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Fred Roos, the Oscar-winning The Godfather Part II producer and longtime executive producer for Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola, died Saturday at age 89, four days shy of his 90th birthday.
The news about Roos, who won his Godfather Part II Oscar and was later nominated for Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, comes as Francis Ford Coppola is here at the Cannes Film Festival, 45 years after winning the Palme d’Or for Apocalypse. Coppola is in town with his $120 million passion project Megalopolis, which had its world premiere last week. Roos is billed as EP on Megalopolis.
The news also comes after Coppola’s wife of 61 years, Eleanor, died April 12. Roos was an executive producer on Eleanor’s Hearts of Darkness, her famed documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now that won them both an Emmy in 1992.
Roos was Francis Coppola’s co-producer on The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, and a producer on One From the Heart, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, The Godfather Part III, Youth Without Youth and Tetro.
He also executive produced Sofia Coppola’s films including The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, The Bling Ring, The Beguiled, On the Rocks and her latest, last year’s Priscilla.
The silver-haired Roos, in addition to being a consigliere to the Coppolas on the set, was also renowned for his “shrewd eye (that) helped pick the leads for films like American Graffiti, The Godfather and Star Wars,” wrote Deadline’s Peter Bart, who was the VP of Production at Paramount when Coppola made The Godfather.
Roos began his career in TV as a casting director in the late 1960s for shows such as Gomer Pyle: USMC, I Spy, The Andy Griffith Show and That Girl. He moved into movie casting with early credits including Monte Hellman’s Flight to Fury, Two-Lane Blacktop and Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces before taking on The Godfather.
When Roos was casting Lucas’ 1973 teenage pic American Graffiti, he and fellow casting director Mike Fenton saw between 100 to 150 actors a day, assembling what has been known as a seminal ensemble that included Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus, Cindy Williams, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark and Mackenzie Phillips.
But there was one standout discovery on that pic, and that was Harrison Ford in the role of drag racer Bob Falfa. Roos knew Ford from his time as a carpenter at Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios. After American Graffiti, Roos convinced Coppola to give Ford cameos in 1974’s Conversation and 1979’s Apocalypse Now. However, in between those two, there came another feature for Ford, when Roos championed the actor for Lucas’ Star Wars.
“I was, from the get-go, pushing him for Han Solo,” Roos told EW back in May 2016. “‘George, you saw him right under your nose in American Graffiti,’ and finally it clicked with George. Other people were considered, but finally I won the day with George on that one.”
“Fred is a very loyal man,” Ford once told Bart. “Once he believes in you, he is unrelenting. He kept putting me up for parts and I kept getting rejected. Finally things worked out.”
Another discovery of Roos was Phillips, who he caught at an open mic band night at the Troubadour. “The casting director Fred Roos happened to be there that night and he approached me and my mother after our set and asked if I’d like to be in a movie. And I said, ‘Yeah, man, that would be totally cool.’ I was 12 and had no acting experience,” Phillips told the LA Times.
The Godfather repped Roos’ first teaming with Coppola in which he was involved in casting. One of Roos’ myriad early actor discoveries was John Cazale, who would play the dim older brother Fredo to Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone. Roos first caught Cazale in an Off Broadway show starring Richard Dreyfuss. Roos was there to see Dreyfuss for The Godfather, but it was Cazale who was the takeaway from that performance.
It was Roos as a producer on 1979’s Apocalypse Now who helped keep the audacious $30M production intact amid typhoons, Marlon Brando’s ego, Harvey Keitel’s firing after a week and replacement by Martin Sheet; the latter’s heart attack, etc. punctuated by John Milius script which had an unresolved ending. Roos in Robert Koehler’s oral history on the film chose to shoot the movie in the Philippines over Australia as the latter continent required 100% locals casting which wasn’t feasible. In addition the producer had contacts on the ground having shot there. When it came to shoot on military bases, the production had to shoot at the country’s sites as the U.S. military declined any clearance for Apocalypse Now to shoot on their bases. This entailed talks with Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ administration.
Roos told Koehler, “while Martin (Sheen’s) heart attack (in late March ’77) was a terrifying moment for all of us, Francis having to take a time-out from filming to recover his psychological equilibrium — and that’s what it was — was one of the most sobering moments during the entire shoot.”
Apocalypse Now went on to gross close to $105M worldwide at the box office, win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and saw eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and two wins for Sound and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography.
Roos’ first credit as producer was the 1964 Monte Hellman-directed, Jack Nicholson-starring movie Flight to Fury which he also shared a story by credit on with the filmmaker. He reunited with the duo on the WWII-set Back Door to Hell and again which on Cordillera, which Hellman co-directed and Nicholson co-wrote. Reportedly, Nicholas once nicknamed Roos “The Rooster”.
Roos was born on May 22, 1934, in Santa Monica, California, the son of Florence Mary (née Stout) and Victor Otto Roos. He was an alum of Hollywood High School as well as the UCLA where he majored in theatre arts and motion pictures.
