Revisiting Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar races in honor of ‘Megalopolis’
“Megalopolis” is now playing in theaters, and director Francis Ford Coppola is in the Oscar hunt yet again after already winning multiple Academy Awards throughout his esteemed career. Let’s look back at his many Oscar races.
After building his credits as a screenwriter and director in the 1960s, Coppola’s breakthroughs arrived in the early 1970s with “Patton” and “The Godfather.” He wrote the screenplay to the beloved epic drama “Patton,” directed Franklin J. Schaffner and starring George C. Scott, both of whom won Oscars for the film. Coppola also received his first Academy Award for his original screenplay, which he shared with co-writer Edmund H. North. His only threat in the category that year was “Five Easy Pieces,” which got into Best Picture, but with “Patton” dominating in a bunch of categories that year, winning the Screenplay prize was all but inevitable.
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Two years later, Coppola won another Oscar in the Screenplay category, this time in Adapted, sharing the prize with novelist Mario Puzo for “The Godfather,” considered by many as one of the greatest films ever made. What might surprise you is that Coppola did not win the Academy Award for “The Godfather” in Best Director, that gold trophy going instead to Bob Fosse for “Cabaret,” the musical starring Liza Minnelli that still holds the record for most Oscar wins without taking the Best Picture prize (eight). Coppola of course got to see his movie win Best Picture, and producer Albert S. Ruddy accepted the trophy.
After receiving an Oscar nomination the following year as a producer on George Lucas’ “American Graffiti,” which got into multiple categories including Best Picture, Coppola returned to the Academy Awards in early 1975 with multiple bids for two films — “The Conversation,” which opened in April 1974, and “The Godfather Part II,” which opened in December 1974. Few directors have had two giant awards players at the Oscars in a single year, but Coppola managed to do it, and if you consider his screenwriting duties on that year’s “The Great Gatsby,” you could argue he had three, given that the period drama based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel got into two Oscar categories and won both — Best Costume Design and Best Music. Coppola never had a chance to win any Academy Awards for “The Conversation” — it only got three noms total and for the most part was competing with his own “The Godfather Part II.”
His anticipated sequel to the 1972 masterpiece turned out to be just as good if not better, a dazzling achievement filled with monumental performances and storytelling. The film received 11 Oscar citations (including three in Best Supporting Actor, just like the previous movie did), and it won six prizes, including Best Adapted Screenplay, again, for Coppola and Puzo, and Best Picture, this time for Coppola, Gray Frederickson and Fred Roos. And unlike two years prior, Coppola finally won his still-to-date only Academy Award for Best Director. He began his acceptance speech by saying, “I almost won this a couple of years ago for the first half of the same picture.” His film had considerable competition that night, namely from “Chinatown,” which also got eleven nominations, but ultimately nothing could stop “The Godfather Part II.”
Coppola returned to the Academy Awards in 1980 for his years-in-the-making war epic “Apocalypse Now,” which received eight nominations, including three for Coppola — Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. This time, however, Coppola had to stay in his seat for all three categories as the blockbuster domestic drama “Kramer vs. Kramer” dominated that night, winning Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay, among others. “Apocalypse Now” had been met with a series of controversies, and along with its many delays and a summer release date coming just months after Oscar-winning war epic “The Deer Hunter,” Coppola’s movie couldn’t muster up enough praise and awards momentum to overtake the more celebrated “Kramer vs. Kramer.”
Coppola made plenty of acclaimed films throughout the 1980s, including “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” but his to-date final Oscar nominations arrived in early 1991 for the trilogy closer “The Godfather Part III,” for which he got into Best Director and Best Picture. Since the third chapter of the Michael Corleone saga wasn’t as well received as the first two, he had zero chance in winning gold trophies for “The Godfather Part III,” as his film was far behind the better reviewed “Dances with Wolves” and “Goodfellas” that awards season. Coppola was just happy to be there, losing in both categories to Kevin Costner for “Dances with Wolves.”
His next movie “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” got into the Oscars in early 1993, winning a handful of prizes, but Coppola wasn’t nominated anywhere, and in the decades since his only Academy Award has been the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial prize in 2011. Is it possible he can return as an Oscar nominee for his latest epic “Megalopolis,” now screening around the country? Only time will tell. Still, with five wins behind him, Coppola’s legacy with the Academy Awards is cemented for all time.
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