Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro is nuts. I should be quick to point out that I mean that in a good way—I was engaged by it, entranced by it, and finally even moved by it. But it’s nuts nonetheless. It begins, as some critics and even the maestro himself have noted, in a relatively normal mode not unfamiliar to fans of Tennessee Williams or WIlliam Inge: a wide-eyed younger sibling reconnects with the older, much-admired and loved estranged older sibling; emotional epiphanies and shocking revelations are bound to ensue. But well before the aforementioned younger sibling (played here by a charming and aptly sweet Alden Ehrenreich) turns up, sweaty-faced, upper lip trembling, and wearing.…wait, is that the same leather jacket Lou Castel had on in Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore?.…to declaim a buried family truth while standing under a Mussolini-style portrait of Klaus Maria Brandauer, the picture has well and truly jumped the track it had started out on and climbed somewhere wholly…other.
One reason it works is that for some reason, Coppola owns the craziness here, in a way he couldn’t quite muster with his prior film, the sometimes dazzling but largely moribund Youth Without Youth. Rather than trying to recast himself as a European filmmaker, as he did in that film, here he indulges his manic eclecticism in a more meaningfully personal way. (Which isn’t to say, incidentally, that the influence of Pedro Almodovar, and particularly of Habla con ella Talk to Her,isn’t deeply felt here, as much so as the more obvious Powell/Pressburger influences.) And one of the film’s most personal revelations is that its 70-year-old director is still kind of freaked out by having become famous, and guilty about someone else in his family not becoming famous.
In Tetro, it’s the wide-eyed innocent who acheives a surreally-depicted fame, and here I’m going to step back from the film just a bit, because its texture is so unusual and interesting that I want to be able to tell the below story to readers who haven’t yet seen the film, and do so in a way that won’t give away too much. Suffice it to say that at one point in the film our wide-eyed hero—in a way the film’s real protagonist, rather than the tortured older brother who gives the film its name (and I should note here that I was surprised and gratified to see that after all the bullshit he’s publicly manufactured, Vincent Gallo, who plays Tetro, is still capable of generating a convincing, sympathetic screen presence)—gets to cavort in a hot tub with two very attractive young women. And watching the little scene, I was reminded of having breakfasted with Francis Ford Coppola many years ago.
Was it the late winter of 1998, the early winter of 1999, or even later, some time in 2000? I don’t precisely recall, but I remember it was cold. Jim Meigs, then the editor-in-chief of Première, had gotten a call from Coppola’s agent. Jim was relatively new there—he had come on in May of ’96, and brought me on freelance a couple of months after that, making me a staffer in January of 1997—and gathered from the call that Mr. Coppola wanted to make the acquaintance of current régime. Jim asked me to come along because—and of course I was flattered to hear this—he wanted someone with whom Coppola could really talk film, hardcore, to be there.
At the time the maestro was holing up in a place he owned on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, trying to finish his script for the since-abandoned project Megalopolis. He suggested a breakfast at a joint on East Houston, a high-ceilinged, roomy place, a bit Balthazar-esque, hip but not too hip, as are so many of the bistros of the LES today.
Coppola was in an expansive, voluble mood. Sure enough he wanted to talk about film—somehow The 400 Blows came up—and about technology. (Incidentally, take a look at some of what quite a few people took to be his rantings about the potential of digital technology, from ten and even more years back, and you’ll see that he was pretty much absolutely right in all of his predictions.) He was excited about the then-emerging DVD format, and the mastering facility American Zoetrope was building out west. He’s a great bear-like guy, with a real natural warmth, and a lively mercurial mind, and of course he’s a least just a little bit intimidating. Great company, and at the same time you could kind of see how exasperating he could be on a bad day.
As it happened, he also had something of a bone to pick with Première. He hadn’t been too crazy about some of the things that had been published about him in the magazine in the past. “I never called Winona Ryder a whore!” he protested, referring to a piece by Rachel Abromowitz on the making of 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There were one or two other things, but Jim could plead not-personally- guilty to most of them, as they had occurred prior to his tenure there. Nothing implausible about that kind of deniability. As it happened, these citations were just a warmup. What, or rather who, had really gotten his goat was, as Coppola put it, “that kid Peter Biskind,” whose extremely juicy exposé of ’70s Hollywood, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, had been published in 1998.
