Not that it makes me unique, but I’m a huge fan of these old letters. They’re such a neat little snapshot of place and time and people, and I wonder if the next generation will have any equivalent (“Ooh look, it’s the original emoticon Brett Ratner Blackberry messaged Nick Cannon on the set of Party Barge!”). Anyway, last time we posted a Marlon Brando letter, he was the sender, of a super creepy letter to a stewardess that opened with “dear lady.”  This time he’s the recipient, and the sender is Francis Ford Coppola. Brando had recently turned down his Oscar for The Godfather (sending Sacheen Littlefeather instead), and Coppola was trying to convince him to return for Godfather Part 2 – in which, Coppola wrote, “the Mafia is only a metaphor for America and capitalism,” — even though Brando’s relationship with Paramount executives Charles Bluhdorn, Robert Evans, and Frank Yablans had soured. Because Brando was a fat weirdo, presumably.

You can see the full-sized letter at LettersofNote, but here’s the transcript:

Monday

Dear Marlon,

I heard you were back from the South Pacific; but I didn’t want to call you because I always feel stupid bringing up the matter of the Godfather. I know you return my calls on a personal and friendly basis, and so I can’t bring myself to misuse that and bring up what is bothering me.

My problem is simply that I am stalling and stalling because I have the inkling that it may be possible that you will play the young Vito Corleone. I’ve seen in the past, that even a slight possibility may blossom into a fact, and so I’ve tried to kindle this as best I could. I’ve become a real behind-the-scenes monster playing Yablans and Evans and Bludhorn; trying to get them to do what I want. I tell Yablans that he’s the only one who can do it. Then I tell Evans the same thing.

I tell them the movie cannot be made without you; I tell Yablans he has to apologize to you. Now Yablans says that he’s trying to do this, and get together on the money and stuff, but you don’t return his call.

Evans wants to approach you; but Yablans is terrified that Evans might make it work, where he failed…so he keeps preventing that.

But what it really comes down to is me. Marlon I respect you enormously; and if you told me that you did not want to do it under any circumstances, whatsoever…of course I would accept that, and never mention it again. And if you liked, I wouldn’t tell anyone else.

I learned a lot from you…one thing being that it’s only a movie, and what’s that compared to everything else there is in the world.

At times, I try really hard to imagine what you’re like in your thoughts. I realized that you’ve been in the strange state of adoration and exhibition for 25 years now, intensely…and I think that would have driven me crazy. And the fact that you’re really a good man, and warm, and love people is a tremendous achievement considering that you’ve been in a glass box for half your life.

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The entertaining Tumblr site Ruin-A-Wish Foundation recently found a book page from a copy of The Godfather that apparently belonged to the film’s eventual director, Francis Ford Coppola. The (we assume, real, otherwise I don’t get the joke) page contains scene notes for the Academy Awards’ 1972 Best Picture winner, and they’re basically incredibly brief and sloppy insight into the mind of the man who created one of the greatest movies of all-time.

You can read the notes for yourself after the jump, and as an added bonus I also personally dug up the scene notes of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg from Epic Movie.

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This is the trailer for Twixt, from Francis Ford Coppola, the famous wine magnate who many forget once directed films. Starring Val Kilmer and Elle Fanning with narration by Tom Waits, Twixt follows Kilmer’s charater, an author who writes books about witches who finds himself stuck in a small town haunted by a ghost played by Fanning. It premieres at the Toronto Film Festival, and apparently it’s some kind of choose-your-own-adventure story.

Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola premiered his interactive film, “Twixt” at Comic-Con a little more than a week ago, announcing that he would be taking the haunting mystery film on a road tour in which he’d tailor the show to each audience, each night, changing it by cutting and adding as it went along.
“If the audience is the mood to go off on a little bit of a tangent, then you’d be able to go off on a tangent, but if the audience seems to want to cut to the chase, you could cut to the chase,” he told the AP at the event, teasing a new level of fan participation in cinema.
No matter what version ends up on screen, the film will feature Val Kilmer as a witchcraft-focused author who finds himself, during a book tour, in a strange town that recently experienced a mass murder; while investigating, he comes across the ghosts Edgar Allan Poe and a girl played by Elle Fanning. He begins to pursue the story for his next book, and all hauntings, nightmares and danger begin to jump out at every turn. [HuffingtonPost]

Excuse me for one second, I think hear an obvious joke at the door. Oh hi, obvious joke, what’s going on?

KILMER HEARD HIS AGENT SAY ‘TWIX’ AND SIGNED UP ON THE SPOT!

Haha, good one, obvious joke, classic you.

So I was just reading a somewhat turgid interview with Francis Ford Coppola for something called The99Percent wherein, amidst ruminations on Jimmy Caan and Balzac (ha ha), the interviewer just kind of casually mentions this:

Like Bergman, Coppola wanted to wake up and make movies based on his dreams and nightmares. Thanks in no small part to his booming wine business, Coppola now does just that. He recently wrapped his latest picture, “Twixt Now and Sunrise,” based on an alcohol-induced dream he had in Turkey. The film even features the latest 3-D technology…

How am I just now hearing about this? A man best known for expertly adapting Mario Puzo and Joseph Conrad is now just getting ripped in Istanbul and scribbling in a dream journal? And to whom, pray tell, did Coppola turn to put a face on this deeply personal come-back project? Pacino? Duvall? Some sort of CGI Brando?

*Checks IMDB*

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A three-disc edition of Apocalypse Now hits Blu-Ray this week, and one of the special features is the conversation between director Francis Ford Coppola and writer John Milius, who adapted Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for the screenplay.  Here Milius tells Coppola the origin of the title “Apocalypse Now”.  Basically, Milius hated hippies, so he took their common button or jacket patch, a peace sign that said “Nirvana Now”, and added a few lines so that it looked like a B-52 and said “Apocalypse Now.” I don’t know about you, but seeing a dude who looks so much like Walter Sobchak from Big Lebowski talk about hating hippies kind of gives me a hard on.

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