“I specialize in being the ringmaster of a circus that’s reinventing itself.”
- Francis Ford Coppola
“Intrigue, anger, blackmail, deceit, pussy galore, macho grandstanding, backstabbing, and threats to life and career plagued the five-year making (and near unmaking) of The Cotton Club. The treacheries involved were so bizarre that The Godfather and Scarface combined pale by comparison. I can only tell some of the story—not wanting my life insurance canceled.”
- Robert Evans
As is often the case in cinema, the best films are discovered, not seen, and sometimes the best discovery you’ve seen might just be laying right under your nose in plain sight. Such is the case for Francis Ford Coppola’s reworking of the 1984 Harlem Renaissance/gangster opus “The Cotton Club”, remastered and lightly re-edited closer to his original vision that released recently on Blu-ray after years of languishing in American Cinema exile, thanks in no small part to an infamous and wildly litigious production history and frequent feuds between creatives and partners that often spilled out into the trades.
Coppola taking on the writing and directing of "The Cotton Club” was, for all intents and purposes, intended to be a stabilizing gig as well as a sort of return to the sweeping scale of his Godfather era.
Spearheaded by former head of Paramount Studios and Hollywood party boy Robert Evans - who had recently left the security of studio management for a more prestigious production deal within the studio he helped roll the stone away and resurrect just a few decades earlier. Not to mention more fame, coke, women and ownership. However, even with the titanic talent assembled, fired, and then recast, it was a project mired in controversy, overshadowing its artistic merits for decades. At first announced as Evans' directorial debut - a gig he landed financing for based solely on a poster and a tagline - the film’s budget quickly inflated, and after losing interest from actors like Richard Pryor and Sylvester Stallone and cooling interest from director Robert Altman who had made a hit for paramount with the quirky live-action POPEYE. Evans made a Hail Mary act of desperation to a Francis Ford Coppola. A director he once openly derided as “Prince Machiavelli”. Yet Coppola and “The Godfather” had made Evans as famous and influential amongst hollywood dealmakers as it established its director as a mercurial and defiant artistic force. Coppola and his former Paramount Studios head frequently butted heads in the public square of the industry trades, but after Evans optioned a pictorial history book on the titular storied Harlem club during the storied Harlem Renaissance and ran aground on getting a working script written. Evans called his former director, who he described often as “The Prince”, saying “I got a sick kid, and I need a good doctor.” Coppola and Evans both found themselves in financial binds both distinct and individual to their circumstances that found both of them mutually and defiantly striking an agreement to make “The Cotton Club”.
After that initial good idea to option the material, Evans, now on his own and floundering after a gilded career as a Hollywood enfant terrible studio head with a Midas touch; and without a bottomless check from Charlie Bludhorn, proceeded to secure financing independently through private equity, what he would smirkingly describe as OPM or Other Peoples Money. A feature now so common in filmmaking that you could look to a film like Cotton Club as casting the dye in which most all modern non-studio films are made. Inflated packaging fees, rising production costs due to ambitious filmmaking all offset by the corporate/private equity set that for all intents and purposes practically eliminate any oversight for safety of crew, economic security, and worse, literal threats to life. All studios have to do today, thanks in part to indie cinema financing from the 70s-90s, as well as intrepid - if not always intelligent - ambitious producers who can negotiate good in a boardroom or on the back nine to get their ego projects funded. Here, Evans cut a circuitous route through casino magnate money, money from the wealth of a burgeoning Middle East financial influence and along the way cut-throat deals with shady businessmen and Puerto Rican bankers that ultimately lead to the mob-like hit on a financing partner that set up a bunk deal with Evans. All to get his more commercial spin on “the Godfather” but set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance off the ground.
It would be a series of unfortunate and poorly considered choices that make a film like “The Cotton Club” in any form a miracle that one even gets to see it in finished form. No less a more realized form than the director and visionary behind the film intended. Such is the case often for miraculous films that seem doomed to failure before the first “Pictures Up” is yelled from the AD team. You still see it manifesting occasionally in films today, no less of an example being Martin Scorsese’s brilliant adaptation and infamous financing of The Wolf Of Wall Street - already a film about a financial predator with questionable moral character. Not Scorsese’s financing of, mind you, but how the film itself was financed and packaged before it even landed on Scorsese’s desk. That film secured a large part of its financing through a Malaysian financial equity group called 1MDB, whose operators included con man Jho Low who spent wildly to cavort around with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, and The Fugees. All greatly documented in vivid detail in the film Man On The Run directed by Cassius Michael Kim. However, with the distance of the chaotic drug-fueled environment - speaking now of the Cotton Club era not the Wolf of Wall Street era - this 2019 reworking, titled “The Cotton Club Encore”, Coppola aimed to correct his vision, shedding light on the intricate tapestry of the Harlem Renaissance era while restoring the film's rightful place in cinematic discourse.
