( AP )  , Eleanor Coppola, who documented the making of some of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic films, including the infamously tortured production of” Apocalypse Now”, and who raised a family of filmmakers, has died. She was 87.
Coppola died Friday surrounded by family at home in Rutherford, California, her household announced in a speech. No cause of death was given.
Eleanor, who grew up in Orange County, California, met Francis while working as an assistant craft director on his directing debut, the Roger Corman- produced 1963 dread picture” Dementia 13″. ( She had studied design at UCLA. ) Eleanor and her partner were engaged within a month of dating, and the pair were married in Las Vegas in February 1963.
Their first- born, Gian- Carlo, quickly became a regular presence in his father’s films, as did their subsequent children, Roman ( born in 1965 ) and Sofia ( born in 1971 ). After acting in their father’s pictures and growing up on set, all would go into the shows.
Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017:” I do n’t know what the family has given, except I hope they’ve set an example of a family encouraging each other in their creative process whatever it may be. People in our family chooses to kind of go after the family business, according to the family. We were n’t asking them to or expecting them to, but they did. At one stage Sofia said,’ The seed does certainly fall far from the trees.'”
Gian- Carlo, who’s seen in the context of many of his family’s films and had begun doing next- product photos, died at the age of 22 in a 1986 boating accident. He was killed while riding in a vessel piloted by Griffin O’Neal, son of Ryan O’Neal, who was found guilty of neglect.
Roman frequently collaborates with Wes Anderson and has directed a number of his own films. He’s leader of his family’s San Francisco- based video organization, American Zoetrope.
Sofia became one of the most praised artists of her generation as the blogger- producer of movies including” Lost in Translation” and the 2023 transfer” Priscilla”. Sofia gave that movie to her family.
In joining the family business, the Coppola children were n’t just following in their father’s feet but their mother’s, too. Beginning on 1979’s” Apocalypse Presently”, Eleanor often documented the behind- the- displays existence of Francis ‘ films. The Philippines- set take of” Apocalypse Today” lasted 238 time. Models were destroyed by a tornado. Martin Sheen had a heart attack. A part of the design team passed away.
Eleanor documented much of the conflict in what would become one of the most popular making- of movie about screenwriting, 1991’s” Souls of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse”.
Eleanor told CNN in 1991,” I was simply trying to keep myself occupied with anything.” They requested five minutes for a TV commercial or anything, and I anticipated that I could obtain five minutes of movie sooner, which the movie did, which lasted until fifteen minutes.
” I merely kept shooting but I had no notion … the development of myself that I saw with my camera”, continued Eleanor, who ended up shooting 60 days worth of images. ” But, it was a shock for both of us and a life changing knowledge”.
Eleanor even published” Notes: On the Making of’ Apocalypse Nowadays'” in 1979. While the movie focused on the movie set tumult, the text charted some of Eleanor’s inward turmoil, including the challenges of being married to a larger- than- life figure. She wrote of being a “woman isolated from my friends, my interests and my jobs” during their time in Manilla. She even openly discusses Francis having an extramarital affair.
” Some of me has been awaiting Francis’s departure or death so that I can get my life the way I want it,” wrote Eleanor. With him in it, I wonder if I have the nerve to get it the way I want it.
They remained up, nevertheless, throughout her life. And Eleanor kept looking for new innovative sources. She documented some more of her husband’s pictures, as well as Roman’s” CQ” and Sofia’s” Marie Antoinette”. She wrote a memoir in 2008,” Information on a Existence”.
Eleanor made her tale debut with Diane Lane’s loving funny” Paris You Wait” in 2016 at the age of 80. She followed that up with” Love Is Love Is Love” in 2020. Initial intentions for Emily were to write only the screenplay for” Paris Can Wait.”
My husband once said,” Well you should direct it.” At the breakfast table one morning. I was totally startled”, Eleanor told The AP. ” But I said’ Well, I never wrote a script before and I’ve never directed, why not?’ I was kind of saying’ why not’ to everything”.
Eleanor died just as Francis is preparing a long- planned, self- financed epic,” Metropolis”, which is to premiere next month at the Cannes Film Festival.
She is survived by her husband, her son Roman and his wife, Jen, their children, Pascale, Marcello and Alessandro, her daughter Sofia and her husband, Thomas, their children Romy and Cosima, her granddaughter Gia and her husband, Honor, and their child Beaumont, and by her brother William Neil and his wife, Lisa.
Eleanor recently completed her third memoir, the family said. In the manuscript she wrote:
I appreciate how my unexpected life has stretched and pushed me in so many extraordinary directions and taken me in many directions that were unimaginable.
