ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090018
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: MICHAEL WARREN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A short time before Francis Ford Coppola read the script for ``Jack,'' he was asked to direct ``The Juror,'' the thriller in which Alec Baldwin terrorizes Demi Moore.
And what was the reaction of the director of ``The Godfather'' films, ``Apocalypse Now'' and ``Bram Stoker's Dracula,'' the man who raised garroting to an art form, blew up entire villages and drenched a sound stage in blood?
``I said, `Geez, would you be interested in me doing this if I could come up with a way to deal with the violence more implied, without people shooting down each other and stuff?' And they said, `No, this is the way we want to do it.'
``I don't mean to bum-rap `The Juror,''' Coppola says. ``My point is that when I got `Jack' it was so sweet and touching and poignant compared to some of the scripts people wanted me to do. I mean, I've done violent movies, if that's the story, but I don't particularly enjoy it.
"I'd rather be with a bunch of 9-year-old kids than do that.''
``Jack'' is a charming movie, and a perfect vehicle for the manic talents of Robin Williams, who plays a 10-year-old boy with a man's body, entering the 5th grade and encountering other children for the first time.
But the film might have misfired in another director's hands. This is no ``Big,'' the lighthearted fantasy that helped to make Tom Hanks a star. This boy is afflicted with a disease that ages him four times faster than normal.
``I tried to make it not so much literally a genetic disease, but a metaphor,'' says Coppola, who added lighter touches such as a masquerade party and a wild tree-house scene. He also uses time-lapse photography of a butterfly and speeding clouds to suggest how little time Jack has to enjoy life.
``It's not the most profound thing on Earth, but then it is in a way,'' he says. ``All of us are kind of like Jack - our lives are whizzing by.''
Coppola has been on fast-forward ever since he was 10 years old, when he spent much of his time playing with a 16mm projector while quarantined in his family's Queens apartment after being stricken with polio.
Now 57, he has earned a reputation as the most daring filmmaker of his generation, with five Academy Awards to his credit. But he has insisted on living on the edge, risking all he owns to bring his visions to the screen.
He also launched his own studio, American Zoetrope; started restaurants, literary magazines, a radio station and a movie house, and in a benevolent take on Don Corleone, looked after the careers of countless people from his base of operations in San Francisco.
The millions Coppola earned from the first two ``Godfather'' movies (along with two best-director Oscars in 1973 and 1975), might have secured his wealth and reputation decades ago, but he's been so overextended throughout his career that he's had to take on work from others to finance his dreams.
And those dreams have been expensive: ``Apocalypse Now,'' his definitive statement about the Vietnam War, spiraled out of control in the Philippines and took three years and $30 million to pull together, in 1979. To his surprise, it ultimately made more than $100 million at the box office.
```Apocalypse Now' only got made because I financed it. It turned out to be a good financial move, but who would have guessed?'' Coppola said.
Instead of trying something less ambitious for his next project, he launched into ``One From the Heart,'' a musical love story set in Las Vegas, starring Teri Garr. It, too, soared over budget, and flopped in 1982.
Coppola had to give up Zoetrope's Los Angeles studio and fend off eviction notices for his house in San Francisco, his vineyards in Napa Valley and other properties. Any profits had to pay interest on debts of more than $20 million.
Still, he pursued his own films, shooting ``The Outsiders'' and ``Rumblefish'' back to back in Tulsa, Okla. The teen gang films helped Zoetrope survive, and jump-started the careers of Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio and Mickey Rourke.
He also made money on the next movie he was offered - ``Peggy Sue Got Married,'' but ``The Cotton Club'' and another of his own projects, ``Tucker, the Man and His Dream,'' were disappointing at the box office. ``Tucker,'' though, won critical acclaim.
Finally, Coppola, his wife and Zoetrope had to declare bankruptcy in 1992. Only when ``Bram Stoker's Dracula'' opened later that year and took in more than $200 million could he wipe the ledgers clean.
Eleanor Coppola, his wife of 34 years, gets much of the credit for keeping him sane, he says. ``To have a woman and a friend who's been in my corner, where even if she's very different from me, and even different from what I thought I wanted, it gives you a tremendous edge.''
The Coppolas now spend most of their time living in a house at their vineyards, which has ``2,000 acres of best wineland in Napa,'' he says. He writes scripts in a little bungalow there, and entertains legions of guests, cooking big Italian dinners and serving Rubicon, his fine red wine.
``I'm blessed with a wonderful lifestyle,'' says Coppola, wearing a rumpled suit and monogrammed Italian shirt after flying in from France. ``I have a little place in Paris, a little place in New Orleans, I have little places all over the place.''
But never again will Coppola bet the ranch on a movie, he says.
``I made a deal with my wife - I said, `Look, if I take my hands off it so I don't have the ability to put it all up - but then I go and I work real hard and I make another little fortune, can I blow that?' And she said, `yes,''' Coppola says, grinning gleefully.
``I'm willing to do it again. In fact, I'm looking forward to it. I just don't want to do it to people I like and cause them a lot of injury.''
After ``Jack'' and his next directing effort, John Grisham's ``The Rainmaker,'' Coppola is hoping he'll have enough to bankroll a script he's been working on for years, ``an ambitious project that tries to deal with our times, and it uses the metaphor of a giant city.''
An ``Apocalypse Now'' for the 1990s?
``Yeah, I know, that's the trouble. I better make some money,'' he says. ``But you know, money is to use. Money is fine if you're going to do something with it, but just to stash it in the bank and know you have it and use it to make more, is I think, kind of disgusting.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: color.by CNB