Greg Saunier: It’s well within the realm of possibility that human civilization collapses within our lifetime.
Francis Ford Coppola: And ultimately that’s what I did. I was just having fun.
Saunier: Sometimes I’ll try sleep deprivation.
Coppola: It was insane, but it was a wonderful apprenticeship.
Saunier: That’s what it’s all about. (Laughs) And silence is a choice.
•••
Coppola: And pretty soon, everyone just fell into character. Nobody knew what I was talking about, and I was much ridiculed for what I said, because it was off the wall.
Saunier: Anyway, what were you asking?
Coppola: How do I manage to tell this story that’s so big and broad and wide in two hours and 40 minutes of screen time, and how can I use the language of film to take what was 60 pages in the novel and make it into three pages of the screenplay?
Saunier: You want the opposite. You’ll be on foot, looking for food in a desert.
Coppola: But even when I was in that mode, I always tried to find something to fall in love with.
•••
Saunier: And what worked yesterday does not seem to work tomorrow. We’re talking centuries.
Coppola: But my feeling, to be honest, is that it’s totally irrelevant and I would prefer not to say exactly how I did it until people see it.
Saunier: We do Skype calls.
Coppola: We just tried to be as tricky as we could and to outmaneuver them.
Saunier: Angela Davis is suddenly a person that people are quoting everywhere.