Creative control key for Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t want to make big movies.

The ‘Godfather’ director admits he gets annoyed with people suggesting he should make a certain genre of film, and instead focuses on projects where he has creative control.

He said: “Even more as an older person, there are lots of times when everyone is always saying, ‘Oh, why don’t you make a movie about so and so,’ or, ‘Why don’t you make a great World War I story?’

“That’s probably why I stopped being a commercial director, because, ultimately, those good directors, people on the level of Ridley Scott, they have a few projects and a few scripts being written for them and then one of them seems to gel or attract the cast that they need they go and do that.

“But I want to feel more personally involved, that I want to make films about things from my personal life that I don’t understand, and most of them have to do with my family, with my brother and my father.”

The 71-year-old filmmaker also claims his first love was writing, but he believes he was not very good at it and so looked into other jobs.

He told the Independent newspaper: “I started out doing theatre when I was 18 and I wanted to be a writer, but I had no natural ability at that.

“I was very good at technical things, so I could do sets and lighting and so I became more of a techie. I would watch the director on the ladder when I was hanging the lights and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I could do that.’ ”