The Path to Paradise

A Francis Ford Coppola Story

De: Sam Wasson

Narrado por: Timothy Andrés Pabon

“Sam Wasson’s supremely entertaining book tracks the ups and downs, ins and outs, of a remarkable career. . . . A marvel of unshowy reportage.”—New York Times

The New York Times bestselling author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. and The Big Goodbye returns with the definitive account of Academy Award–winning director Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long dream to reinvent American filmmaking, if not the entire world, through his production company, American Zoetrope.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of moviemaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.

As Wasson makes clear, the story of Zoetrope is also the story of Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola, and their children, and of personal lives inseparable from artistic passion. It is a story that charts the divergent paths of Coppola and his cofounder and onetime apprentice, George Lucas, and of their very different visions of art and commerce. And it is a story inextricably bound up in the making of one of the greatest quixotic masterpieces ever attempted, Apocalypse Now, and in what Coppola found in the jungles of the Philippines when he walked the razor’s edge. That story, already the stuff of legend, has never fully been told, until this extraordinary book.

Narrator Distracted from the Story

One day, audio narrators' performances may be competently edited, but until then we are stuck with voices that mispronounce so many common names that the listener can be pulled right out of the narrative into frustration. I feel sorry for authors who have much of their work mangled by unsupervised narrators.

Narrator sucks shit

Can’t pronounce words. Doesn’t care about the story. Absolutely bananas when Sam Wasson narrated his other books so adeptly.

Coppola’s relationship with Lucas and Eleanor’s intelligence and devotion

The authors style was jerky and impersonal. The dashing about through time and place and project was unnecessarily taxing to a listener. I came away feeling more distant from the characters than when I starred. I was glad when the book was over.

Overall Pretty Good

It’s a good listen, but not an entire biography. The book instead splices different parts of Coppola’s life into a non-linear story that, though well written, feels kind of random at times. It’s mostly about the productions of both Apocalypse Now and One for the Heart and how they fit into his life. The book does not really cover the Godfather movies, Megalopolis or most of his other work.

I found the narrator to be frustrating and not well cast. He speaks fine, I just think his tone doesn’t match Coppola’s story.

Overall a good experience, though I definitely wanted more.

Narrator was awful

Sam Wasson gets too caught up in the mystical connection between Coppola's work and character growth, or regression, depending on your point-of-view. Fact is, he became a megalomaniac who shot himself in the foot repeatedly. And it seems he's doing it again... Allowing 12-year-olds to direct actors on set of a $35M movie?! Directing from his trailer, not on-set with cast and crew? It's clear he lost focus, became consumed and charmed by technology instead of what really matters....Wasson conveys this but is so over-enamored with Coppola's B.S. about "the future" he missed that this is the reason his movies got bad, bad, bad....

I agree with critics of the narrator. He mispronounced 90% of the names. How does a person pronounce the name Marcia as 'Marsee-ah" how is that possible? Or instead of saying Warner Brothers he says Warner Bros as in "hey, bro!" Continual mispronounced words and names. It takes you out of the passages.

Does anyone oversee these recordings? We're paying a lot for this, and get readings by ninth graders?!