Godfather (10 page)

At any rate, once outside the porno parlor, Bernard and Amy chat with each other on the telephones in adjoining phone booths on the street, an act that serves as a metaphor for their attempt to connect with each other. Indeed, they discover that, among other things, they both attended P.S. 109 in New York City (the same school Coppola attended).

A stand-out location sequence in
Big Boy
begins in Humphrey's office, where nearly all of the principals in the cast (even Barbara) meet for a showdown. It is at this point that Bernard impulsively steals the Gutenberg Bible and is pursued down Fifth Avenue by a posse led by his father. En route, they wind up in Macy's department store. Coppola explains that he wanted to see what would happen when this “madness” hit Macy's at 11:00
AM
, with no one outside the film's cast and crew having the remotest idea of what was transpiring. Three cameras were concealed in delivery carts and shopping bags. Coppola and Laszlo, as usual, filmed the scene with the natural light available, in this case a mixture of the fluorescent lights overhead and sunlight coming in through the windows. Kastner and his pursuers were running up and down the aisles, “and they started a riot,” Coppola remembers—“some kids started ripping Peter's clothes off” (footage which did not make the final cut). “My only regret is we didn't have thirty cameras to get everything down on film.”
⁸

The chase ends when Barbara finally corners Bernard in a room where the department store mannequins are kept and clobbers him with the leg of a dummy. This shot is apparently a homage to one of Stanley Kubrick's
early films,
Killer's Kiss
(1955), in which the hero slugs it out with the villain in a warehouse stored with department store mannequins.

Chown observes that Coppola photographed the movie in a rather showy fashion, with frenetic handheld camerawork during the chase in Macy's and ostentatious dolly shots in the library as Bernard skates through the stacks. The freewheeling cinematography, he continues, is marked by the wild camera movement and gaudy colors reminiscent of TV commercials and, hence, draws attention to itself. Coppola, commenting on his style of cinematography in the picture, told me,
“You're a Big Boy Now
is a flashy movie to some extent. I have since been more subtle than that. But flashy films do attract attention, and that was what I wanted to do when I was making my first film for a studio.” In fact, he has often thought of the movie as the first underground film ever made for a major Hollywood studio by a tyro moviemaker.

At times the flashy photography pays off, as when Bernard takes Amy on a date to a psychedelic disco in the Village where Barbara is appearing. Coppola's canny camera captures the garish atmosphere, all dazzling lights and glittering decor. To top it off, gory scenes from Coppola's own
Dementia 13
are being projected on one of the walls just to add to the bizarre setting.

Barbara, a typical 1960s swinger dressed in a miniskirt and plastic boots, is gyrating to the music in a cage suspended from the ceiling. Bernard looks up at her adoringly, as if she were an inaccessible goddess on a pedestal. By the same token, Barbara looks down at Bernard like a goddess eyeing with disdain one of the mortals who worships her.

This scene incorporates some excellent visual imagery, some of which has just been described. In addition, there is the shot, shortly afterward, when Bernard kisses Amy while they are walking in Times Square. As they embrace Bernard fantasizes that a gigantic neon sign above them is spelling out “Barbara, you're on my mind” in bright lights. Thus Coppola indicates visually that Bernard is preoccupied with Barbara, even while he is kissing Amy! Another fine visual symbol occurs when Bernard and Raef are flying a kite in Central Park, with Raef all the while advising Bernard to give up his dream of winning the unattainable Barbara. The kite gets caught in a tree, and Bernard cannot reach it when he tries to retrieve it—a metaphor for how a young man's romantic dreams all too often elude his grasp.

Indeed, when Barbara finally invites Bernard to her apartment for a sexual escapade, the experience is an unqualified disaster. Barbara, who was seduced by a middle-aged therapist when she was a youngster, is a castrating female who despises men. Little wonder that Bernard fails to perform
at the climax of the scene. When he expresses his shame to her, Barbara, the bitch-goddess, smirks with her usual condescension, “There is nothing wrong with you that a firing squad couldn't fix.” As already suggested by Bernard's embarrassed tour of the porno shops earlier, he is not satisfied by sex without love—which is all that Barbara can offer him, and he cannot respond to it. He subconsciously yearns for the kind of genuine love that Amy represents. So much for Barbara as Bernard's dream girl.

