A Man and His Bad Dreams: Coppola Turns a Nightmare Into a New Film

Just the memory of trying to get Marlon Brando to perform his lines in “Apocalypse Now” should be enough to provide Francis Ford Coppola with a lifetime of nightmares. But Mr. Coppola, the director whose films include “The Godfather” and “The Outsiders,” dreams of more universal terrors, and it was one such vision that inspired his coming film, “Twixt Now and Sunrise,” which he is currently shooting and plans to release next year.
In a statement Mr. Coppola discussed the origins of the movie, which stars Val Kilmer and which he said “seemed to have the imagery of Hawthorne or Poe.”
Mr. Coppola wrote that the new project “grew out of dream I had last year – more of a nightmare.” He continued:

But as I was having it I realized perhaps it was a gift, as I could make it as a story, perhaps a scary film, I thought even as I was dreaming. But then some loud noise outside woke me up, and I wanted to go back to the dream and get an ending. But I couldn’t fall back asleep so I recorded what I remembered right there and then on my phone. I realized that it was a gothic romance setting, so in fact I’d be able to do it all around my home base, rather than have to go to a distant country.

Mr. Coppola said he then wrote “Twixt Now and Sunrise” as a short story (“something I always do as a first step,” he said) before turning it into a screenplay.
The film’s cast will also feature Elle Fanning – an actress seen in a coming film by his daughter, Sofia, “Somewhere” – as a young ghost named V, and Joanne Whalley, who is Mr. Kilmer’s ex-wife, playing an unspecified role. (Mr. Coppola wrote that Ms. Whalley “was suggested by Val.”) Other actors will include Bruce Dern, Ben Chaplin, Don Novello, David Paymer and Alden Erenreich, a star of Mr. Coppola’s 2009 film, “Tetro.”
Mr. Coppola said production for the film, which he financing and is budgeted at under $7 million, would take place in Napa County and Lake County, Calif., as well as on his own estate in Napa Valley, and would last about five weeks. The director said he would use the same minimal mobile film unit he has designed for previous features like “Tetro” and “Youth Without Youth.”
No distributor for the film was immediately announced, but Mr. Coppola wrote that its “gothic romance/horror subject matter may make it good for this time next year.”