At its core, "Cotton Club Encore" serves as a testament to Coppola's enduring commitment to storytelling. In revisiting this narrative, Coppola delves into the vibrant world of 1930s Harlem, a melting pot of culture, music, and societal tensions. Unlike his earlier masterpieces like "The Godfather" series or "Apocalypse Now," which garnered immediate acclaim, "Cotton Club" faced challenges in its reception, both critically and commercially. Yet, Coppola's persistence in refining and reimagining his work underscores his dedication to his craft.
The film transports viewers to 1920s Harlem, immersing them in a world of jazz, cultural and racial clashes, and ambitious dreams. Gregory Hines delivers a compelling performance as a budding tap dance performer navigating the challenges of a racially divided society, while Robert Gere captivates as a figure caught in the Cotton Club's web of intrigue. Set against the backdrop of the legendary Cotton Club, a hub of jazz and entertainment where “Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway had fronted the house band, and such performers as Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Lena Horne, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters were regular entertainers” “Mobsters, celebrities, members of high white society, and political bosses were equally at home in the establishment”. Working from a script co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William
Kennedy with some story assistance by Mario Puzo, Coppola’s film intertwines the lives of the aspirational characters on the margins of 1920s prohibition navigating the complexities of race, class, territorialism, and ambition while trying to get into, or ultimately on stage of the biggest club in Harlem. Central to the film's magnetism is its ensemble cast, comprised of seasoned character actors and emerging talents, most pulled from Coppola’s recent cast of collaborators. Gregory Hines delivers a stellar performance as Sandman Williams, an aspiring tap-dance performer who - along with his performing partner and real-life brother Maurice Hines, strive for recognition and opportunity at the club in a racially divided society, while Richard Gere portrays a captivating Clark Gable type with a knack for jazz bugling finds himself entangled in the club's illicit dealings when he’s befriended by James Remar’s temperamental and hot-headed gangster Dutch Schultz who finds himself embroiled in a turf war with current mob boss Owney Madden portrayed vividly by Bob Hoskins in one of his early prominent roles in American films. They’re all drawn together and ultimately at odds over the frequently vacillating desires of the quintessential flapper-cum-gangster moll Vera Cicero played with a feline-like playfulness by Diane Lane. One of Coppola’s oft-overlooked gifts as a director has not just been his frequent collaborations with the best actors of his time but in expertly rounding out the dense world of supporting characters with a murderer’s row of up and coming talent as well as old Hollywood legends. Lawrence Fishburne's portrayal of a charismatic gangster Bumpy Rhodes is captivating, while Nicolas Cage's early break-out performance here foreshadows his future stardom and distinct approach to character. Not to mention some phenomenal stunt casting in Fred Gwynne as Owney’s bodyguard Frenchy- we know Gwynne more likely as the cranky and confused judge in “My Cousin Vinny” or most likely as the head of the house in 1969 tv series “The Munsters”. A particular favorite discover here is in Julian Beck, portraying the calm but crocodile-like henchman Sol Weinstein to Remar’s up-and-coming crime boss. Julian Beck haunts all our Gen-X dreams thanks to his terrifying role as Kane from Poltergeist II. Not to mention turns from Jennifer Grey, Joe Dellesandro, Woody Strode, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Cobb, Mario Van Peebles, and more! Coppola's meticulous attention to character and bringing them to life allows for these performers to shine, infusing the film with a charisma other “gangster” films often forego for the sake of more explosive rounds from the Tommy Gun over a barrage of newspaper headline montage.
