Godfather (38 page)

In this fashion Jackie introduces the extended flashback that covers the events leading up to his funeral, and it is to his funeral that the movie returns at the film's conclusion. Hence, Jackie's obsequies serve as the narrative frame for the entire picture. The story proper begins in flashback a year earlier, with Jackie arriving at Fort Myer as a trainee. He soon encounters Sergeant Clell Hazard, a combat veteran who has become increasingly demoralized as he observes the Army futilely waging a war in Vietnam he is convinced is unwinnable. “I care about the U.S. Army,” he says to a friend.
“That's my family. The only one I got. And I don't like it when my family is in trouble.” It is clear that Hazard has always defined his self-image in terms of his membership in the armed forces.

After four years in Vietnam, Hazard is now a member of the Old Guard, a special unit that serves as the honor guard for the burials at Arlington National Cemetery (the gardens of stone) of servicemen killed in Vietnam. In practice this can involve participation in as many as fifteen funerals a day. Hazard is convinced that the experience he has gained from his tours of duty, both in Korea and in Vietnam, is being squandered. He would much prefer to train cadets for combat so that his expertise could well save some lives.

Depressed by the continuing loss of so many young lives, Hazard sardonically tells Jackie Willow, a young recruit in the Old Guard, that burying is their business and business has never been better. Bright-eyed, impetuous Jackie insists that the war is not lost and that the right kind of soldier could make a difference. Hazard, on the other hand, thinks Jackie far too idealistic nd tells him so repeatedly. Nonetheless, the rambunctious lad is itching to plunge into the fray in order to do whatever he can to help win the war.

Since Jackie is the son of an old comrade of Hazard's in Korea, Hazard nurtures paternal solicitude for the young man and discourages him from volunteering for combat. To no avail. Jackie in due course is shipped overseas, where he is killed in action just a few weeks before he completes his tour of duty. During the ceremonies at graveside for Jackie, we can hear a couple of the younger members of the Old Guard muttering their favorite jingle: “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust;/Let's get this over and get back in the bus.” Jackie no doubt recited this same impish little ditty when he was part of the ceremonial guard.

Hazard is divorced and has lost custody of his son to his ex-wife. It is not surprising, then, that Jackie had become a surrogate son for Hazard during their time together in the Old Guard. So he feels as if he has indeed lost a son when Jackie is killed. The aging soldier remembers that Jackie had dreamed of winning the Combat Infantry Badge while he was in Vietnam but did not live long enough to receive one. Hence Hazard places his own C.I.B. on Jackie's coffin before the interment, equivalent to a gift from father to son. Hazard also decides, in the wake of Jackie's death, to return to the battleground in Vietnam in the hope that he can teach other young fighting men everything he knows about how to survive under fire, since he never got the chance to help Jackie in this way.

Coppola explains that he ultimately decided to make this muted, elegiac
film about the special ceremonial unit of the army because it is consistent with the theme that frequently appears in his films, the significance of family. To be precise, he valued the opportunity to present an in-depth portrayal of servicemen as a sort of family whose members are bound together by a traditional code of honor and by mutual loyalty and affection. In short, his goal in making the film was to limn military men, not as conventional movie stereotypes, but as complicated human beings. He accomplished this task quite satisfactorily, as reflected in the solid characterizations of Clell Hazard and Jackie Willow and in the subtle father-son relationship that gradually develops between them. Coppola portrays very warmly the fatherly relationship of the tough old sergeant and the enthusiastic young rookie so that we cannot help but care about them.

Critical reaction to
Gardens of Stone
was very reserved indeed, with most reviewers praising individual aspects of the film, but not the whole show. For example, Jordan Cronenweth's cinematography was lauded for giving the movie a mellow, autumnal look with its muted, pastel tints. (More than one critic pointed out that the melancholy tone of the picture could be attributed to some extent to the personal tragedy that had intervened in Coppola's life while he was making the movie. Coppola once again demonstrated his skill in drawing the best from his actors, as with Caan's sturdy performance as the grizzled veteran, matched by Sweeney's smart, alert portrayal of a recruit.