At the film's denouement Bernard is jailed for stealing the Gutenberg Bible. While he is behind bars he admits to a guard that he has been imprisoned by his domineering parents, who have caused him to be “filled with self-doubt, frustration, and perpetual guilt. I've been in my parents' custody all my life. From now on I'm going to be in my own custody.” Significantly, it is Amy who bails Bernard out. She not only liberates him from prison but ultimately helps to free him from his parents' control.

The picture ends with the couple merrily romping through a pretzel factory (Bernard had earlier opined that what this country needs is a good five-cent pretzel). They are accompanied by the 1960s rock group the Lovin' Spoonful singing, “Go on and take a bow, cause you're a big boy now,” while a conveyor belt sends a cascade of nickel pretzels toward the camera.

You're a Big Boy Now
reflects Coppola's theme, already enunciated in
Dementia 13
, that the family is a source of strife and emotional problems. He states, “I'm fascinated with the whole idea of family.” In his work, “it is a constant.”
⁹
Indeed
Big Boy
is the first of his movies to explore a father-son relationship, a theme that would surface prominently in films like
The Godfather
.

Big Boy
was taken seriously by the film community. It was chosen as the only official U.S. entry at the Cannes International Film Festival and gained Geraldine Page an Academy Award nomination. Still the picture merited a mixed bag of reviews, both at Cannes and in the American press. Some critics noticed positively that the movie is crisply paced and has a refreshing story that turns somersaults and zigzags off in unexpected directions. They conceded that it is hard not to warm to the director's brash, invigorating style. As one reviewer put it, when the camera is capturing city life off the cuff, the picture has energy and charm. By contrast, the movie was criticized for its anarchic, “custard-pie plot” (a reference to the slapstick chase through Macy's department store, with its resonance of the Keystone Cops' silent comedies).

As for the acting, on the one hand, the supporting cast headed by Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, and Rip Torn, were complimented for giving their roles a dizzy spin. On the other hand, the naysayers pointed out that
their performances at times came close to caricature, as when Margery Chanticleer or Miss Thing screeched at Bernard for chasing girls. It is true that the characterizations of some of the minor figures are somewhat superficial and even border on the grotesque, as certain critics maintained, but Bernard himself is drawn in some depth. At times he seems to be traveling a road without signposts in his journey toward maturity. He seems a feckless outsider, the sort of innocent whose luggage an airline is bound to lose. Kastner gave the most memorable performance in the picture as the harried young man.

All in all,
You're a Big Boy Now
is a winning amalgam of quirky comedy and serious drama that offers glimpses into complicated lives, and that keeps it from becoming merely an inflated situation comedy. The picture is in some ways slight and slender, but it nevertheless indicates the stirrings of a major directorial talent. Goodwin and Wise cite critic Joseph Morgenstern as stating that not since Orson Welles went riding out of town “has any young American made a film as original, spunky, and just plain funny as this one.”
¹⁰
Charles Champlin, critic of the
Los Angeles Times
, delivered the ultimate accolade to Coppola by acknowledging that the young writer-director already deserved to be termed an auteur.

Asked at the time of the film's American release how the movie's box-office performance would affect his career, Coppola replied stoically, “If the movie's a bomb it won't destroy my reputation as a director because I don't have any,” adding that he could always go back to being a screenwriter for the time being.
¹¹

Although budgeted at $800,000, the picture eventually cost closer to $1 million, which it never recouped during its original release. The film was not a commercial success because, besides the mixed reviews, the two leads were unknowns who had not yet established themselves in the movie world, and the supporting players likewise lacked marquee value for the youthful filmgoers at whom the film was targeted. When
Big Boy
failed to attract ticket buyers in its initial New York and Los Angeles runs, Warners-Seven gave it only a limited distribution across the rest of the country. The upshot was that the movie did not break even until it was sold to television.

