Phillip depicts Coppola's career as a struggle to exist as an 'artist in an industry,' showing that the auteur theory has validity even within today's Hollywood system.
~Booklist
A first-rate production history of Coppola's films, a history that makes effective use of many interview, biographical, and critical materials, with specific attention to the scripts of Coppola's films.... Highly recommended.
~Choice
Traces his subject's life and career from the University of California at Los Angeles through his brush with softcore porn 'B' flicks for Roger Corman, his work as a screenwriter, and the founding of his own production company.
~Dallas Morning News
Phillip's book is marked by an honest appraisal that rises above the hyper-context of Coppola's media history and eccentric behavior.... Gives this much-maligned figure his rightful seat in the pantheon of late twentieth-century film directors, not for one work alone, but for his contribution to the future of the medium.
~Film Quarterly
Phillips' work is stellar. The text will clearly become the definitive assessment of Francis Ford Coppola.
~Lester Keyser
Coppola's movies will be seen for generations to come, and the book Godfather is a good insight into those films and the man who made them.
~Lexington Herald-Leader
The author's access to knowledgeable people and his obviously painstaking research make this one of the most useful books to date about Coppola.
~Library Journal
Working with Francis Ford Coppola on the screenplays of the Godfather films showed me how a really good direct works.
~Mario Puzo
Coppola gave Phillips full access to his private journals and intimate opinions, resulting in a book of greater depth and focus.
~New York Resident
Certainly the definitive work on the director to date and scholars (and lovers) of film will revel in the details about Coppola's best work and hoard the trivia about his worst.
~Publishers Weekly
The definitive assessment of one of Hollywood's most enduring and misunderstood mavericks.
~SirReadaLot.com
I have never made a movie as good as The Godfather and I don't have the amitition to try.
~Steven Spielberg