Francis Ford Coppola

This week Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro hits theaters following its May debut at the Cannes Film Festival. I was among the first to see the film back at the end of April and recently had a chance to speak with the Oscar-winning writer and director over the phone from his office at American Zoetrope, his production house that is also set to distribute the film, but it wasn’t always planned that way.

“We sort of fell into self release without really wanting to,” Coppola tells me as the film hits theaters this Thursday, June 11. “It only happened because we didn’t particularly want to show the movie until it was finished and we didn’t want it to get suddenly released in late November with a bunch of independent films because they have this habit of all coming out at the end of the year so they can possibly be in the sweepstakes for awards. I wanted it to come early. So I decided to have it come out on June 11th, which is my father’s birthday.”

It’s only fitting Coppola’s first original screenplay in more than 30 years, and one he admits draws on memories of his own family, would hold even more personal significance all the way down to its release date. However, early discussion of the film around the entertainment community has people wondering if Tetro will be a “return to form” for the director of such films as The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. The idea of such speculation is to approach the film with a misunderstanding of the director’s intentions.