Eleanor Coppola, Documentary Filmmaker and Artist, Dies at 87

Published: 13 April 2024 at 03:11

Entertainment

Eleanor Coppola, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and artist, passed away at the age of 87 at her home in Rutherford, California. Best known for directing the 1991 documentary 'Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse,' she documented the making of iconic films like 'Apocalypse Now' and was married to director Francis Ford Coppola. They had three children, including filmmakers Roman and Sofia Coppola. Coppola's cause of death was not disclosed.

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Eleanor Coppola (Wikipedia)

Eleanor Jessie Coppola (née Neil; May 4, 1936 – April 12, 2024) was an American documentary film director, screenwriter, and artist. She was married to director Francis Ford Coppola from 1963 until her death. She was best-known for her 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse as well as other documentaries chronicling the films of her husband and children.

Gian-Carlo Coppola (Wikipedia)

Gian-Carlo Coppola (September 17, 1963 – May 26, 1986) was an American film producer and actor. He was the oldest child of set decorator/artist Eleanor Coppola (née Neil) and film director Francis Ford Coppola, and brother to screenwriter/producer Roman Coppola and director Sofia Coppola.

Francis Ford Coppola filmography (Wikipedia)

Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and film composer whose career spans more than fifty years. Coppola has directed twenty-three feature films to date.His films The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now are often cited among the greatest films ever made.

Francis Ford Coppola (Wikipedia)

Francis Ford Coppola ( KOH-pəl-ə, Italian: [ˈkɔppola]; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood film movement of the 1960s and 1970s and is widely considered one of the greatest directors of all time. He is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA).After directing The Rain People in 1969, Coppola co-wrote Patton (1970), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with Edmund H. North. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather (1972), which revolutionized the gangster genre of filmmaking, receiving strong commercial and critical reception. The Godfather won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Mario Puzo). The Godfather Part II (1974) became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highly regarded by critics, the film earned Coppola two more Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, making him the second director (after Billy Wilder) to win these three awards for the same film.Also in 1974, he released the thriller The Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next film, the war epic Apocalypse Now (1979), which had a notoriously lengthy and strenuous production, was widely acclaimed for vividly depicting the Vietnam War. It also won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola one of only ten filmmakers to have won the award twice. Other notable films Coppola has released since the start of the 1980s include the dramas The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both 1983), The Cotton Club (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), The Godfather Part III (1990), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and The Rainmaker (1997). Coppola has acted as producer on such diverse films as American Graffiti (1973), The Black Stallion (1979), The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) and The Secret Garden (1993).Many of Coppola's relatives and children have become popular actors and filmmakers in their own right: his sister Talia Shire is an actress, his daughter Sofia is a director, his son Roman is a screenwriter, and his nephews Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are actors. Conductor, Riccardo Muti, is his 2nd Cousin on his mother’s side (Pennino). Coppola resides in Napa, California, and since the 2010s has been a vintner, owning a family-branded winery of his own.

Coppola family (Wikipedia)

The Coppola family (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔppola]) is an Italian-American family of filmmakers and performing artists.The family originates from Bernalda in the region of Basilicata. Agostino "August" Coppola (1882–1946) emigrated to the United States circa 1905. He married Maria Zasa (1887–1974) (also from Bernalda) on January 25, 1908. They had seven children—Archimedes, Carmine, Pancrazzo, Mario, Anton, Edward and Clarence. The best-known members (Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia Coppola, Nicolas Cage) are descended from Carmine Coppola.

List of awards and nominations received by Sofia Coppola (Wikipedia)

Sofia Coppola is an American filmmaker and actress. She is best known for directing, producing, and writing such films as the psychological drama The Virgin Suicides (1999), the comedy drama Lost in Translation (2003), the period drama Marie Antoinette (2006), the coming-of-age drama Somewhere (2010), the crime drama The Bling Ring (2013), the period thriller The Beguiled (2017), the comedy On the Rocks (2020), and the biographical drama Priscilla (2023). She also wrote, produced, and directed the Netflix Christmas musical comedy special A Very Murray Christmas (2015).Throughout her career, Coppola earned nominations for three Academy Awards, winning one, and three Golden Globe Awards, winning two. She was also nominated for three British Academy Film Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2004, Coppola became the third woman, the first American woman, and the youngest woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2010, she was the first American woman and the fourth American filmmaker to win the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 2017, she became the second woman and the first American woman to receive Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Wikipedia)

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a 1991 American documentary film about the production of Apocalypse Now, a 1979 Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Roman Coppola (Wikipedia)

Roman François Coppola (born April 22, 1965) is an American filmmaker. He is the son of Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola. Coppola serves as president of film company American Zoetrope. He is also the founder and owner of The Directors Bureau, a commercial and music video production company.

