Graft & Collusion: Finding the Real Tom Waits Within the Illusions of One from the Heart

|Sam L. Landman| As he ventured onto the American Zoetrope lot in the fall of 1980, fully prepared to write the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, Tom Waits had already spent a majority of his career as an imposter. (And I say that lovingly, as a fan who’s… Continue reading

Never Get Out of the Boat

A man rises from a bog, his face covered in mud and substances this editor cannot determine.

|Lucas Hardwick| High school…shit; I was still only in high school. Every day I thought I was gonna wake up and that book report would be done. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing written, and not much read. I hardly said a word to my sophomore English teacher until I said… Continue reading

Double Exposures, Love, and Magic: Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula

The Coppolas employed vintage effects to gorgeous ends: in this case model train + giant book

|Penny Folger| Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a novel that was originally published in 1897, was later adapted to film over 200 times. What led Francis Ford Coppola to make it again in 1992, on the heels of his Godfather III? The answer can be found in then 19-year-old Winona Ryder. After dropping out of Godfather III due to nervous exhaustion… Continue reading

Bram Stoker’s Dracula as the Center of the Universe: A Mini-Memoir of Cultural Consumption 

Mina Murray wears a high-collared light green floral dress and Jonathan Harker wears a dark plaid suit as they converse in a sunlit garden

|Hannah Baxter| It’s November 1992, and a new movie with Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves has just come out. As someone born at the tail end of Gen X, that’s all you need to know. You’ve never heard of Francis Ford Coppola or the male lead, someone unmemorably named Gary Oldman. You have, however, watched Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, … Continue reading

Aggressive Adaptation: Francis Ford Coppola’s Visionary Madness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

A menacing Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, wrinkled and pale, with his white and coiffed beehive hairdo, licks his razorblade to the right of the frame while shrouded in blackness.

|Chris Polley| Besides both of us being complete dorks, the venerable, legendary auteur Francis Ford Coppola (of Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame) and I have exactly one thing in common: We both forced a group of people to sit down and read Bram Stoker’s iconic gothic novel Dracula out loud together… Continue reading