The young principals in
Big Boy
continued to pursue film careers. Elizabeth Hartman's career never really got off the ground, and she finally took her own life in 1987. Although
Big Boy
was not a moneymaker, Warners-Seven was sufficiently impressed with Coppola's handling of the film and the positive reviews it received in some quarters to ask the promising young director to make
Finian's Rainbow
, a movie musical with Fred Astaire.

The merger of Warner Brothers and Seven Arts had reached the point where Jack Warner, the venerable Warners production chief, finally sold his stake in the studio to Seven Arts. Earlier, when Joseph Landon, producer of
Rainbow
, had broached Coppola's name to Warner as a possible director for the film, Warner dismissed Coppola as too young and inexperienced for a big musical (George Cukor was a sexagenarian when Warner picked him to direct
My Fair Lady
in 1964). After Warner's departure, however, Eliot Hyman was named chief executive officer of the company. Hyman, in turn, appointed his son Ken as production chief (“the son also rises,” as one wag quipped), and Ken Hyman was interested in nurturing young talent in a way that Jack Warner, a scion of the old Hollywood, was not. So Ken Hyman authorized Landon to consider Coppola for the director's chair for
Finian's Rainbow
.

The new administration at Warners-Seven Arts had some very practical reasons for setting their sights on Coppola. To begin with, the studio had not allocated a huge budget for
Rainbow
, despite the fact that at the time it was customary to assign a generous budget for a large-scale musical, such as
Funny Girl
(1968). But Warners-Seven wanted
Rainbow
to be made quickly in order to cash in on the wave of musicals initiated by the blockbuster
Sound of Music
(1965) before the trend waned, and they wanted to do so at bargain prices. Hence, instead of the $10 million budget usually set aside for a musical in those days and a six-month production schedule, the studio wanted
Rainbow
to be made for a thrifty $3.5 million on a three-month schedule. Consequently, the front office really wanted Coppola to helm
Rainbow
, not only because they knew a young director would not command a substantial salary, but also because he had proved with the low-budget
You're a Big Boy Now
that he could bring in a picture on time with a shoestring budget. They also hoped he could give the picture the vigor that
Big Boy
had.

By this time Coppola had taken some office space and commenced writing the first draft of a screenplay that would eventually become
The Conversation
. Landon phoned him and cagily sent up a trial balloon by inquiring of Coppola if he knew anyone who could direct
Rainbow
. “I thought about it,” Coppola remembers, “and I gave him some suggestions and hung up.” Coppola did not suggest himself because he had promised himself not to make another film for a major studio unless he was assured of a reasonable degree of artistic freedom as director. The next day Landon phoned again and this time asked him flat out, “What about you?”
¹²

Coppola pondered Landon's offer for a few days and initially turned it down after reading the hackneyed script that had been derived from the old-fashioned 1947 Broadway show. Nevertheless, Coppola eventually changed his mind because, for a start, Ken Hyman had let it be known that he planned to attract up-and-coming directors by giving them more artistic control of their films than had been the case under the old regime at Warners.

In addition, “musical comedy was something that I had been raised with in my family, and I thought frankly that my father would be impressed.”
¹³
Carmine Coppola had conducted the pit orchestra for the road companies of several Broadway musicals when Francis was a lad, and young Francis got a chance to see some of them. Moreover, Coppola had written the script and lyrics for a musical while he was still in high school and had directed a musical show at Hofstra in his college days. Then too, making
Finian's Rainbow
afforded Coppola the opportunity of directing one of the screen's legendary hoofers, Fred Astaire. But what finally clinched the deal for Coppola was the score lyricist E. Y. Harburg (who had written the lyrics for
The Wizard of Oz
), and composer Burton Lane had served up in
Rainbow
: a score that boasted a bumper crop of songs like “Old Devil Moon” and “If This Isn't Love.” Several of these songs had become standards, and they went a long way in explaining why the musical had racked up 725 performances on Broadway. In fact, Coppola judged the score one of the best ever composed for the American musical theater, and so he was essentially persuaded to make the picture “by the goddamn thought of doing all those wonderful musical numbers.”
¹⁴