The Path to Paradise

"Sam Wasson’s supremely entertaining book tracks the ups and downs, ins and outs, of a remarkable career. . . . A marvel of unshowy reportage."—New York Times

The New York Times bestselling author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. and The Big Goodbye returns with the definitive director biography—an account of Academy Award–winning director Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long dream to reinvent American moviemaking, if not the entire world, through his production company, American Zoetrope.

A true icon of the New Hollywood era, Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of filmmaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.

As Wasson makes clear, this deep dive into cinema history reveals the story of Zoetrope is also the story of Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola, and their children, and of personal lives inseparable from artistic passion. It is a story that charts the divergent paths of Coppola and his cofounder and onetime apprentice, George Lucas, and of their very different visions of art and commerce. And it is a story inextricably bound up in the legendary behind-the-scenes making of one of the greatest quixotic masterpieces ever attempted, Apocalypse Now, and in what Coppola found in the jungles of the Philippines when he walked the razor’s edge. That story, already the stuff of legend, has never fully been told, until this extraordinary book.

This definitive work of Hollywood history explores the passion, chaos, and genius of a cinematic icon:

A Utopian Dream: Chart the rise of American Zoetrope, the revolutionary production company Coppola founded to reinvent filmmaking away from the Hollywood machine. Art vs. Commerce: Witness the divergent paths of collaborators Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as they pursue radically different visions of creativity and commercial success. The Making of a Masterpiece: Go inside the legendary, chaotic production of Apocalypse Now and discover what Coppola found on the razor’s edge in the jungles of the Philippines. A Family Saga: Understand the story of Eleanor Coppola and their children, whose personal lives were inseparable from the artistic passions that fueled films like The Godfather.