Rewrites & drafts

Francis Ford Coppola

improvising and adding lines and touches of his own. He would basically rewrite his part to make it bigger, but it was always really good, so that was always fun. And definitely he made a contribution not only for the interesting senator, but for some of his own dialogue that he came up with.

16:16 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

in production and if al were to not be in the film we would have to stop and it would be a disaster and great loss and i said we'll tell you what can al come here to san francisco it's going to be friday and wait and i will rewrite the entire script that weekend on monday i'll give him a new script and then he can decide whether he wants to be in it or not and they got back to me and said yes, Al is willing to do that

41:11 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

And so I started and I rewrote the entire script through the night, that Friday and Saturday, and totally rewrote it. I gave it to Al Pacino on Tuesday, exhausted. And after a day or so of waiting, the word came back that, well, guess Al would do it, and he thought the rewrite was good. So, you know, it takes a leap of faith to make these kinds of movies, and it's very hard to get the script to totally...

41:38 · jump to transcript →

a slight rewrite, and we wound up writing a new script. Rudy Wurlitzer wrote a completely new script. And so, you know, the gears were in motion, and the thing kept moving on and moving on, and got to the point where we did screen tests and cast actors.

15:18 · jump to transcript →

was taken from a short story. Is that correct? No, it was taken from a screenplay. Oh, it was taken from a screenplay. There was a screenplay by Will Corry, and we got Rudy Wurlitzer to rewrite it, but in essence, he never even read the screenplay. He wrote a new screenplay just based on the concept of a cross-country race. How did you get inside how this would go down in a town?

1:10:12 · jump to transcript →

Mankiewicz was hired after Richard Maibaum had completed a first draft script. Director Guy Hamilton remembers working with the writer. Tom Mankiewicz came out to Universal, and we sat down and we started to write the script, and we had a lot of fun writing it. Here's Tom Mankiewicz's memories of writing the script. When I was hired to rewrite Diamonds Are Forever,

5:15 · jump to transcript →

that go together in the geodesic dome. It feels to me like a bunch of scenes and ideas have been fit together. And it's like, I'd like to illustrate this idea or this little thing without any particular sense. And I would imagine that the first draft is Washburn and Cimino and then Bochco comes in. And at that time,

43:29 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

The Godfather being successful, and I had a little family now with three children, and I didn't have much money, and I obviously was worried about what would happen to us. And Evans was making The Great Gatsby, and they didn't have a script that they liked, and he asked if I would rewrite it. So I figured that was a chance for three, four weeks to make some money.

2:21:44 · jump to transcript →