This past Thursday 5/10/07, thanks to my friend Jeremy, I got to attend a documentary screening and Q+A with the legendary Francis Ford Coppola at the Rialto Theatre for Georgia State University.

(photo by Jeremy Frye)

The documentary, called “Coda: Thirty Years Later,” and filmed by his wife Eleanor, is the companion piece to Hearts Of Darkness and centers around his filming of his current project, Youth Without Youth. 

Now I was very excited about attending this event as I’m a big fan of Francis Ford Coppola.  I even stalked him on a trip I took to San Francisco a couple of years back until I was finally able to get a picture with the man. 

(trust me, he was not happy taking this pic.)

Overall, the documentary felt more like an extended DVD extra, but still interesting as I haven’t heard much about Youth Without Youth, which is based on a novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade and filmed in and around Bucharest.  It was written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola (the first time in almost 10 years since he’s helmed a movie).  The film stars Tim Roth and Alexandra Maria Lara.  The premise appears to be about Tim’s character, a professor, who lives a very, very long time and loses and finds love with two different women, both played by Ms. Lara.  The basic themes that he kept mentioning after the doc ended, were the illusionary nature of time, consciousness and reality.  Sounds like a head trip, but one that you will want to see more than once.

He took questions from the audience (many of whom just wanted to drop off their headshot, script or get something signed) and was very open and engaging.  In fact, he’d spend almost five minutes answering each question by veering off onto other tangents that answered questions no one had asked yet.  One bit I found amusing was when he mentioned that he’s been hounding George Lucas to start making personal films now that he’s done with Star Wars, totally implying he knew how bad those new movies were, but did defend him by saying he’s a truly talented director.  He also said that his vineyard is completely financing all his new film ventures (he plans to keep writing and directing  until he can’t).  And how these smaller, more personal films were partly inspired by what Sofia’s been doing.  He also mentioned a project that he was trying to get off the ground for years that he finally had to abandon called Megalopolis (which made me think of Metalocalypse and how amazing would it be if Coppola made a live version of that?!?). 

He kept talking and taking questions for almost two hours until the GSU staff finally had to politely ask him to wrap it up as they had to vacate the theatre by a certain time.  My friend Jeremy had hoped for an opportunity to get something signed but was unsuccessful.  But as you can see from the initial pic, we did have really close seats so that’s a small concession.  This was a really cool event and from the sound of it, he’s not doing too many of these around the country, so big thanks to the folks at GSU for putting this together.

One last thing, this little write up is a DaFC exclusive.  Typically I recap all the concerts and shows I go see on my personal myspace page, with the intent of reposting some of those here.  But since I really haven’t been good about doing that and this event didn’t quite fit in with my regular blog, I’m only posting it here.  Enjoy.