Art of Darkness

Francis Ford Coppola, 59, has always lived his life on the edge. "Give me three tests," he offers, as if he has something to prove. "I'll do anything for you."

In fact, as a permanent outsider, Coppola still has to prove himself to the Hollywood studios that finance many of his movies - and that's fine by him. He cares more about his vision than about his reputation, and he's not afraid to challenge the powers that be: When he thought that Warner Bros. had stolen his screenplay for a feature-length Pinocchio film, he filed a lawsuit. (This past July, the suit was decided in his favor, and he was awarded $20 million in compensatory damages and $60 million in punitive damages.)

Coppola is always trying something new. He's a technologist who tried to build a television-satellite hub in Belize - and failed. But in the course of that adventure, he found an abandoned lodge and turned it into a resort. He's a publisher whose literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, emphasizes short stories - a money-losing proposition. But Coppola still believes that the best films begin as short stories.

Now he has major business plans: Within the next year, he intends to open a wine-bar-and-bistro in San Francisco under the name Rosso & Bianco. It will be a Starbucks-like spin-off of the cafe that he now operates at his Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery in Napa Valley. Why does Coppola take such gargantuan risks with his money and his ego? Because, he says, that's the only game worth playing.

In an interview with Fast Company, Coppola outlined his essential principles of spontaneous recklessness.

The unlived life is not worth living.

It's important to be interested in everything. You have your life - experience it to the fullest. You're eventually going to lose it anyway. I am a very restless personality. If I take time off, I'm likely to do something like build a resort. I can't help myself. That's why I try to make businesses out of all of the things that I enjoy: food, wine, films. My company, FFC Brands, sells my taste. I want to set a precedent for my children. They won't hear me say on my deathbed that I wish I had lived my life differently. I am one big yes.

It's not a gamble unless you go all the way.

Get into situations in which failure isn't an option. Be an adventurer. I based Apocalypse Now on the novel Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. That book defied even the great Orson Welles, who tried to film it but had to abort the project (he then went on to make Citizen Kane). My script, written with John Milius, told the story of an American soldier who travels into the jungles of Southeast Asia to bring to justice a man named Kurtz, who had stepped beyond the accepted limits of morality.

Filming that story was perhaps the biggest risk I've ever taken. To get United Artists to finance the movie, I offered to put up my wine estate and my home as collateral. I lived in the Philippine jungle for 238 days, through guerrilla uprisings and through typhoons in which the rain came down so hard that it hurt. We had too much money and too much film; little by little, we went insane. The stakes were so high that I simply had to succeed.

Your work is your life - give in to it.

My films make my life. If you are a serious artist, your work will be about you. There's no other way. When I did The Godfather, people said, "Oh, you're like Michael Corleone - determined to make things come out your way." When I did Apocalypse Now, they said, "You're just like Kurtz - out in the jungle, at the threshold of your sanity." When I made Tucker: The Man and His Dream, a film based on the true story of a guy who tried to build his own car company, they said, "You're like Preston Tucker - and the big guys won't let you build your own studio." There's something to all of that. Those connections aren't just coincidences. Those films grew out of my own passions and feelings. Passions are wired into the real world more directly than our workaday routines are. If you love something, you'll bring so much of yourself to it that it will create your future.

I also made a film about a soldier who begins to care for a boy. Later in the film, the boy dies. On the first day of shooting, my son died. I asked myself, "Is this 'The Twilight Zone'?" The film, Gardens of Stone, was about the loss of a boy: I was going to a funeral on the set every day. Then I had to go to a funeral off the set - and in my life. Last year, I made The Rainmaker, in which David-type people take on a Goliath-type corporation in a lawsuit - which is what happened when I took on Warner Bros. My next film, the one I'm writing the script for now, is about a man who tries to affect the way the future will evolve. The hero dies while the city of the future is being created. Now I'm saying, "I don't want my life to turn out like the film that I'm making." I want to be around to see the realm of the future. That's why I'm writing this story. I know that film has the power to show the future, to make it seem real.

If Hollywood can make a movie showing the Titanic sink or spaceships battling giant bugs, then I can make a movie showing what the world of the future could be like - not just an artist's sketch, but a precise social and architectural rendering. Then, if people like what they see, maybe they will build it.