Francis Ford Coppola, one of Hollywood’s most important living directors, is set to receive the Life Achievement Award from the AFI in their upcoming ceremony. Taking place at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on April 26, the event, titled “The 50th AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Francis Ford Coppola,” will be televised on TNT, although no official air date has yet been announced. However, what has been confirmed is that the prestigious award will be handed to Coppola by two Hollywood legends who happen to be very close to the director: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas .
As reported by IndieWire, the American Film Institute selected Coppola to be the next recipient of the prestigious award. Lucas and Spielberg will join other incredibly important guests such as Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Adam Driver, Spike Lee, Al Pacino, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell and Diane Lane, among others. AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale said the following about the event while heaping praise on The Godfather filmmaker:
“There is only one Francis Ford Coppola. And it is AFI’s honor to gather the art and entertainment communities, along with his family, friends and colleagues, to celebrate cinema — all of it — and the very best of it.”
Previous recipients include noteworthy figures like Mel Brooks, John Williams, David Lean, Diane Keaton, Lucas and Spielberg. The AFI Life Achievement Award was awarded for the first time in 1973 to John Ford, the director famous for works like The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley.
Considering Coppola’s legacy in creating not one, but two films that many consider to be the best ever made (The Godfather and The Godfather Part II), it’s surprising that the American Film Institute took so long to recognize the long career of the auteur behind other classic films like The Conversation, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Apocalypse Now. The director continues to do it his way, recently releasing the deeply divisive Megalopolis. Just last year, Coppola was awarded a Razzie for his work in Megalopolis, an award he was “thrilled to accept,” explaining that he “chose not to follow the gutless rules laid down by an industry so terrified of risk.”
Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg & the Movement That Changed Cinema Forever
As the ’60s came to a conclusion, an artistic movement began in Hollywood. One that would change the cinema industry by shaking its foundations and making big studios uncomfortable. The New Hollywood movement became known as the American New Wave, and it included filmmakers who dared to break some rules and almost always maintain control of their work. No longer were movies owned by the studios from an authorial perspective; instead, they belonged to the writers and directors who had conjured them.
Lucas and Coppola funded the American Zoetrope studio in order to escape the abrasive views of the bigger Hollywood studios, who didn’t always agree with their views, and ultimately forced them to “adapt” the films. THX 1138 and American Graffiti, two pivotal movies by Lucas, were made under this new system. Coppola produced The Godfather through American Zoetrope (along with Paramount Pictures) and proved auteurship could be incorporated into the model. Spielberg entered the picture soon after when he and Lucas grew close, and they began informally overseeing each other’s projects. It was a time of absolute artistic freedom within the Hollywood system, and led to some of the greatest American movies ever made.
