Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545125
45 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W patchwork biography that covered virtually every notable director of the era, but largely confines his focus to the three inimitable figures named in the subtitle. Of course, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg have not been chosen as some random trio: these film- makers are not only colleagues working in the same industry at approximately the same time, but friends, collaborators, and mentors or mentees to one another. Fischer recognized that because their careers criss- cross in all sorts of ways, their stories would be ideally suited for a triple-biography such as this. Another factor keeps "The Last Kings of Hollywood" from coming across as "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls Redux": So many of the directors written about in the earlier volume — such as Friedkin, Hal Ashby, and Bob Rafelson — premised their careers on confronting and upsetting Hollywood orthodoxy. By contrast, Lucas and Spielberg made movies that kept continuity with old- er Hollywood traditions, even if both did so on their own terms. And despite his restless quest for independence, Coppola, too, was more successful as the populist who made the "Godfather" films rather than the artsy marginal figure he seemed to want to be. In other words, Fischer was right to character- ize these three in monarchical terms in his book's title; instead of toppling Hollywood, they were content to reign. Fittingly, the book opens with a striking image of the moment when the takeover began. "George Lucas walked through the gates of Warner Bros. the same day Jack Warner walked out — at least, that's how George liked to tell it," Fischer writes in his potent opening line. In 1967, Warner was making his hasty exit upon ceding owner- ship of his studio to a Canadian business, while Lucas, then a 23-year-old University of Southern California film school graduate, was making his wary arrival to reap the benefits of having won the Sam Warner Scholarship, which gave him the right to ingratiate himself inside a studio depart- ment. "George asked to be assigned to the animation department, where he was least likely to have to deal with other human be- ings," writes Fischer, who sketches well his subjects' various personalities, including Lucas's noted owlishness. Fischer does not press the point of the allegedly concurrent departure of Warner and arrival of Lucas, but he makes clear it was a consequential moment. "One event didn't cause the other, but they weren't, in the great scheme of things, unrelated," he writes. "By late July 1967, the studios were on their last legs. Kids like George Lucas were a Hail Mary pass: a desperate, last- gasp attempt to do something about it." Dissatisfied with the inactivity in the animation department, Lucas strolled onto the set of "Finian's Rainbow," a late-in-life musical vehicle for Fred Astaire with the unlikely costar of Petula Clark and the even unlikelier director of Coppola, whose gift for whipping up excitement among a group of collaborators had been with him, evidently, since youth. "I had a little movie company there on 212th Street in Queens," Coppola said of early movie ventures made on 8mm with family and friends. In time, Coppola sought employment with and an apprenticeship from Roger Corman, which he parlayed into a job directing a quirkily personal film, 1966's "You're a Big Boy Now." Then came "Finian's Rainbow." "He was dealing with Hermes Pan, who disapproved of Francis's roving camera and tendency to improvise the dancing," Fischer writes. "He was dealing with Petula Clark, whose publicist husband kept asking to rearrange her shooting schedule to max- imize her tax position back in Britain." But Coppola was also encouraging Lucas, who was ready to forsake his apprenticeship. "Look," he told Lucas, "stick around, and I'll P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T FACE MELTING: Spielberg, center, directs Harrison Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T 'HEART' HEALTH: Coppola, right, and Gene Kelly on the set of "One From The Heart."