But the film as a whole was thought to rely too much on character and mood and not enough on dynamic storytelling. Coppola himself confessed that he was aware of this problem from the get-go: “I was trying to orchestrate a piece that didn't have a strong narrative,” and it showed.
⁸²
It seemed that Coppola strained too hard to wring pathos out of the melancholy tale. For example, Jackie's funeral, which frames the picture, appeared to be designed to squeeze every last tear from the tragedy. In the end,
Gardens of Stone
was judged to be no more than workmanlike moviemaking.

Inevitably
Gardens of Stone
was compared to
Apocalypse Now
, much to the later film's disadvantage. Referring to Jackie's funeral, Richard Blake asked, “Why did Coppola, whose own strong
Apocalypse Now
presented a searing portrait of Vietnam and its corrosive effects on human values, turn to sentimentality in
Gardens of Stone?
.
⁸³
The film's somber vision was to some degree responsible for its dismal performance at the box office. Coppola consoled himself with a “Certificate of Appreciation for Patriotic Civilian Service” from the Army, which endorsed the film as displaying the devotion to duty and strong leadership that characterizes the United States Army.

Coppola concedes that he probably would not have chosen to make
Gardens of Stone
had it not been for the fact that the film production studio he had launched in the early 1980s had collapsed into bankruptcy. In order to pay his debts, he was compelled to become a “hired gun,” working nonstop on a variety of projects to pay his bills. The next section of this study will examine how Coppola's dream of owning and operating his own studio as a haven for independent filmmakers turned into a nightmare.

There is no point in hating Hollywood. That would be like hating the Sphinx. It's just there, and it will go on being there, whether you like it or not.

—Ken Russell, film director

Hollywood is still held together by palm trees, telephone wires, and hope.

—John Schlesinger, film director

Although both of the
Godfather
films were productions originated by Paramount Pictures, Coppola continued to maintain his own independent production company through which he initiated projects, such as
Apocalypse Now
, that he arranged to finance, shoot, and release in cooperation with various major studios. He initially named this operation, which he established in San Francisco in 1969, American Zoetrope, after the primitive mechanism that was a forerunner of the motion picture projector.

In 1980 he purchased the old Hollywood General Studios in the heart of the film colony, which had all the elaborate technical facilities necessary for shooting a motion picture that his San Francisco setup did not have. He christened his new acquisition Zoetrope Studios and envisioned it as similar to a repertory theater company where a group of artists and technicians would collaborate in making movies together.

He had passed the studio every day as a high school student during the period when the family lived in Los Angeles, and now it was his. Since
One from the Heart
was to be the first film Coppola directed at his own studio, it is important to outline the inauguration of Zoetrope Studios at this point before discussing the film itself.

Hollywoodites talked about Coppola's empire-building with tolerant chuckles, and one industry insider quoted the old adage about directors who started their own studios: “The lunatics are taking over the asylum.” Even George Lucas criticized his former mentor for buying a studio in Hollywood. “I thought Francis was betraying all of us in San Francisco who had been struggling to make this community a viable film alternative,” he said at the time.
¹
For his part, Lucas had set up Lucasfilm, his independent film company, in Mill Valley in the Bay area, a good distance from Hollywood. Coppola replied that his office complex at the Sentinel Building in San Francisco would continue to be the principal base of operations for his independent film unit, though shooting would be done at Zoetrope Studios in Hollywood.

Coppola envisioned his high-tech studio in Hollywood as a paradise for creative production specialists, who would function independent of the suffocating Hollywood establishment. “This feeling of being a part of a family, this closeness would be stimulating to professionals,” he said.
²
Among the “family members” would be Zoetrope regulars like production designer Dean Tavoularis and sound specialist Walter Murch.

