Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a deceptively shallow movie. Largely thanks to the participation of George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola made a Disney-fied version of the Tucker Preston story, replete with an ideal Midwest family, overflowing music and color, and a happy ending. But scratch the surface of the film's complex backstory just a bit and you'll realized that Tucker is part of a riveting story about the evolution of Hollywood as a film industry, from the golden days through the blockbuster era.
Take the film's nostalgic bent. Perhaps the strangest thing about Tucker is that it feels like a movie from another era altogether. It's been pasteurized of all risque content just like a Code-era Hollywood film, and given a spit shine with bright-eyed, one-dimensional characters and a soundtrack that just about never stops. In these ways, Tucker is reminiscent of a screen musical from classical Hollywood days, fitting as Coppola originally conceived of this film as a musical. It also harkens back to the work of Frank Capra, whose bread and butter was the American morality tale about the triumph of virtue and the power of the American Dream.
Coppola had a streak of films in the 1980s which left critics cold, and Tucker: The Man and His Dream is barely an exception. Frankly, this makes sense. Coppola made his name on gritty, ambitious films that exposed the dark underbelly of their subjects. Consider his most famous run in the 1970s, which saw him making The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). These were the work of a daring genius and master of the film form, and they were regarded as such by both the critical establishment and filmgoers at large. They're considered classics.
On the basis of these films, Coppola stands as one of the figureheads of the New Hollywood movement. "New Hollywood" refers to a period in American filmmaking when the major production houses were willing to take risks in the name of putting out innovative, challenging, and, most importantly, high-quality film. It marks a departure from the "Code era" of Hollywood, when the major production companies enacted a strict self-censoring regimen to keep films family-friendly. Generally considered to be spurred by the success of The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 (and, shortly after, Easy Rider in 1969), this period saw some of the greatest American films ever made, and launched the careers of several people considered to be America's best filmmakers, including Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Terrence Malick, George Lucas, and many many more.
The period is generally considered as ending with the release of Hollywood's first real blockbuster movie: 1975's Jaws. The release and smash success of Star Wars in 1977 would put the final nail in the coffin of New Hollywood, as the execs realized that it was a lot more profitable throwing all of their money into big spectacles than it was funding difficult art films, no matter how good or important they may be.
This shift would see the beginning of Francis Ford Coppola's troubles as a filmmaker. Right around this time, he had the misfortune of launching American Zoetrope, and ambitious independent production company dedicated to producing films by some of the great foreign directors of the time (such as Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, and Wim Wenders) as well as Coppola's own productions. Coppola, much like Preston Tucker with his car, aimed to use the company to take on the major studios and change the face of Hollywood for good. He likely would have never succeeded at that project, but what ensued would not only destroy his production company, but also his reputation as a filmmaker and his personal finances.
Coppola conceived of a magnum opus musical called One From the Heart. It was his first project after Apocalypse Now, a film which led him to a nervous breakdown while shooting. One From the Heart would do him no better, as it went so dramatically over-budget that he had to bring in the help of Paramount. That company ultimately had a hand in undermining its box office success, and Coppola's production company went belly-up as he had to declare bankruptcy protection three times over. All Coppola managed to save, really, were a few real estate investments and his winery, which is now quite successful.
Coppola's fate in the post-New Hollywood era of the 1980s would mirror that of many of the finest directors he called his peers. Like Robert Altman, he'd develop a reputation as being difficult to work with, and like Michael Cimino, he was known to make over-ambitious films which failed to connect with audiences.
So when George Lucas agreed to produce Tucker, Coppola was desperate for a success, and gladly took Lucas's suggestions to ultimately Disney-fy the movie. Of course, this is something of an irony in and of itself, as Paramount—the company that ruined One From the Heart and ultimately Coppola himself — saw a mass defection of all of its power plays to Disney, with chief executive Michael Eisner leading the pack. George Lucas and Disney alike would go on to lead the charge of producing the kind of family-friendly fare that would make Hollywood money it had never really seen before.
Coppola took advantage of the opportunity and ultimately made a nice film that did relatively well with the critics and fine at the box office. It was no hit, but it wasn't a total flop either. Regardless, Coppola got to make a film about a dreamer who took on the system, only to be destroyed by it. But that didn't matter, since the dreamer got to make his dream come true nonetheless. Does this sound like the story of Preston Tucker or Francis Ford Coppola?