“What’s this nonsense [it’s possible Coppola used a stronger word] about me having other women in my hot tub? For one thing, I never even had a hot tub in that house! You can check for yourself!” And again, in this case Jim and I felt that we were in the clear. Biskind, of course, had based much of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls on material he had collected and written—and, more to the point, on relationships he had cultivated—during his lengthy tenures at both American Film and Première magazine. But it kind of goes without saying that the whole time he was saving the “best” stuff for himself. Very little of the more scandal-mongering material in the book had originally appeared in Première. (And indeed, it’s my understanding that Biskind, who I know only slightly, but cordially, approached the publication of the book with no little trepidation, sensing that quite a few bridges were gonna be napalmed in its wake.) Peter, who had been Première’s Executive Editor at the time of the Great Staff Walkout of ’96 that created the void Jim came in to patch up, stayed at the magazine as a Contributing Editor for a while, but by the time of our breakfast with Coppola, he had departed for the much much greener (if you know what I’m saying) pastures of Vanity Fair.
Given the circumstances, Jim and I didn’t feel inordinately uncomfortable in saying that, while, no, we hadn’t had anything to do with the false hot-tub story or any other such thing, we could absolutely assure him that no snafus such as that would ever happen again. And thus, the relationship between Coppola and Première: The Movie Magazine was once again as blank and pure as the soul of a newly-baptized babe. Coppola would continue to hold a bit of a grudge against Biskind (who, of course, everyone at Première would henceforth only ever refer to as “that kid”), which came to a head of sorts on Bob Shaye’s yacht (see Frank DiGiacomo’s highly entertaining account here). Of course, given that Coppola was about to enter a not-entirely-fecund stage of his directing career, from which he would only emerge with 2007’s Youth, the magazine didn’t get much of an opportunity to take advantage of it.
But I recalled Coppola’s hot-tub fulminations watching that scene in Tetro, and I have to admit, I thought, was he lying to us? For the scene is pretty convincingly vivid. Further investigation reveals that Coppola himself actually designed a very snazzy 11,000 gallon hot tub for his resort/creative retreat/whatever the hell it is, in Belize. Check it out. So what gives, or gave? I decided to go back to the source, Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
And…there’s no mention of a hot tub. Here’s part of Biskind’s description of Coppola’s reaction to “sudden riches” in the wake of The Godfather’s success: “He bought a robin’s egg blue twenty-eight room Queen Anne row house…in San Francisco’s posh Pacific Heights…One room was devoted solely to electric trains…[a]nother contained a Wurlitzer juke box full of rare Enrico Caruso 78s. A ballroom was turned into a projection room, replete with a Moog synthesizer and a harpsichord, and a collection of roller saktes left over from You’re A Big Boy Now. He greeted guests wearing a caftan. Like a newborn porpoise, he cavorted in a small, clover-shaped, Moorish style swimming pool.” (I have to say, inputting the passage, I find a new appreciation of Biskind’s mastery of real-estate prose.)
And so, I wonder just where is this ur-hot tub that seems to loom so large in the Coppola subconscious mythology. I despair that I shall ever know, let alone soak in it.
UPDATE: Well, we have closure on the hot-tub theme, thanks to commenter Bruce Reid’s nimble Google work. What tripped me up was that I was looking on the book for a pure Biskind assertion (which is what Coppola seemed to be objecting to. But as it happens, the hot tub was evoked by Marcia Lucas, the editor and former wife of George, who’s a reliable source of juicy and sometimes bilious bits in Bulls. The pertinent passage is on page 208 of the hardcover edition. After describing Coppola as a particular type of “hound,” Lucas evokes the image of our auteur “feeling up some babe in the hot tub” after Coppola’s wife Eleanor had gone “upstairs with the kids.” Ah well. Francis and Eleanor remain married, as it happens, and good for them.
