On October 2nd Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release the 2-Disc Bram Stoker’s Dracula Special Edition DVD and it comes loaded with extras, one of which is a brand new commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola and what he has to say is quite interesting for anyone that pays close attention to the movie business, which I am guessing is anyone reading this site.
I was a fan of Coppola’s Dracula for no other reason than the fact that it is a Dracula movie. The film has major flaws, the casting of Keanu Reeves being the biggest one, but any chance to see work by Coppola and watch Gary Oldman is reason enough for me to sit down and spend a couple hours on the couch. However, with this new DVD you get more from Coppola on his commentary than just some making-of tidbits. Yeah, the making-of stuff is there and the biggest thing you will notice in that regard are how many of the effects shots are actual in camera effects. This includes glass paintings, repeated shots and so forth, all very cool and quite interesting. However, it is not as interesting as hearing some of the information from the business of film perspective.
Coppola talks about how Winona Ryder bailed on him in The Godfather Part III to film Edward Scissorhands just before shooting, which is why his daughter Sofia ultimately took the role as Michael Corleone’s daughter. To this he says he doesn’t hold grudges and gave her another chance. He talks about Winona even more when she said to him, “Oh I have done this before.” He asks where and she replies Tim Burton shot it like this. You can almost taste how much this bothered him.
He then talks about the budget of the film and how tight the production was. Shot for a reported $40 million the entire movie is shot on a stage, absolutely no location shoots. He points out several moments in the film that look the way they do because they weren’t granted the budget to shoot it the way he wanted to. He talks about how the film was one week ahead of schedule and how he approached the financiers for the money from what is now a bonus week to shoot some effects. He was granted the money at first only to be denied later for what was being called an accounting error.
Taking everything into consideration and what sounds like a very troubled shoot, including a moment he says he “lost his cool” with Gary Oldman, kicked a chair across the room and walked off set, the film is officially Ford Coppola’s most successful film at the box-office. This is a man that made the highly acclaimed Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, yet a film that he speaks of with what I can only describe as antipathy is his biggest monetary success. He is obviously proud of several moments of the film, but at no time does he seem overly pleased with the picture.
Dracula made $82,522,790 domestically and $133,339,902 in the foreign markets giving it an overall worldwide total of over $215 million. Yet, don’t talk dollars and cents with him, that part of the business doesn’t seem to get him all warm and fuzzy. Below I have typed up three paragraphs from Coppola’s commentary on the DVD in regards to this matter. These comments come about an hour into the film and once I heard them I knew I had to write them up:
I must confess, and this maybe sounds disheartening, but when I look at this and I think of all the work it is to make a movie any way, I have to say that unless it’s a theme or a subject matter that you have to make because it says something that has never been said before or it is in your soul and you have to get it out – I can’t see any point to make a film at all.
The way it’s been set up and the way the whole profession has gone it’s like you have to tolerate so much stuff. You have to work on this movie for so long under such unenlightened directives from the company financing it and when it’s all said and done they publish in the newspaper like the sports scores how much money it did. They show it in a theater that’s a box with ten other [films] and you have to not only hear the battery of critics that rightly or wrongly say their opinion along with everyone else, it seems like the only reason to make a movie is because it’s something that’s never been made before and is really part of your feelings about life.
Therefore it should be something that you should finance as well as make because that is the only way that you can have the same right as a painter has when he paints a picture, or poet has when he writes a poem or, to a large extent, that a novelist has when he writes a novel. Even really an opera composer, more or less, has the right to sit down and make his opera the way he sees it.
Sounds to me like he has a bit of an issue with studio meddling and the growing concern for box-office success.
It is no secret studios aim for weekend one box-office dollars and that is all that concerns them. Look at this weekend alone, Resident Evil: Extinction is being hidden from critics, pushed hard for opening weekend dollars and to hell with whatever happens after that, it is all gravy and let’s look forward to the multitude of DVD and high-definition format releases.
Shortly after the comments above Coppola says that he originally went into making Dracula with the idea of making two films, the follow-up would have been Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a film that ultimately ended up in the hands of Kenneth Branaugh and for anyone that has read Shelley’s book knows that movie was a complete and utter disaster. Coppola comments on such thoughts and remembers his thinking at the time of consideration, “What am I wasting my time with this for?” he asks, “I should be reading books or something.”
If you are a fan of Coppola’s Dracula you are definitely going to be happy with this DVD release. Finally the film is presented in its proper aspect ratio made for widescreen televisions, the transfer looks great and the commentary is worth it for sure as you can probably already tell. I hope to have a complete and official review online soon so stay tuned for details on all the disc-two features, but if you want to preorder one for yourself in the meantime click here.
