“When I finished directing Apocalypse Now I felt the same about the jungle. So I bought my first hotel.”
It was a Sunday afternoon and I’d just been watching a 70-something owner of two hotels in Belize, one in Guatemala and one in Argentina, explain the reasons why he got into the business.
Even the slightest of film buffs will know I’d been listening to the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, who was in London to talk about his most recent hotel, Palazzo Margherita (pictured above) in the Basilicata region of southern Italy.
One suspects that many of the anecdotes he regaled me with when I met him in a remarkable £19 million penthouse close to London’s South Bank had been told many times before. But what does that matter? This was the Oscar-winning director of The Godfather!
“Running a hotel is very similar to directing a movie… the guests are our audience and the staff are our actors”
“Running a hotel is very similar to directing a movie… the guests are our audience and the staff are our actors, with each wearing a different costume.”
Francis’s passion for the properties was evident, although tourists hoping to see him or wife Eleanor at the hotels will be disappointed, with the director admitting he visits them usually just once a year.
His influence is real, however, and his tastes and views have clearly coloured every corner of the “court of Coppola”.
The Basilicata region has its own movie traditions - being close to Castellaneta, where the silent film star Rudolph Valentino was born. Nearby is Matera, the Unesco World Heritage Site where people still live in homes fashioned out of caves (or “sassi”), and where Mel Gibson filmed The Passion of the Christ in 2003.
Otherwise this part of Italy is well known for not being overrun with tourists. The room rates at the Palazzo Margherita are not likely to change that - although the intimate, nine-room resort is well worth its place on the luxury hotel trail.
From his first hotel, Blancaneaux Lodge in Belize, to the Palazzo Margherita, my encounter with Coppola left me with no doubt that his remarkable properties have been fashioned with every inch of the same independence that he brought to his career as a filmmaker.