Also, after the rather Jesuitical taunt “your mistakes unfortunately compound themselves,” I’ve put the Almodovar movie title in English. That’ll teach me.
Hey, at least you got to meet the guy…
AND you got to see Tetro. It’s rough being a fan of many obscure films (I suppose Tetro can fit in that category) and not living in a big city. If it weren’t for Netflix, I’d probably be moving to the city a lot sooner. 😉
This story must be false. Francis Coppola couldn’t fit in a hot tub with two women.
Movie’s worth seeing though.
Great anecdote, but one quibble: If you’re gonna refer to Almodóvar’s 2002 film as “Habla con ella,” I expect to see you refer in subsequent posts to e.g. Suzuki’s “Koroshi no rakuin” and Kaurismäki’s “Kauas pilvet karkaavat.”
@m’da: One of the many reasons I love you, sir (and I’m not being sarcastic here at all) is that you’re one of the few people likely to catch that glitch/detail, and then call me out on it. Believe it or not, when I was writing the post, the Almodovar title literally just came out that way, and I looked at it, wondered whether to English it as I generally would, then shrugged and said “What the hell.” I won’t make that mistake again!
Sorry, man, pet peeve of mine. People who always use the French-language title—but English for everything else—drive me especially nuts.
C’est drole, ça.
Hmm, I definitely remember reading a Coppola hot-tub story in a book. I could have sworn it was in ‘Easy Riders’ too.
From the description of FFC’s Belize hot spot: “Made from thousands of pieces of local granite and built by local stone craftsmen, it sits in a hillside amid the same kind of lush jungle paradise Coppola fell in love with while filming Apocalypse Now.”
From me: _Tetro_ kinda begs to be understood allegorically, but I’d like to think that isn’t necessary. I’d like to think one can simply enjoy the beauty, and, by looking at its lights, and its lustiness, one can enjoy quite a bit. I, for one, was moved by it. I also really dug _Youth Without Youth_ precisely because of its wildness, and its interest in language (of course). My highest praise for _Tetro_, though, is strictly personal in that right at this moment I’m kind of hating film and this one made me excited again about not just watching movies and videos and everything “cinematic” but, well, about thinking about such things in serious, artistic ways.
Also, I saw _Cluny Brown_ for the first time this weekend and it gave me hope, and courage, too. Somehow, I find that pairing apt, in surprising ways. Thoughts, GK?
your mistakes unfortunately compound themselves– If you wanted to use Almodovar’s title for the film then you should have written it as HABLE CON ELLA, using the imperative form of the verb hablar.
I don’t have a copy of the book at hand (didn’t care for it and didn’t hold on to it), but a google search gave this quote from Marcia Lucas: “Francis would be feeling up some babe in the hot tub. I was hurt and embarrassed for Ellie, and I thought Francis was pretty disgusting, the way he treated his wife.”
md’a: “People who always use the French-language title—but English for everything else—drive me especially nuts.”
The most annoying, egregious example of this pretentiousness I’ve encountered: Years ago I read a Gide novel (The Counterfeiters probably; can’t recall for certain) in which every chapter began with a quote from a famous writer. The edition I read translated every quote–German, Russian, Italian–into English. Except the French, despite this being the one language it’s certain purchasers of this translated version couldn’t read.
Sorry, didn’t know I couldn’t embed links. Here’s the review with the quote: http://sfchronicle.us/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1998/05/01/DD38973.DTL&hw=gibberish&sn=058&sc=563
Vincent Gallo is one of the best filmmakers currently working. I look forward to his next film more than I look forward to anyone’s. He is severely underrated by the “cinema community,” or whatever name you want to give to the people who decide what’s what. And Francis Ford Coppola is the most overrated filmmaker. Ever. I look forward to someone telling me I’m an idiot.
An idiot would be someone who made either the Gallo statement OR the Coppola one. Putting both in one post? That’s deserving of something far worse.
@AA
The problem with “best/worst”, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone (just look two posts back), is that it practically begs for people to contradict you.
