"I'm Always in Money Trouble"

By RICHARD CORLISS

How to lose a zillion, by Francis Ford Coppola

Laid on at a cost of $4,000, it was a banquet fit for a movie king: white and green pasta, chicken with mozzarella and prosciutto, strawberries dipped in chocolate, vintage wine. Francis Ford Coppola, 41, the director of the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, had invited 100 journalists to inspect the most elaborate toy a movie-mad boy could hope to own: Zoetrope Studios, the 10 1/2-acre Hollywood production lot he bought early in 1980 to make his own films and those of fiercely loyal independent moviemakers he has invited to join him. This, he hoped, would be the studio of the future, an artistic Arcadia with nine sound stages, 34 editing rooms and newfangled videotape-and film-editing technology designed to allow films to be shot and completed in five weeks, half the normal time. But when the proprietor tried to explain the marvels of his "electronic studio," his guests bombarded him with questions about the cash crisis that has imperiled One from the Heart, his $23 million fantasy about love in Las Vegas, and may sink Zoetrope altogether. Was the nation's premier moviemaker in trouble? Said he, throwing his palms out: "I'm always in money trouble."

Coppola has always dreamed big about the movies. As a young man he went to Las Vegas to win enough money to buy a movie camera. In the early '70s he gambled successfully with Oscar-winning Godfathers, and then parlayed his work into a nine-hour TV mini-series that brought him more millions. Three-and-a-half years ago he came close to bankruptcy when a typhoon and other problems drove the cost of Apocalypse Now from the budgeted $12 million to over $30 million; now, 18 months after its release, the Viet Nam epic is in the black. Still, Coppola can't help envying the even greater financial success of another hot moviemaker. In 1973 Coppola produced a low-budget feature by George Lucas, and the film, American Graffiti, became a surprise hit. With Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, the protege has finessed his mentor at the box office. Says one screenwriter: "Francis has spent long hours bemoaning the twist of fate that brought George all that money." Lucas has invested much of his movie winnings in the conversion of a 2,000-acre tract in California's Marin County into a production base. With Zoetrope, Coppola hoped to build a prototype movie world of his own.

He corralled estimable talents from all over the world. Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, Weekend) came from France, Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Peeping Tom) from England, experimental Film Maker Scott Bartlett from San Francisco and Hoofer Gene Kelly from the heart of Hollywood. He put three films into production on the Zoetrope lot: Hammett, a surreal murder mystery directed by the German Wim Wenders; The Escape Artist, starring Ryan O'Neal's 16-year-old son Griffin; and One from the Heart. By January, Zoetrope had some 500 employees and a $600,000-a-week payroll. Inevitably, Coppola's Olympian disregard for the bottom line led to deep financial trou ble. Last spring, Hammett, which had endured a dozen rewrites on its way to filming, was shut down before completion.

Then a few weeks ago, after the budget for One from the Heart ballooned from $12 million to $23 million, a group of investors withdrew $8 million of Heart's financing.

Would Francis' film be abandoned?

Would Zoetrope go the way of all Utopias?

It has become the industry's most tantalizing clifmanger: Dallas for real.

The movie business is not famous for philanthropy, but most Hollywood folk have wished Coppola well in his daring venture. A few have offered more. Jon Davison, who produced the hit comedy Air plane!, has been at Zoetrope preparing a thriller called Interface. To help his boss inch away from disaster, he showed the Interface script to Paramount Pictures, which last week paid Zoetrope $500,000 for the property and also gave Coppola a $500,000 interest-free loan-- enough to keep the director's enterprise afloat for two more weeks. Says Paramount Chair man Barry Diller: "It's not a charitable act, it's a supportive act. Francis shouldn't be shut down. He is a national resource."

Support came from within Zoetrope too: 155 employees took a pay cut, reducing the weekly payroll by $150,000.

And some of Zoetrope's lower-cost, but still spectacular schemes have paid off. At Manhattan 's 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, Coppola presented a refurbished, multiscreen version of Abel Gance's 1927 epic, Napoleon, with a live orchestra playing the magnificent score composed and conducted by Coppola's father Carmine. The film grossed $800,000 in just eight showings, and a tour is being planned that may culminate with a film-concert in the Hollywood Bowl. Says Zoetrope's director of special projects, Tom Luddy, who oversaw the Napoleon engagement, "Francis is great for me -- and for movies. He's a risk taker who likes to gamble every thing on his art. I think he'll pull through."

Hollywood insiders -- and outsiders who want films to provide something more than loss-leaders for the movie theater popcorn sales -- are hoping this compulsive gambler will scrape by. Says one young director: "Francis is redefining brinkmanship, but he hasn't defeated himself yet. As arrogant as he is, he's still the only important thing happening in film today. We desperately need him."

Jon Davison is even more assertive. When asked whether Coppola will be forced to unload his beloved Zoetrope, Davison quotes a line from Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West: "You don't sell the dream of a lifetime." Indeed, TV Producer Norman Lear's company, Tandem/T.A.T., last week offered $18 million for Zoetrope's facilities. Coppola, still betting he can do it his way, turned it down flat.

Reported by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles

With reporting by Martha Smilgis

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