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"Meanwhile," said Coppola, "I’m not counting years, but I’m now 7 years in. My company had started to get very successful because I was in the wine business, and the travel business, and this was starting to become almost as hot an area as film had been in the 60s and 70s. Everyone was talking about wine. Certainly the American public was drinking much more wine and interested in wine. My company was doubling its revenues every year.
When a company does that, it’s much more important than when a film makes a lot of money.”
Coppola interrupted his story to say, “So, I’ll try to make this short. Excuse me, but you asked what I’ve been doing in the 10 years. Finally, the metaphor to me that everyone will understand is Megalopolis was like being in love with a beautiful woman that didn’t want me. When that happens, you don’t have her, because she doesn’t want you, but you don’t have anyone else because you only see her. You are so dedicated to her, so as a movie I could only think, ‘I have to solve this. I have to solve this.’”
However, trying to solve the problem of Megalopolis led to further frustrations. “Year after year, [at] Christmas I would see my family, and the next thing I know it would be June. The year was half gone and I was becoming very frustrated. Maybe one mistake I made is that I shared the script with too many people. It’s unusual work, even an unusual film like Youth without Youth is that the more people you ask, the more you are likely to get contradictory opinions about it.
They say, ‘Hmm, well that’s unusual. You better do this. You better do that.’ So I decided I had shown too many people the Megalopolis script. I had every opinion that you could have.
I had given it to a young girl I knew in college, now a distinguished professor, and I think you know the story. I was very interested in film, how you express consciousness. I feel that all of us must, in our normal life, every once in awhile think, ‘What is this? Is this a dream? Is it real? Is this reality? These other temptations I have?’ These are a little bit of philosophical concerns, but I think everybody has thought about that once in a while. She sent me quotes to do with this theme of consciousness and perception of reality. I thought that was very brilliant, what Mircea Eliade wrote. When I read Youth Without Youth I was like, ‘Wow, what a story.’
Every time you turn the page, something crazy happens. This guy, he’s an old man like me. He’s frustrated because he can’t do his big work, like me. Then all of a sudden things start happening but that doesn’t stop, like, ‘Oh, he gets to be young like Faust.’ He gets to be more brilliant. He never could learn Chinese and now he can speak Chinese. He can read books just by looking at the cover. Then he turns into a double that debates him, almost like on moral issues. Then he gets to meet he girl he loved, and he thought she was… I said, ‘What a crazy story.’ How fun to get to make a movie like this.”
Coppola wrapped up what he’s been up to for the last decade. “At the same time I could make an unusual story like this, and also I could examine some of these ideas. ‘How do you express things related to consciousness and time on a film?’ It was like I was in love with this woman that didn’t want me, and then I met this cute girl from Romania who said, ‘Runaway with me!’ So, I ran away with the girl from Romania, the project of course, and didn’t tell anyone. I conspired making it and by then I was wealthier than I was used to being. I thought, ‘I will just finance it myself and I don’t have to show anyone the script, or get their opinion, or get a certain star.’ Excuse me for my lengthy explanation of why it took 9 or 10 years to make a film.”
Coppola’s not concerned about whether or not audiences will be able to decipher the story told in Youth Without Youth. “What I think is that the story of Youth Without Youth, granted it’s different than other movies, that they are now being given movie, after movie, after movie… Pretty much, I think, you go to the movies today and I think you come out saying, ‘Haven’t I seen this before?’ Then you go see something like Punch Drunk Love and you say, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen anything like that, but I like it because it’s different.’ I don’t think the story of Youth Without Youth is at all hard to follow,” said Coppola. “What's demanding is that at the same time, it tells this fable story, like a Twilight Zone".
“An old man is despondent, the girl he loved when he was a student who he didn’t take in his life, and he regrets it,” explained Coppola. “He’s hit by lightening, he thinks he’s going to die, and he realizes that he is rejuvenated. He becomes a young man again, and also his intellectual abilities are increased. He is in Romania at the time of the beginning of World War II. He’s taken care of and the Nazi’s hear word that there is this remarkable rejuvenation, that even implies immortality, which Hitler liked. So, they begin to try to get him.
I could go on, and I think everyone understands that is what the story is about. What is different is that at the same time that it’s telling that story, it is also ruminating about the meaning of life. I think that is the job of literature. I think that the audiences you speak of can enjoy the film, if they just want to go for the ride of the story. He realizes that the electrical bolt of the lightening has split him into more than one personality. In other words, it’s true that the story starts to take interesting levels that most stories don’t choose to go there. But that’s the Eliade story. I would rather that we all read books that we all find fascinating. Why do films have to be a subject matter less fascinating than books can be is basically the question. You may disagree, I don’t think that it has to be deciphered. What has to be deciphered is just as your life, you probably understand your life very well but also there are parts of your life you don't understand like why are you here? What's going to happen when you die? What's the difference between what you dream about and what you experience? Those things do have to be deciphered, but that's another level and you can think about that in private."
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