coppola will ignore Jack. Because Ingmar Bergman laid The Serpent's Egg, it doesn't diminish his place in the pantheon of directors and when the name of Fellini comes up, nobody mentions City of Women.. Thus when one talks of the Coen Brothers in the future, the few aberrations will fall into oblivion.' (from my intro to the new updated edition.

I might add, though, that I've given up on Coppola Sr and the Coens. (and Woody Allen) I hope I'm proved wrong in these cases.

I hope so, too, naturally. By the way, I picked up your book on Coppola when I was in the States in March and... well, I'm still looking forward to reading it, but now all the more so. [grin]

So you're the one who bought it. (Old joke!). It's pretty light reading. I had hoped to visit Coppola in the Napa Valley, but he was busy shooting his last (?) film. Perhaps I can now update the book with all his future films, though I hope Godfather IV is not among them.

I thought the last two Coen brothers movies were wonderful, although it wasn't until the second viewing of "Intolerable Cruelty" that I really began to appreciate it.

If you thought Intolerable Cruelty (on audiences) and The Lady Killers (crude and unfunny) were wonderful, then you must think that Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Fargo and Lebowski are among the greatest films ever made. My comments on their last two films can be found in the update of my Coen Brothers book. Too long (and negative) to repeat here. However, I think it's significant that these two films are the only ones in the Coen's filmography that didn't originate from them.