Following up on a
post from a couple of weeks back, there's a preliminary
Web site up for
Youth Without Youth, Francis Coppola's "return to personal filmmaking." Included are a few absolutely fascinating
diary entries from the maestro, all written last September and all concerning his obsession that he may have outgrown his talent. An excerpt:
"WITHOUT
Without what? What is missing? What could be the reason that the same person, later in life, is unable to compete with himself as a younger artist? Is anything missing at all, or is the answer simpler — that each person is given only one or two truly worthy ideas, like a couple of arrows in a quiver. When such ideas come on the scene in an exciting work of art, it appears like magic; it's news. Critics and journalists require fresh blood for their own professions, and so it's understandable that a new artist with a new idea is seized up and catapulted into fame . This is true, also, for a series of works from one artist: a trilogy or tetralogy. Aren't the fourth books of The Alexandria Quartet or Mishima's The Sea of Tranquility the weakest of the group? Could it be that the ideas and innovations of the first or second book have already been demonstrated and are played out by time the last are written? Originally, I didn't intend to make more than one Godfather film; yet economic forces at the studio were insistent: "Francis, you have the formula for Coca-Cola; are you not going to make more?" But the first film expended most of the arrows in my quiver or, more aptly, the slugs in my revolver. So, the second film had to stretch into new and more ambitious territory to show a few more; otherwise, it would have been weaker than the first. By the time the third arrived, the basic ideas that made the first fresh and excited were all but used up."
Will Coppola rediscover his creative youth? Time will well....
(Via
Anne Thompson.)
# posted by Matthew Ross @ 6/12/2006 10:27:00 PM
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