Visually, “The Cotton Club Encore" is visually ravishing, thanks in equal turns to the technical team Coppola found himself the ring-leader of. From the cinematography of Stephen Goldblatt - the cinematographer on Tony Scott’s brilliant and inky black sapphic vampire film “The Hunger”. Here Goldblatt was brought in to inject a bit of that Gordon Willis prince of darkness magic after Willis himself declined to return to the chaos of a Coppola/Evans ran set. Capturing the visual essence of 1930s Harlem, Goldblatt's lens brings to life the opulent interiors of the Cotton Club and the bustling streets beyond. The film's costume design headed by legendary costumer (and Tulsan by marriage!) Milena Canonero (Grand Budapest Hotel, The Shining) and trademark craftsmanship from Chinatown production designer Dick Sylbert’s. The craft and production design harmonizes into not just an approximation of nostalgia but a literal transportation of viewers right in the thick of an era fraught with glamour, violence, and intrigue. Furthermore, Coppola's command of this circus and his new approach to the film adding twenty more minutes of plot, Coppola breathes new life and a brisker pace into the narrative, seamlessly integrating musical performances that serve as both spectacle and commentary. The film's pacing is brisk yet deliberate, ensuring that each scene contributes to the overarching themes of identity and belonging. The gentle reworking and added touches have made “The Cotton Club Encore” a film in a filmmaker’s oeuvre a significant work worth seeking out and studying. Both for its cautionary tale of production and for its entry in a body of work by a major American auteur making films well into his 80s.
Unlike his contemporaries, like Lucas, Spielberg, or Scorsese, Coppola often eschewed lingering on any one specific subject within his filmmaking. Instead often seeking out a more omnivorous and pioneering storytelling approach and exploration through the medium. Often the story itself serves as more a kernel for his more techno-geek obsession and life theater passion to thrive unfettered. Never one to stagnate on a subject Coppola’s rather more distinct defining characteristic is his mercurial tenacity to attain and hold total creative control over his films while pushing for innovative methods and filmmaking techniques. Even with the hired hand films he often found himself taking to stave off financial ruin, Coppola often attacked the making of the film with the same wild man curiosity of innovating the form as he did in his early groundbreaking films like “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now”. “Cotton Club Encore” is imbued with this spirit and is in my estimation saved by that artistic tenacity in spite of so many near-fatal missteps taken in bringing the film to life. It is this restless and tenacious spirit Coppola has since re-ignited in his elder-statesman phase of his career where he can revisit and tinker with his films - that along with a pretty significant rights ownership clause in all his work since Apocalypse Now that has allowed him to (mostly) retain ownership of his films, in just the last decade he’s released re-edited versions of The Godfather part Three, now renamed The Godfather Coda - so as to distance it from the dismissive nature around its initial release, as well as recuts of Apocalypse now. Giving some newfound love and consideration to “The Cotton Club” he has both the distance of time from the wounds of production as well as the wise clarity to see a better film from the mired history of its making. Despite its troubled production history, "Cotton Club Encore" emerges as a triumph of resilience and artistic vision. Coppola's decision to revisit and refine his work reflects a desire to honor the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and the cultural significance of the Cotton Club itself. In doing so, he elevates the film from a forgotten relic to a timeless exploration of race, power, and the pursuit of dreams. It is often only with time that a film can truly be judged on its own creative statement and merit. Films are often judged both in the time they’re released and eventually in the time they are discovered and viewed in renewed curiosity detached from the period or controversy that may have dulled a film’s luster unnecessarily. Francis Ford Coppola's reworking of "The Cotton Club" stands as a testament to the enduring power of a bit of artistic temerity and the power of cinema. Through meticulous craftsmanship and a commitment to storytelling, Coppola invites audiences to rediscover the magic of 1930s Harlem and the indelible imprint of the Cotton Club on American culture. As the curtains close on this cinematic journey, one thing remains clear: sometimes, the greatest discoveries lie hidden in plain sight
, waiting to be unearthed and celebrated for generations to come. “The Cotton Club Encore” is available on Blu-ray through most retailers, as well as free to watch on numerous streaming platforms.
Endnotes and References
+ pg 327, “The Kid Stays In The Picture”, Robert Evans
* pg 339 Tap dancing through minefields, Michael Schumacher, ”Francis Ford Coppola - A filmmaker's Life”
** pg 336 Tap dancing through minefields, Michael Schumacher, ”Francis Ford Coppola - A filmmaker's Life”
*** pg 342, Tap Dancing through minefields, Michael Schumacher, ”Francis Ford Coppola - A filmmaker's Life”