Wherever Gallo might be rated, to be honest he’s got no one to blame but himself. I remain uncertain as to whether the ego trip he’s been on for a decade or so is just an elaborate gag or completely sincere. Either way, it’s managed to piss off a lot of people, and when he brought in that disastrous first cut of “The Brown Bunny” (through the wonders of the Internet, I saw this, and I wish Gallo would put it out with the cut that made theaters: paired with Roger Ebert’s two reviews of the film it’s pretty interesting), let’s just say karma catches up with you.
As for Coppola being overrated…instead of calling you an idiot, I’ll just assume you’re a bit hazy on film history. Say what you will about his output (and it is indeed, er, variable), Coppola still matters as a filmmaker. I’m actually catching “Tetro” tomorrow, and I can’t wait.
I’m waiting to hear from those who have seen “Tetro” to comment on the score by Osvaldo Golijov.
Buffalo 66 and Brown Bunny are two of my favorite films of the last fifteen years. That people who like to pose as film lovers would willfully disregard these two films, and Gallo’s artistry, attention to detail, and vulnerability, just goes to show that given a chance, most people will constantly outsmart themselves. And since when did being an asshole have anything to do with being a great filmmaker or being received as one? I mean, that’s a joke, right? If karma were real then Paul Thomas Anderson would be working at Starbucks right now and Lars von Trier would be bottling pickled herring. People don’t like Gallo because he’s good at everything he does, and nothing upsets mediocrities more than someone who can’t be mediocre.
@AA: I rather like Gallo’s films myself. When I referred to the “bullshit” he’s generated, I was thinking of the sperm sale on E‑Bay, the jagoff vodka ads, that kind of thing. To insist that that kind of activity doesn’t somehow detract from his artistic credibility is to admit that you don’t pay much attention to what I’ll provisionally call the real world. But as you insist that Gallo is good at everything he does (hey man, I’ve LISTENED to his “Recordings Of Music For Film”) I’d have to say that’s a given with you.
“That people who like to pose as film lovers would willfully disregard these two films, and Gallo’s artistry, attention to detail, and vulnerability, just goes to show that given a chance, most people will constantly outsmart themselves.”
The thing I hate about the Internet is that I read phrases like this and I can’t decide whether the poster is deluded/insecure/silly enough to think themselves the Supreme Arbiter of Taste, or if they’re just a troll.
But, either way, thanks for the laugh.
What about all the bullshit that Coppola has generated? I’ve tasted his wine and it’s about as good as Manishevitz. How come that doesn’t detract from his movies? His crap spaghetti sauce, his direction-by-proxy of his daughter’s films, his virtual editorial control over Film Comment vis-a-vis his advertisements running in the front, middle and back of the book? How is that any different? How come Gallo is constantly getting penalized for doing shit that everyone else does? Why, because he can swap clothes with his model/musician/actress girlfriends? Because he has a great head of hair? Because he still has maintained his punk agression and cracks jokes about being a republican to rile up the easily rile-able? And what “real world” are you talking about, Glenn? Yours? What, you live in the real world because you live in NYC and spend 75% of your time blogging? That’s the real world? Is that the current definition as decided by you? And let’s not get into what makes someone artistically credible. I mean, I’m a huge fan of your boy Soderbergh, but he’s made three films that make it very hard to take him serious when he wants to be taken seriously. As far as Gallo goes, don’t be disingenuous. You know his bonafides. You know who he’s run with in the past. There’s no need to name names. Anyone who has dated PJ Harvey has more than enough cred. Insecure much?
@AA: Dan’s right, you really ARE funny. You ask me if I’m insecure; lemme ask you, do you think Gallo would actually consent to have you suck his cock, as you’re so clearly dying to?
Okay, that was uncalled for.
This is what I LOVE about the internet: getting into a flame war with some dipshit after I’ve actually complimented the work of one of his artistic heroes.
AA said: “People don’t like Gallo because he’s good at everything he does, and nothing upsets mediocrities more than someone who can’t be mediocre.”
Wow, you can just smell the nuance.
