Now here’s a curious strategic decision. Having been offered the chance to unveil his much-anticipated “Tetro” in an out-of-competition slot at Cannes, Francis Ford Coppola has responded with a polite “thanks, but no thanks”:
“While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film,” Coppola said in a statement released late last week. “More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the US release this June 11th.”
Coppola is instead opting for a considerably more low-profile bow at the Seattle Film Festival. What gives? Perhaps he just wants to avoid the pressure of a major festival environment: the Cannes crowd can be notoriously hostile towards auteur works that don’t meet certain expectations. (Just ask Coppola’s own daughter.)
But they can also be welcoming towards veteran filmmakers looking to rediscover form, particularly in the more relaxed out-of-competition strand — Woody Allen has twice benefitted from such platforms in recent years. Considering that “Tetro,” an Argentinian-set family saga headlined by Vincent Gallo and Maribel Verdu, doesn’t sound like the easiest sell in the world, I’d say the Cannes exposure could have done it some good — but maybe Coppola knows something we don’t.
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5 responses to “Coppola turns down Cannes”
Good thanks for the info
Basically, Cannes said: Your movie will never win the big award, but we’d like you to show your movie for “our” publicity. Maybe the publicity will do you good, too.
And Francis got all mad for that feigning a fake excuse about the “blah blah, independent movie, blah blah”.
Sounds like a bruised ego to me.
Seattle? I would have waited for Toronto.
Regardless, this is my most anticipated film of the summer (along with Up). I am an ardent defender of Coppola’s last film Youth without Youth, and Gallo has impressed me in the two self-directed films I’ve seen him in. The personal premise offers a true sense of poignancy that I feel could flourish into something truly mesmerizing.
A “Brown Bunny” defender? I’m intrigued … I’ve never met one.
Could it be that Coppola is just plain tired of the whole Hollywood machine and wants to go totally indy? It seems to me that has achieved everything anyone could want to achieve and might want to go back and do what it was he started out doing — small personal films outside of the Hollywood system. Had he never another film after ‘Apocalypse Now” he would still be among the greatest of all time but because he did, many failures in fact, there is a notion (a foolish one) that he has something to prove — nothing to prove for me Francis…you are without question among the greatest directors of all time.