Francis Coppola May Be Sweating Blood No More

San Francisco novelist and screenwriter Diane Johnson sums up Francis Ford Coppola's mercurial style with a single phrase: "He needs his downtime." It's no surprise, then, that the day after the Mann's Chinese Theater premiere of his latest film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Coppola hid himself away in a tiny house in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. He was baby-sitting for his granddaughter, Gia. "It is not easy being me," he sighs, reflecting on the violent ups and downs his career has taken. "I have been fighting expectations all my life, and that's a game you can never win."

For Coppola, one of Hollywood's most gifted -- and controversial -- directors, the hardest part of life is business. Business is always getting in the way of art. More than 20 years ago, he turned up his nose at the Hollywood Establishment and retreated up the coast to San Francisco to launch an independent studio called Zoetrope Productions. Three bankruptcy filings later, he's only now recovering. Coppola has won five Academy Awards. His Godfather series and Apocalypse Now rank among America's finest films. But to those who finance movies, his legacy is much more prosaic: It's not easy being one of Francis Ford Coppola's lenders.