Sam Wasson, a gifted cultural historian who has already chronicled the birth of improv comedy and the tangled backstory of the modern noir classic CHINATOWN, is given complete access to Francis Ford Coppola's archives, to the man himself, and to many of his colleagues. And he does not squander this golden opportunity.

THE PATH TO PARADISE picks a single thread of Coppola's protean career: his lifelong quest to forge his ideal creative environment, a living, breathing, collaborative utopia that he christened Zoetrope. In Coppola’s vision, it “would be an oasis, a paradise of self-discovery and celebration wide open to everyone … La Bohème for the planet.” It never quite came together, but that it almost did—more than once—is itself a miracle.

This focus allows Wasson to touch on the totality of Coppola’s life and art. It produces valuable insight into the films of friends and contemporaries like George Lucas and even daughter Sofia, her worldview shaped by essentially growing up the princess of an enchanted kingdom. It illuminates the idiosyncratic work methods of the man who called THE GODFATHER “the most expensive home movie in history.”

What resonates is how much of a visionary Coppola was. His problem was that he was too early. Decades ago he talked of “exploiting a single property across all media,” with magazine articles yielding proto-podcasts and stage productions before going in front of movie or TV cameras. Exactly what corporations are doing now, but without the love. He told anyone who would listen in the 1980s that the coming digital revolution would transform filmmaking entirely. His prophecy was destined to come only partly true. We got what Coppola wanted, but not how he wanted it. He imagined a world where advances in hardware would allow filmmakers to be nimble and tell highly personal stories—as Coppola himself is attempting to do now with his upcoming film MEGALOPOLIS, touched on in the book's conclusion—but we ended up with TikTok instead.

In Wasson's hands, Coppola's thwarted efforts to create paradise is an inspiring story. As Gary Fettis, the set decorator on APOCALYPSE NOW, said, “All that is good in life … is what Zoetrope was.” By the end of this galvanizing book, you believe him.