This is a put-on, right?
You guys are making me feel bad about myself.
@AA: Aw, man, you blew it. My provocation was meant to have you return with a rhetorical Uzi and go down in a blaze of irrational glory. Instead, you back down. Pshaw.
To be brutally honest: I AM jealous of Vincent Gallo, and it IS because of that magnificent head of hair of his. He seems to be able to do ANYTHING with it. Some of the time I was looking at “Tetro” I was thinking, “Is that a wig?” and of course I knew all the while that it wasn’t. Even when I had hair, I was only able to do one thing with it. And if I try to grow anything out now, I’ll end up looking like Benjamin Franklin, or Kelsey Grammar on the first season of “Frasier.” And that’s if I’m LUCKY. Pshaw again.
I don’t want to feel bad about myself anymore.
“To be brutally honest: I AM jealous of Vincent Gallo, and it IS because of that magnificent head of hair of his.”
I’m jealous because he managed to talk Chloe Sevigny into letting him film the blowjob.
OK, that was uncalled for, too. In context, that scene’s actually pretty emotional. Of course, you can count the number of people who have watched the scene in context on one ha-…er, tens of people have actually watched that scene in context.
AA is so punkily aggressive. That’s what I like about him.
@AA
OK, joking aside, you’re right in that Coppola has pursued many side businesses and has made some pretty arrogant statements of his own, and that’s worth actually talking about, because some filmmakers we do forgive while others we don’t. And you’d be correct in observing the process of this seems to be dependent on the whims of the larger audience as well as having a good publicist.
I wouldn’t agree that Coppola hasn’t been penalized for his arrogance; let’s not forget the man’s taken more than a few critical lumps, to say nothing of the havoc his own ego wreaked on his personal life and finances. The guy’s paid the bills.
Also, he’s put out “The Godfather”, wrote “Patton”, and paved the way for “Star Wars” by producing George Lucas’ first two films. It doesn’t matter WHAT you think of that output, it had a massive effect on film history. Being living film history earns you a LOT of goodwill.
Gallo, bluntly, isn’t living film history. So far, he’s a footnote that fancies himself a prize-winning novel. That might well change; he is, whether you like the guy or not, a good filmmaker. But whether he becomes a filmmaker anybody other than film nerds like us care about one way or the other is anybody’s guess.
Dan made me feel a little better about myself.
It actually took me a while to accept the fact that Gallo was a filmmaker of significant artistic merit. I was so frustrated by the apparently overwhelming evidence that he was an asshole of intergalactic proportions. My more enlightened view is, currently, that he’s a pretty troubled guy with a few redeeming qualities; one of which is his hair, and another of which is his cinematic talent.
The thing about Coppola is that he’s much easier to forgive for his foibles, at least in my book. In a perfect world, every artist whose work I admire would turn out to be a saint, but that’s sadly not the case.
Part of the fascination with Gallo, I would say, lies in the striking incongruence between the tenderness and vulnerability evinced in his films and the raving egomania he projects publicly.
@ Zach, re Gallo: Well put. My sentiments exactly.
Hey! That’s what I said. Maybe I was obnoxious when saying it, but that’s exactly what i was trying to say and all of youse jumped on me like, I don’t know. Not fair. Hey!
You guys with your meter set permanently at Semi-Detached Irony. It gets old sometime. Makes for dull conversation. A lot of you are boring to read. Glenn, insults don’t sound good coming out of your mouth. You sound pissy and kind of bitchy. Like you went to Oxford or something. And if it sounds to you like I want to suck Gallo’s cock, then it sounds to me like you wanted David Foster Wallace to fuck you in the ass. I mean, relax, you barely knew the man.
I picture AA jerking off while typing that.
Double yuck.
Just to inform the thread: I’ll leave that last AA comment up, as my semi-ironically-detached testament to what a thoroughly class act he is. But that’s the final one. Everything else he tries to put up will be deleted.
Sorry. I really didn’t help matters, did I?
No worries, Bill. The image IS icky, but hardly inapt.
