Eleanor Coppola has died. An author and documentary filmmaker, Coppola’s most celebrated movie was the 1991 documentary Hearts Of Darkness, in which she recounted, with intimate access and an unsparing eye, the numerous disasters that befell the filming of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Coppola also directed a handful of fictional features—including 2016 Diane Lane vehicle Paris Can Wait—and a number of making-of features based around the films of her daughter, Sofia Coppola. Per Variety, Coppola died on Friday at her home in California. She was 87.
Born in California, Coppola (then Eleanor Neil) was 27 and working in the art department of a Roger Corman horror film, Dementia 13, when she first met the film’s director—a first(ish)-time filmmaker going by the name of Francis Coppola. By the time the film was eventually released (after Coppola got into a series of arguments with Corman over the movie’s final edit), the pair were already married, and celebrating the birth of their first child, Gian-Carlo.
After working directly on Coppola’s next film, You’re A Big Boy Now, Eleanor continued to accompany Francis around the world as he made movies, often keeping detailed notes and diaries, and even film footage, of their lives. That tendency served her well in 1979, when she published Notes: On The Making Of Apocalypse Now, her recounting of the several years that she, her husband, and her children lived in the Philippines while Apocalypse Now constantly threatened to spiral out of control. Less film manual than a very personal view on the making of one of the most famous films of all time, the book was well-received, ultimately serving, at least in part, as inspiration for the making of Hearts Of Darkness.
Originally released by Showtime, the film was built out of footage that Coppola shot during her time on the movie’s set, which was then passed over to young filmmakers Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, who shot new interviews to support the existing footage. The trio then edited the film together, before premiering it at Cannes in 1991. The film received rave reviews, which praised its clear look at an incredibly chaotic production. (Francis Ford Coppola was a bit less enthused about the final production, noting, not incorrectly, that it often makes him look terrible—but also acknowledging that “It was very good.”)
Eleanor Coppola continued to work and make movies for the rest of her life, releasing a second book, Notes On A Life, in 2008. (The book recounts 30 years of her life, but often returns to the death of Gian-Carlo, who died in a boating accident at the age of 22 in 1986.) In later years, she released a number of making-of films, including for Francis’ film The Rainmaker, and her daughter Sofia’s Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides. Her two narrative features, Paris Can Wait and Love Is Love Is Love, were released in 2016 and 2020, respectively, to generally poor reviews. Sofia’s 2023 film Priscilla was dedicated to her mother.
