Francis Ford Coppola: Close Up: The Making of His Movies (Close-Up Series)

"Like the other volumes on contemporary film-makers in the Close Ups series from Orion, this compact and nicely illustrated book combines a biographical and critical essay with reprints of the original reviews of Francis Coppola's films in Variety, the leading industry trade paper. In his well-informed, engagingly written essay, Ronald Bergan argues that Coppola's films "lead themselves to autobiographical scrutiny". He sees them as meditations on Coppola's own life and on his work as a film-maker, with the lead character in THE GODFATHER and Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW standing in for the megalomaniacal director. Bergan's account of Coppola's films concentrates especially on the 1988 biopic, TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM, in which a brilliant and visionary independent automobile designer in 1940s America is prevented by the big Detroit manufacturers from realizing his plans for "the car of tomorrow"".Ronald Bergan is the author of 'Francis Ford Coppola: Close Up: The Making of His Movies (Close-Up Series)', published 1998 under ISBN 9781560251941 and ISBN 1560251948.