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It's an offer they still can't refuse: Francis Ford Coppola will lead a parade of veteran titans of American cinema returning to the Cannes Film Festival next week, a likely swan song for the “new Hollywood” generation.
The “Godfather” director will be joined by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas and “Taxi Driver” writer Paul Schrader on the French Riviera for the world's most famous cinematic gathering, where the three men enjoyed success at their peak in the 1970s.
Half a century later, Coppola and Schrader will face off for the festival's coveted Palme d'Or with their new films “Megalopolis” and “Oh Canada,” while Lucas will receive an honorary prize for his successful career .
“It makes it seem like the old gunslinger is coming back to town for one last showdown,” said Hollywood historian Thomas Doherty.
“It’s like an exclamation point on their career,” recognized American film journalist Tim Gray.
“Yes, these guys are brand names, they are well known, but they are artists and they are recognized by the film community around the world.”
The trio were central figures in a group of rebel filmmakers, dubbed the “New Hollywood,” who shook up the Hollywood studio system in the 1970s.
It borrows the arthouse styles of the French New Wave of the previous decade, as well as its idea of the director as a visionary “auteur.”
They also fundamentally changed the way films were financed, including Coppola, who broke away from traditional Hollywood studios and invested vast sums of his own money in colossal films like “Apocalypse Now.”
That film earned Coppola one of his two Palmes d'Or awards, and he's hoping lightning strikes a record third time with “Megalopolis,” another epic passion project that cost $120 million.
Coppola, 85, sold part of his California wine estate to finance the film, about the feud between two men struggling to rebuild a crumbling metropolis.
It does not yet have a major distributor in Hollywood.
“I love that decision. Coppola is pretty brazen,” said Gray, former editor-in-chief of Variety and now executive vice president of the Golden Globes.
“As a filmmaker and showman, Coppola always leaned toward barriers…he defied career logic.”
The presence of so many aging giants of American cinema potentially saying a final “farewell” at Cannes should be a deeply moving and sentimental affair.
Lucas – one of the richest and most famous film directors of all time – received relatively few accolades in his native America.
But it was the screening of his first science fiction film “THX 1138” at Cannes in 1971 that set him on the path to creating “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.”
On the occasion of his return to the Croisette, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, Lucas “doesn’t need money, he doesn’t need anything,” Gray said.
“But it’s a kind of recognition of him as an author.”
And it won't just be the directors. Several stars who also broke through in the New Hollywood era will join them.
Coppola's “Megalopolis” stars Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, as well as Laurence Fishburne, who appeared as a young teenager in “Apocalypse Now.”
Schrader – whose “Taxi Driver” won the Palme d’Or in 1976 – reunites with Richard Gere, decades after “American Gigolo”.
Gere plays a Vietnam War refugee haunted by his past in “Oh Canada.”
Meryl Streep, another notable figure of the time for her roles in “The Deer Hunter” and “Manhattan”, also received an honorary Palme d'Or at the festival.
It promises to be an important final goodbye, Doherty said: “We have to give them the final salute.”
The 77th Cannes Film Festival begins next Tuesday and runs until May 25.
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