FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA - COPPOLA: 'YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH IS NOT A COMEBACK'

Veteran director FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA has dismissed talk his new movie YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH is a 'comeback', even though it's his first film in 10 years. Youth Without Youth, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival in Italy over the weekend (20/21Oct07), is Coppola's first movie as director since 1997's The Rainmaker. But Coppola insists he always planned to make more films. He says, "I never went anywhere. A comeback is, like, when a fighter stops fighting and then goes and says I'm retiring and then makes a comeback. Who is to say what a film director's schedule has to be? "I didn't really ever stop making movies; I think that moviemaking is a stop-and-start process. If you then start to write a project that takes a long time or if you are ultimately having difficulty achieving what you were trying to do... things could prolong."