WITH A FOREWORD BY WALTER MURCH Gene Phillips blends biography, studio history, and film criticism to complete the most comprehensive work on Coppola ever written. The force behind such popular and critically acclaimed films as Apocalypse Now and the Godfather trilogy, Coppola has imprinted his distinct style on each of his movies and on the landscape of American popular culture. In Godfather , Phillips argues that Coppola has repeatedly bucked the Hollywood "factory system" in an attempt to create distinct films that reflect his own artistic vision―often to the detriment of his career and finances. Phillips conducted interviews with the director and his colleagues and examined Coppola's production journals and screenplays. Phillips also reviewed rare copies of Coppola's student films, his early excursions into soft-core pornography, and his less celebrated productions such as One from the Heart and Tucker: The Man and His Dream . The result is the definitive assessment of one of Hollywood's most enduring and misunderstood mavericks. Of the many brilliant young American directors in the 1970s, Coppola was perhaps the brightest. He received the greatest acclaim for The Godfather and its first sequel, but critics were equally impressed by the less popular The Conversation . Since his 1982 debacle One from the Heart (whose failure cost him the independent studio he had set up), he has made mostly undistinguished films. Phillips depicts Coppola's career as a struggle to exist as an "artist in an industry," showing that the auteur theory has validity even within today's Hollywood system. He valiantly attempts to make this case by giving equal time to Coppola's less-celebrated efforts, arguing effectively for the underappreciated Bram Stoker's Dracula , which he maintains reinvented the horror film much as The Godfather had the gangster film, but less successfully for "gun for hire" jobs such as the John Grisham adaptation, The Rainmaker . Phillips relies heavily on previously published resources but makes good use of a lengthy interview with Coppola. Not definitive, but worthwhile. Gordon Flagg Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Phillip depicts Coppola's career as a struggle to exist as an 'artist in an industry,' showing that the auteur theory has validity even within today's Hollywood system."― Booklist "A first-rate production history of Coppola's films, a history that makes effective use of many interview, biographical, and critical materials, with specific attention to the scripts of Coppola's films. . . . Highly recommended."― Choice "Traces his subject's life and career from the University of California at Los Angeles through his brush with softcore porn 'B' flicks for Roger Corman, his work as a screenwriter, and the founding of his own production company."― Dallas Morning News "Phillip's book is marked by an honest appraisal that rises above the hyper-context of Coppola's media history and eccentric behavior. . . . Gives this much-maligned figure his rightful seat in the pantheon of late twentieth-century film directors, not for one work alone, but for his contribution to the future of the medium."― Film Quarterly "Phillips' work is stellar. The text will clearly become the definitive assessment of Francis Ford Coppola."― Lester Keyser "Coppola's movies will be seen for generations to come, and the book Godfather is a good insight into those films and the man who made them."― Lexington Herald-Leader "The author's access to knowledgeable people and his obviously painstaking research make this one of the most useful books to date about Coppola."― Library Journal "Working with Francis Ford Coppola on the screenplays of the Godfather films showed me how a really good direct works."― Mario Puzo "Coppola gave Phillips full access to his private journals and intimate opinions, resulting in a book of greater depth and focus."― New York Resident "Certainly the definitive work on the director to date and scholars (and lovers) of film will revel in the details about Coppola's best work and hoard the trivia about his worst."― Publishers Weekly "The definitive assessment of one of Hollywood's most enduring and misunderstood mavericks."― SirReadaLot.com "I have never made a movie as good as The Godfather and I don't have the amitition to try."― Steven Spielberg Gene D. Phillips is a professor of film history and modern literature at Loyola University. He is the author of numerous books, including Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir and Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. Used Book in Good Condition