I personally found “Buffalo 66” and “The Brown Bunny” to be completely terrible films. I think that Gallo’s particular brand of crapola is, itself, an insecure cover up for his lack of talent at being a director. As an actor, I will admit, he’s pretty good. But the movies he’s helmed are, at best, sort-of a train wreck, and at worst, just laughably stupid.
On the other hand, while I don’t really care for Coppola’s stuff (except for “Jack” of course!!), “The Conversation” is really pretty great.
It’s all just personal taste, though.
Hey, Glenn, I know no one else is going to read this but you, so all I have to say is that you’re the one who started with the cock-sucking insult. You want to talk to people like their faggots and get a laugh out of it, then don’t be so shocked when someone talks to you like you’re a faggot. All I was trying to do was talk about one of my favorite filmmakers and you had to insult me. But you don’t want to be insulted? You’re offended? Too bad. Next time keep your vulgar insults to yourself if you don’t want them returned in kind.
You know, in spite of what I said, I’ll let your comment stand, come to think of it. It’s an incredibly weak rationale for your despicable-beyond-vulgar and hugely ignorant sniping, but it’s your rationale, and you’re entitled to it. Let anyone else following the thread judge for themselves.
AA, you came in here looking for a fight, and you know it. You didn’t just state an opinion; you stated an opinion and followed it up with “I look forward to someone calling me an idiot”. That’s what you wanted, so don’t waddle around now like a wounded duck who just wanted to talk about movies and stuff.
Also, nice use of the word “faggot”. That’ll bring people around.
I knew that was going to happen and that’s why I said that and that’s exactly what ended up happening. Self-fulfilling prophecy or just the fact the most of the people who frequent this sight are incredibly arrogant and rude and I knew that going in? I tend to think the latter. It used to be that Glenn would stay below the fray, but now he’s decided to join in, his contempt for people outside of his little circle getting harder and harder to hide. Like I said before: don’t tell someone else that it sounds like they want to suck someone else’s cock and then get all uppity when that person gets a tad…um…upset. I mean, are you fucking kidding me?
Damn AA, you really do bring it all. An incredible critical acuity, a trenchant, unsparing moral sense, AND the ability to see into the souls of others. It’s a wonder that you haven’t started your own blog, or taken over the world, already.
Hey, wait a minute—you’re not Ann Althouse, are you?
AA, I’m going to give you a very tiny benefit of the doubt and allow that maybe you don’t remember the progression of this thread, and your part in it. I’ve just reread the section where things started to go bad, and it turns out it started with you. Really, go back and read the comments.
Either way, the level you eventually took this to is not justified in any way, even if your take on things was accurate. Which it isn’t.
“I knew that was going to happen and that’s why I said that and that’s exactly what ended up happening.”
V! I! C! T! I! M! STANCE!
Doot doot dah doot doot dah
We can troll if we want to!
We can pule and we can whine!
But if we’re called on our shit,
We’ll cry and we’ll spit
And prove that we have no spine.
Well, we can flame if we want to!
Then we’ll claim it’s not our fault!
Then the regulars show up,
insult us as shmucks,
then the mods rub in the salt.
Synthesizer solo!
Great. Now my computer privileges have been taken away for the rest of the week. Nice. I’ve been so busy talking to you guys that I forgot to do my assigned jobs. I guess none of you know anything about work release programs, do you? Whatever.
And yet they still let you type one more comment? That was awfully big of them.
So I guess this means that no one wants to keep talking dirty with me? Rats. I’m really good at it too.
Having just seen Tetro, and having not seen anything by Vincent Gallo, I’ll avoid the last 20 or so comments and speak to the film. Glenn, I’m glad I’m not the only one who got a strong Almodovar feeling from the film. I actually got more of a Law of Desire feel from it, instead of Talk to Her (I usually say Hable Con Ella, but I don’t want anyone’s wrath). Both grow increasingly melodramatic (not that that’s a bad thing) and outrageous in their imagery, yet neither stops being immensely fascinating and satisfying.
Some of you sound like you just got done eating a sandwich.