(A Different Kind of) Apocalypse Now?

By Steven Zeitchik

Directors may be in a mood to compromise with producers over labor issues, but don't tell Francis Ford Coppola.

The iconic writer-director is unrepentant in his support of the WGA, even seeing a Corleone-esque logic in the AMPTP's current position.

"The struggle going on is about a dirty little secret that no one will really talk about," Coppola told Risky Biz. "In the old days when a movie just had a record (soundtrack) it was considered ancillary rights, and it was agreed that the studio would take 20% and put it in the pot, and the other 80% would remain with the studio. But now ancillary rights include the DVD and the Internet and everything else, and the truth of the matter is it's no longer ancillary rights--it's the profits of the movie."

Later this month Coppola will release his first movie in a decade--the abstract and ambitious "Youth Without Youth," which he financed through his American Zoetrope banner--and he harbors no affection for a system he says exploits writers.

"The studios want to remove the 80% (from the pot) that they are using to cushion the studio system," he said. "They couldn't pay those executives the bonuses or run the type of wasteful operations they do unless they were stealing 80% of the real wealth of the film. That's what the writers strike is really about."

So much for that invite to Nick Counter's Christmas dinner.