The Family Business

By Greg Reifsteck

What's in a name? Sometimes an Oscar. And no one was prouder than Daddy Coppola when his daughter, Sofia, took the stage at the 2004 Academy Awards. Back in 1975, Francis Ford won a writing statuette for best adapted screenplay for The Godfather: Part II, and now his daughter was winning an Oscar for best original screenplay for the platonic love story Lost in Translation.

But has Father Coppola's creative talent as a filmmaker - a renegade famous for taking studio money and making sure his artistic vision ended up on the screen - truly rubbed off on his progeny? And is nepotism a good way of passing along the talents of the generations? Or is it simply an unavoidable evil in an industry predicated on nepotism, and a practice that prevents talent outside of famous families from getting a foothold?

Coppola's daughter Sofia, 33, and son Roman, 39, (and late son Gio) sat on his film sets throughout their childhood, absorbing their father's good and bad times. Both watched him at the helm of his celebrated Godfather trilogy, and they also observed as he struggled with financial dilemmas and artistic obstacles on 1979's Apocalypse Now, 1982's One from the Heart and 1984's The Cotton Club.

Witnessing all of these trials and tribulations surely taught his offspring Sofia and Roman how to get films made, from a financial perspective. Of course, it also doesn't hurt to have the family lineage and checkbook available when needed.

"I think this movie would have taken maybe twice as many years to get made if my last name was Smith,'' said Sofia Coppola in the press notes for Lost in Translation ($119 million worldwide gross against a $4 million budget and $13 million marketing), a film wherein two wayward American souls, embodied by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, bond in Japan. "It's hard for anyone," insists Coppola. "I get phone calls returned probably faster because of my last name. But you have to prove yourself, and maybe even work harder to prove yourself because of your name."

But let's look toward the aesthetic side. Sofia Coppola's first full-length feature for Paramount Classics, the dark and moody 1999 The Virgin Suicides, needed help from foreign receipts (domestic B.O. $4,906,229, overseas $5,503,148) to nearly break even on its $9 million production budget. But major critics such as Roger Ebert did embrace it, even when audiences didn't, comparing it to 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock for its agonizing look at teenage angst and suicide amongst five sisters. He noted Sofia "has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn't hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy."

And Lost in Translation earned her the first nomination ever for a female director in Academy Awards history, along with a nod for best picture and creative carte blanche on her next project, Marie Antoinette, an epic biopic for Sony on the aristocratic French queen beheaded during the French Revolution.

Roman, on the other hand, hasn't found as much success. His only feature film, 2001's CQ, had a reported budget of $7 million. The sci-fi tribute to '60s kitsch about a troubled filmmaker not wanting to bow to the wishes of his producers made a meager $414,358. Most critics gave the film kudos for striking retro production design, but found it lacking in story and character depth.

"If Sofia Coppola's ethereal The Virgin Suicides lifted the weight of a burdensome family name off the first-time director, big brother Roman's CQ helplessly calls attention to the paternal munificence that made it possible," expressed a passionate Dennis Lim of the Village Voice. "Endearing but pointless, at once cluttered and tinny, this film-dork fantasia suggests a shopping spree at a high-end vintage emporium underwritten by Daddy's blank check."

Pan over to another unorthodox film family with as much paternal influence and critical admiration as the Coppolas - the Cassavetes clan. Father John cemented his place in the indie film lexicon with his unique, improvisational cinema verite style. His films Faces (1968) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974), starring his wife Gena Rowlands, were raw portraits of tragic and broken people. Nick, now 44, literally grew up in his father's film sets, since John often shot his low-budget productions right in the Casavettes kitchen and hallways. As a teenager, Nick made his acting debut in his father's 1970 film Husbands.

John died in 1989, having a profound and long-lasting effect on both Nick and Gena. After his death, the indie creed of his father's films seemed lost on Nick, whose track record has yet to show his father's instincts for true-to-life characters.

Although he has tried to keep the family tradition alive, the almighty dollar has led him in different directions. Nick cast mother Gena in his 1996 feature debut Unhook the Stars ($272,542 domestic B.O). When that tanked, he dug up one of his father's unfinished screenplays for 1997's She's So Lovely. The critics received it well, since it was John's schematic, but audiences still stayed away ($7,281,450 domestic B.O. against a $29 million budget).

Unable to emulate his father's critical or financial success by following in his footsteps, he took a radically different direction and finally hit paydirt by ridding himself of his father's indie trappings. He headed for mainstream safety at New Line Cinema with the Denzel Washington-starrer John Q ($102 million worldwide box office) and the schmaltzy word-of-mouth romance The Notebook ($81,001,787 domestic B.O.).

Both these films were defensible thematically, but they bear no real resemblance to anything stylistically close to father Cassavetes' work, intimating there really has been no passing of the torch, critically speaking, from father to son.

Directors who aren't born with a silver viewfinder in their hand are forced to earn their way into credibility and access by hurdling a series of more challenging obstacles. Wannabe directors fresh out of film school can earn a solid track record by cutting their teeth directing music videos and commercials. Other novices who think they have what it takes roll the cinematic dice on what could be called the Quentin Tarantino crap-shoot: You make a short film starring some C- or D-level talent and shop it to every film festival you can find.

Whichever laborious trek is chosen, not having a famous family name adds to the process twice as many years and countless hours of blood, sweat and tears, while the screens and opportunities are taken up by those who were born into the business.

Paramount producer and author Lynda Obst explains, "In Los Angeles you have to use all your connections: a friend, a family member, everybody you know who is close to somebody who works in the industry...Use them! Use them."

All that being said, Obst adds, "Though nepotism is the undying law of Hollywood, access is necessary but not sufficient....that merely gets them in the door."

Sinking big bucks into high-risk concept films made by the progeny of Hollywood's great auteurs becomes less and less desirable every time one of their films tanks, such as was the case with H.G. Wells' great-grandson Simon's reported nervous breakdown while directing DreamWorks' The Time Machine. The novice director's 2002 lackluster mess went from being a tentpole summer hopeful (costing the studio $80 million and $30 million in marketing) to barely breaking even thanks to foreign stubs (domestic B.O. $56 million, overseas $66 million).

The strategy most smart studios seem to be taking is a wait-and-see attitude, letting these apples fall from the lucrative tree and attempt to stay sweet lying in the grass of the art house arms of studios or in cable movies.

The plain truth is the film industry will always be a family business, for better or for worse. But if the material coming from renowned film families does not prove visually fresh, will it lead studios to mine other sources?