Francis Ford Coppola hardly needs an introduction. As the lion of the New Hollywood, the outline of his career is well known. From work with Roger Corman to his first films in the 1960s, and then his Oscar for the screenplay of Patton (1970) and the unprecedented worldwide success of The Godfather in 1972, he established a career against the Hollywood grain that also defines an epoch in film history. By 1969 he had already set up American Zoetrope, his own company away from Hollywood. The risks he took to make Apocalypse Now (1979) outside the studios branded him as a rebel, and as a thorn in the side of an industry more comfortable with low-risk, crowd-pleasing blockbusters than expensive, original visions.
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