The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

108 Kimberly Peirce
Have you ever run into anybody associated with the film and talked
about your passion for it?
Peirce: Oh sure, sure. I’ve spent time with Coppola. You always feel silly
professing your absolute love for something like The Godfather to the person
who made it, but you can’t help yourself and it’s a good thing you do.
Very early on he was incredibly generous toward me, incredibly nice. I was
beside myself with excitement that I was just getting to talk to my hero about
a movie that really had changed my life.
Is this after Boys Don’t Cry?
Peirce: Yeah. We were at some event, and Coppola came up to me and he
told me he loved Boys Don’t Cry. And, of course, I was overwhelmed and
shocked and really humbled by it.
I had the chance to tell him how much I love The Godfather and how
much, in many ways, Brandon [Hilary Swank’s character in Boys Don’t Cry]
was the innocent version of Michael. And then I had looked at Michael and
his relentless use of violence when I was trying to create the John character
in Boys.
Coppola was great. I have the utmost respect and affection for him. He
asked me if I wanted to run his studio, which I thought was really interesting.
But I said no, I don’t think I’d ever run a studio. But it was very
interesting that it was on his mind, and now that I’m years into a career, I
understand where that appetite and desire comes from. I think he’s a man of
huge appetites, but it makes sense that having been through what he’s been
through, he’d want to have some control of the means of production.
Coppola recently said The Godfather should have only been one movie,
that it was a drama and should never have been a serial. What do you
make of that?
Peirce: I loved them both, The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II. In
many ways the second one is, I wouldn’t say superior, because I loved both of
them, but it does give you an outrageously ambitious structure that miraculously
works.
You see The Godfather and you’re just in love with these people, and
you just wanted to go on and on. So you go to see Part II with this amazing