Sunday, May 31, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 37

[37th of 100]. Tom Hanks' Joe Fox in You've Got Mail makes an interesting point in one of his missives to Meg Ryan's Kathleen Kelly, which he revisits all throughout Nora Ephron's romantic comedy classic: that everything important he has learned in life he learned from this Francis Ford Coppola classic trilogy. And Joe Fox is right. What's not to learn from the greatest gangster epic ever made? Here are a few nuggets of wisdom to live by: "Never discuss the family business." "Always make them an offer they can't refuse." "Go to the mattresses." "Revenge is a dish best served cold." "A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemies overestimate your faults." "Never let anyone know what you're thinking." "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." [Knowing these lines also make the likes of Joe Fox the manliest of cinevores.] A lot of these quotes, of course, are cold advise in surviving a rotten, dangerous world -- but you could make the point that the world is exactly like that. And so we watch, and we absorb. I watch this trilogy at least once a year to remind me of that, but of course also other things: that cinematic genius can [often] elevate pulp fiction; that a confluence of masters -- the direction and screenplay of Coppola [with novelist Mario Puzo], the cinematography of Gordon Willis, the music of Nino Rota, the editing by William Reynolds, Peter Zinner, Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Lisa Fruchtman, and Walter Murch, the powerhouse cast of Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Cazale, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, among others -- can indeed create film entertainment of the highest order; and that Coppola's generation of filmmakers was a massive wave that did away with the stodginess of the old studio system, bringing newfound vitality to filmmaking, but also with it the hubris that would create its own end. It's a time capsule, and a fount of wisdom. What's the film trilogy?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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