Citizen Coppola

The scene looks like something out of The Godfather. A bearded Neapolitan and four unsmiling associates alight from a private jet, pile into a black limousine, and head for the office of a prominent editor. They take him for a ride to a local Italian restaurant, where much intense talk and spirited gesticulating ensue. A few hours later, the visitors fly off again in their plane.

Variations on that episode have been playing in a number of American cities in recent weeks, but the only real affinity to The Godfather is the fact that the don is played by Francis Ford Coppola, the movie's director. His traveling companions are new editors of City magazine, a San Francisco weekly that appears next week for the first time in a thoroughly renovated format. Coppola bought a $15,000 piece of the fledgling magazine in 1973, picked up more last year, and had himself named publisher. "It was my Viet Nam," he recalls. "Every month I put more into it. The stakes were getting so high that I felt I either had to get in or get out."

New Recruits. He stayed in, but grew increasingly dissatisfied with City's predictable mixture of entertainment listings and windy anti-Establishment articles. He hired a succession of new editors, then grew dissatisfied with them too. Finally last month he suspended publication and fired the entire staff. Since then, he has taken some new recruits--including Editor Michael Parrish, former managing director of the monthly San Francisco, and Consulting Editor Rosalie Muller Wright, former editor of womenSports--across the country to talk publishing with some successful pros. Among them have been New York magazine Editor Clay Felker, New Times Publisher George Hirsch, Ms. Co-Founder Gloria Steinem and Sacramento Bee Managing Editor Frank McCulloch, a former TIME bureau chief who successfully launched the innovative monthly Learning. Coppola did not like what he heard. "Publishing is worse than the movie business--the egos, the feeling that you've stepped in somebody else's terrain," he says. "I sensed a real coldness in Felker, he was so unresponsive. George Hirsch was friendly but skeptical, as if he didn't believe it was going to work."

Guest Editors. Small wonder. Starting the kind of polished, expensively produced weekly that Coppola wants would be difficult even in a metropolis like New York or Los Angeles, let alone a second-tier city like San Francisco (pop. 675,000). In addition, Coppola has drawn up a list of "guest editors" he plans to invite to put out entire issues. Among them: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Conductor Seiji Ozawa, Rock Singer Sly Stone, Patty Hearst's ex-fiance Stephen Weed and "an Italian fisherman."

Another Coppola idea is to hold the magazine's weekly closing in a theater and open the event to the public. Editors would do their work onstage, with galley proofs flashing on a screen behind them, and the audience offering comments, which would be published as a special page of the magazine. Beyond all that, Coppola wants City home-delivered to its projected 100,000 subscribers on Sundays. He explains: "I think it would be nice to have something like the New York Times to settle down with every Sunday morning."

At first, distribution will be mostly through street sales, and the press run is only about 50,000. The first issue contains a few modest surprises. The cover story is an investigative piece about a recent police raid on a local brothel. The issue also includes a letter from Fugitive Timothy Leary, but Coppola will disclose neither what it contains nor how City acquired it. The front part of the magazine is divided into departments on crime, business news, San Francisco history and other local topics. The middle part contains feature articles, and the back is devoted to entertainment listings. One of the issue's most notable traits is its squarish, Sunday-supplement size (11 in. by 13 in.). "I predict that Rolling Stone and New York will switch to our large, stapled format," Coppola says. "I predict a trend."

Coppola says he is committing $1 million to the rebuilding of City, in addition to the $500,000 he lost in its previous manifestation. He promises to keep the magazine going for a year and then reassess his commitment. "If it's a total turkey, I'll close it," he says. But for Coppola, who also owns a San Francisco theater, FM radio station and various other local enterprises and real estate, City is a reaffirmation of both his affection for San Francisco and his imaginative megalomania. "I don't know if all my ideas for City will work, but they're worth trying," he says. "In publishing, the margin of error is small, and people are frightened to try anything new, to tamper with the formula. But I find the frequency of a magazine exciting. With a movie, the whole process is so slow. Publishing City is going to be like making a movie a week."

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