Publishers Weekly
★ 09/25/2023
Film historian Wasson (The Big Goodbye) explores director Francis Ford Coppola’s artistic process in this enthralling chronicle of his production company, Zoetrope. Founded by Coppola in the late 1960s, Zoetrope was envisioned as a “creative playground” for filmmakers tired of compromising with big Hollywood studios, a principle the director stuck to even as it became financially untenable. Wasson focuses his account on the personal and professional risks Coppola took to make Apocalypse Now (1979) and One from the Heart (1982). The stresses of filming the former—during which Coppola and his wife, who captured the making of the movie for a documentary, endured typhoons and ballooning costs while shooting in the Philippines—nearly ended his marriage. After a key funder pulled out from One from the Heart, Coppola had to put up as collateral $8 million worth of his assets for loans to complete the movie; its box office failure spelled doom for Zoetrope. Wasson’s immersive prose vividly recreates the circumstances of each shoot (“Coppola returned home to... a house illuminated only by candles, tore off his wet shirt, and sat down at the living room table to imagine, on paper, page after terrible, incredible, terrible page, the next day’s scene”), offering a complex portrait of an artist whose unwillingness to compromise cost him dearly. Movie buffs won’t want to miss this. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Sam Wasson’s supremely entertaining new book, The Path to Paradise, tracks the ups and downs, ins and outs, of a remarkable career. . . . A marvel of unshowy reportage." — New York Times
“A vivid biography of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and his production company, American Zoetrope . . . . A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A meticulous portrait of a daring artist who risked his career to establish a studio of his own." — Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Wasson’s account will hold immense appeal for any film buff interested in the era, as will the cast of Mr. Coppola’s peers, proteges and adversaries ranging from John Milius to Steven Spielberg and Michael Cimino. The already thick lore around the absolutely berserk production of Mr. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now gets an additional layer, but equally fascinating is the exploration of ambitious failures like 1981’s One From the Heart and big-budget flops like 1984’s The Cotton Club.” — Wall Street Journal
"The Path to Paradise puts you there, and shows how Coppola got so close to the sun . . . . Wasson captures the extreme ups and downs with a combination of precision and imagination, often bringing an appropriately gonzo tone to the story." — Los Angeles Times
“Before now, writing a biography of Francis Ford Coppola has been like aiming at a moving target. . . . Wasson . . . has deftly judged the moment. . . . The effect is like movie cross-cutting, vivid with changing event and contrast. . . . That Coppola saw further than others into the future of film is argued persuasively." — Financial Times
"Mouthwatering . . . . A sizzlingly vivid and compulsive new book . . . . Wasson has a great journalist’s eye for telling details and a great stylist’s ear, washing the reader along on a torrent of prose that mirrors Coppola’s own unfailing energy. Gorgeous turns of phrase abound.” — The Daily Telegraph
“A bold new book . . . . Wasson’s one of the best at writing about the lives of artists.” — CBS Saturday Morning
“Sam Wasson tells the story of a true dreamer and the price he has paid for his greatest dreams.” — Boston Globe
"Enthralling . . . . A complex portrait of an artist whose unwillingness to compromise cost him dearly. Movie buffs won’t want to miss this." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Of all that has been written about Francis Ford Coppola, this book most accurately captures the film director’s chaotic life . . . . Wasson has written a string of successful books about the entertainment business [...] but this one might be his best so far. Rich in detail, it’s full of surprises and revelations, and impeccably researched and documented. For fans of books about moviemaking in general, and Francis Ford Coppola in particular, this is required reading.” — Booklist (starred review)
“This new book by Sam Wasson (who already proved himself one of the great modern chroniclers of the New Hollywood era with the Chinatown making-of story The Big Goodbye) chronicles the road to heaven Coppola trod after descending to Hell with Apocalypse Now. The Vietnam War epic is already the subject of much reporting, but Wasson boasts unprecedented access to Coppola's personal archive—as well as a first-hand look at the making of a movie we can't wait to see.” — Entertainment Weekly
