1. Francis Ford Coppola
The Good:The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Bram Stoker's Dracula, The RainmakerThe Bad: One From The Heart, Gardens of Stone, The Outsiders, The Godfather Part III, Jack, Youth Without Youth, Twixt The Francis Ford Coppola story must feature, without a doubt, one of the most depressing directorial declines in movie history. As perhaps the most critically-acclaimed filmmaker of the 1970s, Coppola made
The Godfather and its arguably even better sequel
The Godfather Part II,
Apocalypse Now, and
The Conversation, all within the space of a decade. This extremely prolific and near-flawless period marked him out as the most talented filmmaker amongst his contemporaries. And then, presumably overcome with the stress associated tied to this great period, he fell. One can only imagine the burdens that were placed on Coppola as he went about making
Apocalypse Now (many of them burden can be glimpsed in making of documentary
Hearts of Darkness), but it obviously damaged his creative tendencies to the point that the remainder of his career has suffered from a lingering amount of mediocrity. There have been a few gems along the way, and although he has certainly made some of the greatest movies of all-time (three I'm sure of), the bad flicks certainly outweigh the good ones when it comes to this broken genius.
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