Italia Coppola (Wikipedia)

Italia Coppola (Italian: [iˈtaːlja ˈkɔppola]; née Pennino; December 12, 1912 – January 21, 2004) was the matriarch of the Coppola family. She appeared in three non-speaking roles in her son Francis Ford Coppola's films, One from the Heart, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III. She was known for her Italian cooking and published a cookbook called Mama Coppola's Pasta Book in 2000. Francis Ford Coppola named his 1998 Edizione Pennino zinfandel after her family's name and Italian heritage, and her nickname "Mammarella" is the name of her pasta and sauce line made by him.

Sofia Coppola (Wikipedia)

Sofia Carmina Coppola ( KOH-pəl-ə Italian pronunciation: [soˈfiːa karˈmiːna ˈkoppola]; born May 14, 1971) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and former actress. She has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Golden Lion, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her acting debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed crime drama The Godfather (1972). Coppola later appeared in several music videos and had a supporting role in the fantasy comedy film Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). She then portrayed Mary Corleone, the daughter of Michael Corleone, in the sequel The Godfather Part III (1990).Coppola transitioned into filmmaking with her feature-length directorial debut in the coming-of-age drama The Virgin Suicides (1999). It was the first of her collaborations with actress Kirsten Dunst. Her films often deal with themes of loneliness, wealth, privilege, isolation, youth, femininity, and adolescence in America. Coppola received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the comedy-drama Lost in Translation (2003), and became the third woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. She has since directed the historical drama Marie Antoinette (2006), the family drama Somewhere (2010), the satirical crime drama The Bling Ring (2013), the southern gothic thriller The Beguiled (2017), the comedy On the Rocks (2020), and the biographical drama Priscilla (2023).In 2015, Coppola released the Netflix Christmas musical comedy special A Very Murray Christmas, which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.

List of awards and nominations received by Francis Ford Coppola (Wikipedia)

The following is a list of awards and nominations received by American director, producer, and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola.Coppola is the winner of multiple film awards both nationally and internationally including Academy Awards for Patton. His movies The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now are often cited among the greatest films of all time.

Apocalypse Now (Wikipedia)

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper. Harrison Ford, who at the time of filming was not yet a major star, appears in a minor role.Milius became interested in adapting Heart of Darkness for a Vietnam War setting in the late 1960s, and initially began developing the film with Coppola as producer and George Lucas as director. After Lucas became unavailable, Coppola took over directorial control, and was influenced by Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) in his approach to the material. Initially set to be a five-month shoot in the Philippines starting in March 1976, a series of problems lengthened it to over a year. These problems included expensive sets being destroyed by severe weather, Brando showing up on set overweight and completely unprepared, and Sheen having a breakdown and suffering a near-fatal heart attack on location. After photography was finally finished in May 1977, the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited over a million feet of film. Many of these difficulties are chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991).Apocalypse Now was honored with the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered unfinished. When it was finally released on August 15, 1979, by United Artists, it performed well at the box office, grossing over $80 million in the United States and Canada and over $100 million worldwide. Initial reviews were polarized; while Vittorio Storaro's cinematography was widely acclaimed, several critics found Coppola's handling of the story's major themes anticlimactic and intellectually disappointing. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor (Duvall); it went on to win Best Cinematography and Best Sound.Apocalypse Now is today considered one of the greatest films ever made; it ranked 14th and 19th in Sight & Sound's greatest films poll in 2012 and 2022 respectively. Film critic Kyle Smith dubbed it "the greatest war movie ever made", while The Guardian called it "the best action and war film of all time." In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Carmine Coppola (Wikipedia)

Carmine Valentino Coppola (Italian: [ˈkarmine ˈkɔppola]; June 11, 1910 – April 26, 1991) was an American composer, flautist, pianist, and songwriter who contributed original music to the films The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, and The Godfather Part III, all directed by his son Francis Ford Coppola. In the course of his career, he won both the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, with BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media nominations.

Francis Ford Coppola Returns to Cannes Film Festival with Megalopolis Premiere

Nearly 50 years after winning the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, Francis Ford Coppola will premiere his self-financed epic film, Megalopolis, at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2024. The 85-year-old director's project, costing $120 million, tells the story of rebuilding a metropolis and stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and a star-studded cast. Coppola's return marks his eligibility for the Palme d'Or, 45 years after winning it for Apocalypse Now. The festival will also feature premieres for George Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Kevin Costner's Horizon, an American Saga.