Amid reports that the legendary American director had been hospitalised in Italy, Coppola released a statement reassuring fans.
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Following reports that Francis Ford Coppola had been admitted on Tuesday to the Policlinico Tor Vergata, a public hospital in Rome, the acclaimed American director has released an update on his health.
The director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now and his representative have released a statement revealing that Coppola underwent a non-emergency cardiac procedure in the Italian capital.
“Mr. Coppola went in for a scheduled update procedure” - performed by renowned Italian-born cardiologist Dr. Andrea Natale - and is “resting nicely.”
“There was not an emergency. He went to the hospital in a car. He had a scheduled appointment.”
Coppola, 86, has been a patient of Natale for more than 30 years, the representative added. “All is well.”
Coppola also posted a photograph of himself on Instagram, saying: “Da Dada (what my kids call me) is fine, taking an opportunity while in Rome to do the update of my 30-year-old afib procedure with its inventor, a great Italian doctor — Dr. Andrea Natale,” it said.
The term “a-fib” is short for atrial fibrillation, a type of abnormal heart rhythm.
Coppola was in Italy to promote his latest (and extremely polarising) movie Megalopolis, a $120 million self-funded production which premiered in Cannes last year. It had a special screening at the Magna Graecia Film Festival in Catanzaro.
In our (less than glowing) review of Megalopolis, we said: “It’s all a mad jumble of heteroclitic strands that defy basic storytelling and dramatic coherence. Think Cloud Atlas by way of Southland Tales. And even that sounds better than Megalopolis actually is. (...) While this futurist fantasy sounds so insane it could border on genius, don’t delude yourselves into thinking that Megalopolis is one of those ahead-of-its-time / bless-this-mess future classics made by a filmmaker with nothing left to lose. Just because the veteran director behind such classics as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation decides to deliver his go-for-broke magnum opus, doesn’t make it any less of an indulgent folly that borders on nonsensical.”
Still, we’re glad he’s well.
