Francis Ford Coppola: Our generation represented a major transition. It was the first time certainly that film students were given the chance to make films. Film, in the past, was a profession that you worked your way up. Frank Capra was a prop man; I think John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up. When we all went to film school, my class, and my comrades there, we didn’t think we were ever going to really get to make feature films. We thought we would end up making industrial films, or possibly be on the fringe, or maybe get involved in television. My aspirations when I went — I had no idea. I just wanted to be part of the film business. I had no idea that I’d really get to direct feature films, or to be successful at it. And of course, my story is that when I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That’s what I was famous for, was that I was not only the first film student to kind of become a professional director, but I also had my thesis film be a feature film, which was You’re a Big Boy Now.