"A gripping new book . . . vividly chronicling how the director leveraged his two great movies into an assembly line of cinema.” — Deadline
"Richly detailed." — Library Journal
“If you have any interest in film history and the remarkably fecund and thrilling era of American moviemaking in the ’70s, The Path to Paradise is a must read. It tells its tale without brakes, storming from one intense period of Coppola’s life to another, leaving you breathless at the end of every chapter. It is a fantastic whirlwind of a biography that will make you feel as if you just finished a truly amazing film about a truly amazing man who never takes no for an answer and still believes that dreams can change the world.” — Bookreporter.com
“Wasson creates a portrait of one man’s vast artistic ambition—one that (to this reader, anyway) portrays Coppola as a kind of precursor to the tech moguls who would take San Francisco as their base of operations decades after Coppola did so . . . . An insightful book that takes stock of Coppola’s importance to film history and creates a vibrant portrait of a restless artist constantly on the move.” — InsideHook
"Absorbing . . . . What makes The Path to Paradise so refreshing is its focus. Rather than simply rehashing the oft-told tales of making The Godfather, Wasson covers the American Zoetrope experience . . . and, finally, Coppola’s rebirth as a businessman and director.” — The Film Stage
Library Journal
11/01/2023
Prolific entertainment writer Wasson (The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood) presents a stream-of-consciousness view of Francis Ford Coppola, his production company American Zoetrope, and his vision of filmmaking. This richly detailed biography is based on unprecedented access to Coppola's archives and hundreds of interviews conducted with both the director/screenwriter and his coworkers. This book focuses on the ardors of making the 1979 Apocalypse Now, the trouble-plagued Vietnam War—set film based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The biography (the title was derived from a Dante quote relating hell and heaven) is an episodic, impressionistic, nonlinear challenge, even for those in the movie industry. It contains insights about the battles of an unfavored, albeit talented second son who was also a polio and bullying survivor. Readers seeking a straightforward narrative, rather than vignettes on Coppola and his entertainment-excelling family (actress sister Talia Shire; director daughter Sofia; actor nephew Nicolas Cage; and composer father Carmine) and those he met in Hollywood might consider looking elsewhere. VERDICT This demanding book might appeal more to screenwriters and producers than to serendipitous consumers of film culture.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-08-25
A vivid biography of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939) and his production company, American Zoetrope.
“As no other filmmaker does,” writes veteran film biographer Wasson, “Coppola lives in his stories, changing them as they change him, riding round an endless loop of experience and creation”—until, usually reluctantly, letting go of them, only to watch some crash and burn. “Artistic perfection has never been integral to Coppola’s colossal experiment,” writes the author. “Learning and growing have been. Living is. Dying is. The adventure is.” Part of the pain in the failures is that, like his successes, Coppola’s films cost a fortune, and money flows freely through his fingers. Indeed, the author devotes significant attention to the finer points of financing, with one elusive film, Megalopolis, yet unmade, projected in 2001 to cost at least $100 million. It’s not that Coppola’s films haven’t made money: Apocalypse Now, the tortured tale of whose making forms the heart (of darkness) of this book, turned a profit after it threatened to drag all involved into bankruptcy, and The Godfather and American Graffiti sent generations of film executives’ kids to college. Throughout, Wasson shows the studio system as a source of constant hindrance, imposing conditions that sometimes work out and sometimes don’t. Coppola’s one-man-band perfectionism is another enemy. “They had to move quicker,” writes Wasson of one shoot. “But if Coppola the producer said that to Coppola the director, the latter would tell him to take it up with Coppola the writer.” Not to mention Coppola the businessman, with a wine business bringing in about $100 million per year, enough to keep his beloved, legendary American Zoetrope studio afloat “not as an alternative to Hollywood, but a complement”—though still not enough to make Megalopolis a reality, at least not yet.
A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure.
