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The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story

A Conversation with Sam Wasson and Noah Eaker

Anticipating Coppola's 2024 film Megalopolis, best selling author Sam Wasson (The Big Goodbye) returns to the Burbank Public Library to discuss the ambitions and legacy of the celebrated director.

Five-time Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola is one of the iconic directors of the second Golden Age of Hollywood. Sam Wasson was granted total, unprecedented access to Coppola’s archives, and conducted hundreds of interviews with the artist and many who have worked closely with him. His rich portrait of Coppola reveals a charming, brilliant man, grounded in family and community, as well as a restless, sometimes reckless genius. Wasson delivers the definitive account of Coppola’s half-century-long quest to reinvent filmmaking—if not the world—with his visionary production company American Zoetrope.

Wasson writes, “Coppola initiated a colossal, lifelong project of experimental self-creation few filmmakers can afford—emotionally, financially—and none but he has undertaken.  Through the artistic and social ingenuity of his company Zoetrope—in Greek, ‘life revolution’—his living, dying, living production company and onetime studio, he has marshaled the stubbornly earthbound resources for filmmaking, business, technology, and the natural world to stage—and that’s what his Zoetrope laboratory is, a stage—literal worlds analogous to those of whatever characters he’s creating.”

“A vivid biography…A memorable portrait of an artist who has changed the cinematic landscape and whose work will endure.” Kirkus (starred review).

Join us for a conversation with Sam and his editor at Harper, Noah Eaker. Don't miss your chance to learn about the working relationship between an author and book editor! 

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