Francis Ford Coppola Hospitalized in Italy
Francis Ford Coppola has been hospitalized in Italy.
The legendary auteur went in for a scheduled update procedure with Dr. Andrea Natale, a renowned heart doctor who has treated Coppola for more than 30 years. He is said to be resting nicely now. Per The Daily Mail, the first to report the news, the legendary auteur checked into a hospital in the Italian region of Calabria on Tuesday morning.
A follow-up story in the Mirror claimed he suffered a “mild cardiac arrhythmia” after checking in for the procedure. The Hollywood Reporter reached out to the filmmaker’s rep and will update accordingly.
Coppola had just wrapped up a six city U.S. tour in support of his film Megalopolis in partnership with Live Nation. His final show, which included a screening of the self-financed pic and a Q&A, took place at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts on Friday night.
“I’m 85,” he told the audience, per SF Gate. “I lost my wife [Eleanor Coppola] a year ago, around this time. But my attitude for death is that I always lived my life so that when I was at the moment approaching death, I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this and I wish I had done that.’ Instead, I say to myself, ‘I got to do this.’”
It’s unclear at what point over the weekend he flew back to Southern Italy, where he had spent time earlier this summer. According to local media, Coppola made an appearance at the Magna Graecia Film Festival, which hosted a screening of his Megalopolis at the Supercinema in Soverato (Catanzaro) earlier this month. He told reporters at the time that he also worked in location scouting for a new project. “I’m here in Calabria to see some locations for a new project that’s very important to me,” he reportedly said. “A new film that will focus on the beautiful things of Calabria.”
Not much is known about the project but Coppola teased that it won’t be a mafia-based project like his iconic Godfather trilogy. “Calabria is a region very famous for its mafia, but that doesn’t interest me. My film instead will focus solely on the beautiful things about this region.”
More to come.
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