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I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be underambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!

Francis Ford Coppola

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Francis Ford Coppola
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: April 7
Actor
Composer
Executive Producer
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Winegrower
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Better
Upward
Way
Mundane
Think
Ambitious
Thinking
Failed
Life
Fortunate
Fail
Succeed
Failing
Overly

More quotes by Francis Ford Coppola

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I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.
Francis Ford Coppola
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In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.
Francis Ford Coppola
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If you're not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone's going to just stick to the rules - there's not going to be any additional ideas.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, 'Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.' I'd like to do something only I can do.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I've been offered lots of movies. There's always some actor who's doing a project and would like to have me do it.
Francis Ford Coppola
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The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.
Francis Ford Coppola
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When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.
Francis Ford Coppola
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When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
Francis Ford Coppola
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Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
Francis Ford Coppola
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Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I still think Ned Beatty should've played Don Corleone.
Francis Ford Coppola
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Art depends on luck and talent.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying he wanted me to make up dialogue.
Francis Ford Coppola
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When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.
Francis Ford Coppola
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There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.
Francis Ford Coppola
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The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.
Francis Ford Coppola
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I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better - time, consciousness and the dream-like basis of reality.
Francis Ford Coppola
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When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
Francis Ford Coppola