87) Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater, Nina Siemaszko, Dean Goodman, Lloyd Bridges

I'm currently working on a thesis chapter relating to Francis Ford Coppola and one of the films which I think will be quite important to that chapter is a film he made for George Lucas's production company called Tucker: The Man and His Dream. I saw it for the first time last year on a ratty old VHS copy in the university library, but have since managed to get my own copy on DVD so wanted to give it another look.

In the late 1940s, American designer, entrepreneur and huckster Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges) had an idea for a car which would revolutionise the automotive industry. The Tucker Torpedo included safety innovations like seat belts, a pop-out windscreen, shatter-proof glass windows, disc brakes, a third headlight that would turn with the front wheels, as well as fuel injection and a rear engine. Without the funds to start production, Tucker and his business partner Abe Karatz (Landau) set about selling stocks in the company and sales contracts, while failing to let anyone know that there were actually no Tucker Torpedoes in existence. Soon they gather up enough money to construct a prototype from parts found in a junkyard. From the prototype they get the go ahead to start construction. But while Tucker is touring the country promoting the car, the new CEO of the Tucker Corporation, Bennington (Goodman) and his team one by one start to strip away Tucker's innovations until the product hardly resembles his design. Meanwhile, the big automotive companies from Detroit start to worry that it would cost them millions to catch up with Tucker's innovations, so use their clout to organise an SEC enquiry to shed light on Tucker's questionable business methods. Tucker must then fight not only to keep himself out of prison, but to save his car, his company, his integrity and his dream.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is likely not as familiar to you as some of Coppola's other films. In the 1980s Coppola did not have quite the same level of clout he enjoyed in Hollywood in the 1970s. After a decade in which he directed four films (The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now), with all getting at least a nomination for Best Picture he was riding high. In 1980 he used the money he had made from Apocalypse Now to purchase the old Hollywood General studio lot and turn his production company, American Zoetrope, into a fully fledged studio. The problem was that he didn't quite have the operating capitol required to run a studio, so the survival of Zoetrope Studios depended on the immediate success of his next project. That next project, a film called One From the Heart, was a massive flop. Within a couple of years Zoetrope Studios was forced to shut down and Coppola spent the rest of the 1980s and 1990s working as a gun for hire in order to pay off his debtors. Occasionally he would get up a film which was a more personal project, like Tucker, but even then he did not have the clout to convince a major studio to finance a big production. Thus the films that Coppola made after 1980 lack a lot of the prestige that is associated with his work from the 1970s. But that doesn't mean that none of them are good, and it also doesn't mean that none of them are interesting.

Probably the most interesting thing about this film are the obvious parallels between the lives of Preston Tucker and Francis Coppola. Considering when the film was released and the events of the previous few years, it was not lost of many critics that Tucker: The Man and His Dream could be read as pretty much an autobiographical film. Both Tucker and Coppola were dreamers who had ideas they thought would revolutionise a very powerful industry, but both were squashed by the big companies before they could really make an impact. For Tucker it was advanced safety features. For Coppola it was video and digital technology. And while Detroit was able to squash the Tucker Corporation and Hollywood was able to squash Zoetrope Studios, in both cases the innovations that were being worked on found their way into mainstream use.

When you know a bit about Coppola and Zoetrope and the context that this film came out of it can be quite an interesting film. However, if you take all that extra information away the film is nice enough, without blowing you away at any point. It has a really sugar-coated, positive, light and shiny feel to it, which Coppola attributed to the influence of George Lucas. Lucas was determined that Coppola should make it an upbeat and uplifting, family friendly film. With that being the case Tucker: The Man and His Dream fails to be all that hard hitting as a biography. We get no real insight into the who Preston Tucker is and what makes him tick and as a result the weakness of this film ends up being the character of Tucker. This means that the fact that it is a true story seems largely irrelevant. Rather than shedding any light on the story it merely recounts it like a fable about power, success and failure.

Here's a little piece of trivia for you. As you learn in the film, only 50 Tucker Torpedoes were ever constructed back in 1948. When Tucker: The Man and His Dream was in production, 46 of those cars were still in existence, many of them still roadworthy. Coppola managed to commandeer 21 of those 46 to appear in the film's final scene. Pretty decent effort.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a really nice movie. It's the kind of sweet, uplifting, sugar-coated fare that is perfect for a Saturday afternoon TV movie. But as far as a biography goes, we get a lot more of the dream and a lot less of the man. While it is apparent that Coppola has a great deal of affection for the figure of Preston Tucker, when you consider some of his other films, it feels pretty uninspired. While I wouldn't say that Coppola was just going through the motions here, it seems apparent that he had lost some of the self-confidence he possessed in the seventies and therefore didn't try and push the envelope.