The Visionary And the Frog Prince

By 1969, Paramount's efforts to turn "The Godfather" into a feature film were in full swing. But there was one problem: the movie needed a director. Robert Evans and Al Ruddy tried to wrangle Hollywood heavyweights such as Richard Brooks and Otto Preminger, but nobody wanted the job. So, Paramount went after their last-resort option, the little-known Francis Ford Coppola. Like seemingly everyone else working on the movie, and especially Puzo, the Queens-raised director had had a few early brushes with failure, but possessed the hunger to be a great artist. But Coppola, for all his talent and ambition, was hardly handed the job on a silver platter. In Episode Four, Mark and Nathan trace Coppola's career to find out how he went from directing student films at U.C.L.A. to handling some of the richest source material in the history of cinema. They also catch up with Mario Puzo, who in addition to befriending Coppola, has had a makeover of epic proportions and is living out his Hollywood fantasies.

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