The Path to Paradise

A Francis Ford Coppola Story

De: Sam Wasson

Narrado por: Timothy Andrés Pabon

“Sam Wasson’s supremely entertaining book tracks the ups and downs, ins and outs, of a remarkable career. . . . A marvel of unshowy reportage.”—New York Times

The New York Times bestselling author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. and The Big Goodbye returns with the definitive account of Academy Award–winning director Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long dream to reinvent American filmmaking, if not the entire world, through his production company, American Zoetrope.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in San Francisco years before his gargantuan success, when he was only thirty. Through Zoetrope’s experimental, communal utopia, Coppola attempted to reimagine the entire pursuit of moviemaking. Now, more than fifty years later, despite myriad setbacks, the visionary filmmaker’s dream persists, most notably in the production of his decades-in-the-making film and the culmination of his utopian ideals, Megalopolis.

As Wasson makes clear, the story of Zoetrope is also the story of Coppola’s wife, Eleanor Coppola, and their children, and of personal lives inseparable from artistic passion. It is a story that charts the divergent paths of Coppola and his cofounder and onetime apprentice, George Lucas, and of their very different visions of art and commerce. And it is a story inextricably bound up in the making of one of the greatest quixotic masterpieces ever attempted, Apocalypse Now, and in what Coppola found in the jungles of the Philippines when he walked the razor’s edge. That story, already the stuff of legend, has never fully been told, until this extraordinary book.

©2023 Sam Wasson (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Coppola’s relationship with Lucas and Eleanor’s intelligence and devotion

The authors style was jerky and impersonal. The dashing about through time and place and project was unnecessarily taxing to a listener. I came away feeling more distant from the characters than when I starred. I was glad when the book was over.

Narrator Distracted from the Story

One day, audio narrators' performances may be competently edited, but until then we are stuck with voices that mispronounce so many common names that the listener can be pulled right out of the narrative into frustration. I feel sorry for authors who have much of their work mangled by unsupervised narrators.

Narrator was awful

Sam Wasson gets too caught up in the mystical connection between Coppola's work and character growth, or regression, depending on your point-of-view. Fact is, he became a megalomaniac who shot himself in the foot repeatedly. And it seems he's doing it again... Allowing 12-year-olds to direct actors on set of a $35M movie?! Directing from his trailer, not on-set with cast and crew? It's clear he lost focus, became consumed and charmed by technology instead of what really matters....Wasson conveys this but is so over-enamored with Coppola's B.S. about "the future" he missed that this is the reason his movies got bad, bad, bad....

I agree with critics of the narrator. He mispronounced 90% of the names. How does a person pronounce the name Marcia as 'Marsee-ah" how is that possible? Or instead of saying Warner Brothers he says Warner Bros as in "hey, bro!" Continual mispronounced words and names. It takes you out of the passages.

Does anyone oversee these recordings? We're paying a lot for this, and get readings by ninth graders?!

Enjoyed immensely

It is not everyday you can listen to a book that reaffirms our own path in life. Coppola's zest for life is contagious and anyone with the desire to create should read about his life and passions. You will soon realize we only live once so we must make the most of it.

Narrator sucks shit

Can’t pronounce words. Doesn’t care about the story. Absolutely bananas when Sam Wasson narrated his other books so adeptly.

A feast of a book

Wasson’s latest deep dive into the life of a filmmaker is fantastic. Coppola, who never comes across as petty or tyrannical or mean, is an artist and a survivor. Hoorah. One quibble: It’s not Warner BROS; it’s Warner Brothers.

Narrator was superb

Narrator was superb. Great story and great listen. Enjoyed the narration very much. I highly recommend it.

Is there a copy editor for Audible Books

As much as I love listening to books on Audible (for over ten years and 300 titles in my Library) of the continuing annoyance is when the reader/narrator mispronounces a word. This was particularly egregious by the reader, Timothy Andres Pabon, of The Path to Paradise. Here are a couple of his errors: Marin (accent should be on the second syllable), Cimino (the "Ci" should be pronounced as the Italian "chi" not "si"), tromp l'oeil (cannot recall how he read it but it wasn't close to the French), and finally and the most repeated and irritating of the errors, Warner Bros., which he over and over again pronounced as Warner bros (or broz) instead of saying Warner Brothers which is what Bros. stands for. I haven't had a chance to check the text of the book and indeed if Wasson wrote Warner Bros. as Warner Bros then Pabon is somewhat off the hook. But I have never ever heard the studio, Warner Brothers, referred to as Warner "Bros".

So who is looking out for the listener at Audible? I've had some books published (non-fiction), and the copy editors I worked with were amazing and totally helpful in correcting the errors. I assume someone in production should be in charge of this? If anyone at Audible reads this, I'd love to get a response.

Great book, weird narration.

This Tim Pabon guy has reportedly won awards for his narration work, but it is indeed weird, as many other reviews have mentioned. Enough strange mispronunciations here to make me think the guy was somehow using AI to do the reading for him. Warner Bros, Friederich Forrest, etc.

Great Book-Terrible Narration

This was a great profile on Francis Ford Coppola. I have read many books on him and I learned a lot of new material here.

The problem is the narrator has no idea how to pronounce most of the names associated with this. Sometimes pronouncing someone’s name differently in the same sentence, including the subject of the book. Really takes you out of it. Unfortunate.