Tucker: A Man and His Dream (1988)
Written by Arnold Schulman & David Seidler
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
The Tucker automobile had captured Coppola’s mind since childhood. While at UCLA’s film school, the burgeoning director further developed his idea for this biopic. Marlon Brando was approached to star as the lead, then Jack Nicholson, and then Burt Reynolds. Coppola decided he wanted to make it experimental, a modern musical where he would reference Bertolt Brecht and Kabuki performances. His colleague Paul Schrader’s Mishima film inspired him, and Coppola wanted Tucker to be like that. In 1986, George Lucas encouraged Coppola to make his Tucker movie; he thought Tucker was one of the best things the filmmaker had developed in a while. Lucas would produce it, but he convinced the director to back away from the project’s experimental nature. Instead, Coppola would take inspiration from the work of Frank Capra, an exploration of the American Dream and the hope that industrialization brought in the wake of World War II. This would be Coppola’s final production of the 1980s.
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