Coppola officially purchased the ten-acre movie lot on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard at Las Palmas Avenue on March 25, 1980. He embarked on his daring enterprise by putting up $7.6 million for the studio by means of some cash and several mortgages on his assets. The studio housed nine sound stages, several office suites, thirty-four editing rooms, and a special-effects shop, plus ample rehearsal space. He also used his personal fortune, which was largely derived from his share in the profits of the first two
Godfather
films, to renovate the studio. Built in 1919, Hollywood General was one of the oldest studios in town. It had fallen into disrepair in recent years since its glory days, when silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd made
Grandma's Boy
there in 1922 and British director Michael Powell directed
The Thief of Bagdad
there in 1939. Coppola borrowed an additional $3 million to modernize the facility with the latest technical equipment. He hired 184 employees, including office staff and film technicians.

The purchase of Hollywood General Studios implicitly represented an endeavor on Coppola's part to put the auteur theory into practice in a significant manner by making and releasing his own pictures. The purpose of owning his own studio, Coppola explains, “was simply to own the rights to my movies.”
³
He took over the bungalow on the lot that was once used by Lloyd and was still named for him.

Robert Spiotta, a fellow Hofstra alumnus with business experience as an executive of Mobil Oil, was named president of Zoetrope Studios. Lucy Fisher, a former vice president at Twentieth Century-Fox, was named vice president. Mona Skager, who had been with American Zoetrope from the beginning, continued as a production executive, and Coppola appointed himself artistic director.

The fact remained that Coppola simply could not afford to produce and distribute a film without the financial backing of one of the major studios. “He understood that his (and his studio's) future still depended on industry financing,” says Jon Lewis in a book-length study of Coppola's studio. He would also need to negotiate “bank loans secured against his own future film revenues.”
⁴
The first film on the production docket that he planned to direct himself was
One from the Heart
, a romantic comedy with songs set in Las Vegas.

Coppola was determined to run Zoetrope Studios more efficiently than he had run American Zoetrope in its early days in the 1970s (see
chapter 3
). Indeed, back in the spring of 1977, he had addressed a memorandum to the staff of American Zoetrope expressing his displeasure at the lack of organization in the operation of the film unit at the headquarters in the Sentinel Building in San Francisco.

Some Coppola commentators describe the memo as paranoid. Yet it begins with a tactful introduction that hardly smacks of paranoia: “I realize that … it must be difficult for people who are working with me to understand exactly what I expect of them.” He goes on to establish the point that “we will maintain these facilities in order to better realize my own projects” exclusively. In the future, “we will not be in the service business.” His point was that when he founded American Zoetrope in 1969 as an independent production unit he planned to have a number of young directors making films there. That meant that the resources of the facility were eventually stretched thin. Furthermore, some of the aspiring filmmakers whom Coppola had taken under his wing were not experienced enough in their craft to handle expensive equipment properly, and some equipment was damaged or lost.

He added that “it is very important for me to dispel the seven-year
ambience of a happy hangout around the old American Zoetrope.” Coppola thought that the atmosphere sometimes seemed to be that of a frat house rather than of a film organization: “I expect people to dress and behave as they would for any other company.” He was not, after all, running a film school for wanna-be moviemakers or sponsoring other filmmakers' work. “The era of American Zoetrope being a Haven for young filmmakers … to find a home is really no longer in the cards.” In short, Coppola's dream of American Zoetrope as a community of film directors had proved impractical and had finally evaporated. Gone were the days when, as George Lucas puts it, Coppola would hand a camera to any zealous young filmmaker who showed up at the front door (see
chapter 3
).

Occasionally, he added, he would allow an established director to make a film for American Zoetrope. Indeed, he planned to have German director Wim Wenders direct
Hammett
for American Zoetrope. Nevertheless, American Zoetrope would continue to be fundamentally a one-client organization, “and the sooner we are able to gear ourselves to that fact, the better the company will run.”