1988 Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1945. Engineer Preston Tucker dreams of designing the car of future, but his innovative envision will be repeatedly sabotaged by his own unrealistic expectations and the Detroit automobile industry tycoons.
Jeff Bridges Joan Allen Martin Landau Frederic Forrest Mako Dean Stockwell Christian Slater Nina Siemaszko Marshall Bell Peter Donat Elias Koteas Jay O. Sanders Corin Nemec Don Novello Anders Johnson Dean Goodman John X. Heart Patti Austin Sandy Bull Joe Miksak Scott Beach Roland Scrivner Bob Safford Larry Menkin Ron Close Joe Flood Leonard Gardner Bill Bonham Abigail van Alyn Show All…
Tucker - Ein Mann und sein Traum, Tucker - En mand og hans drøm, Tucker: Omul şi visul său, Tucker - En man och hans dröm, Tucker ve Rüyasi, Takerio svajonė, Tucker - Mies ja unelma, Tucker: Un hombre y su sueño, Tucker - Um Homem e seu Sonho
Tucker's car is basically his One From the Heart so yeah I get why Francis wanted to make this
A Freudian nightmare about a genuinely optimistic person. Good luck with your dreams, unless they intersect with the controlling interests of powerful assholes.
The Coppola films of the ‘80s are about how difficult but worthwhile it was to make films in the ‘70s, while the Coppola films of the ‘90s are about how nice it could be to live on an estate winery in the 2000s. What a lord.
There should be a museum dedicated to Vittorio Storaro. I would visit.
Not just a freewheeling non-musical musical but, as is common with FFC's '80s work, gently keyed in to the darker side of the time period it rhapsodizes. The recurring bits that acknowledge Tucker's hiring of a Japanese-American worker have a bit of Fulleresuqe bluntness to them when Tucker flies into defensive monologues in the face of whispers over internment, adding a dimension to the film and protagonist that could eaily have been missed.
Not an especially comprehensive biopic, and not really an exciting business story either. (I knew nothing about Preston Tucker, and I basically knew how the film would end before I watched a single frame.) Tucker: The Man and His Dream pretty much only works as allegory; as Francis Ford Coppola, the iconoclast who dreamed of making things his way outside the established system, telling his own story through Preston Tucker, who suffered much the same fate as Coppola in the world of automobiles. But it’s a damn good allegory. And it’s amazing how much sadder Tucker is simply because Tucker (at least as played by Jeff Bridges) was such a happy person.
Steven Soderbergh called Tucker: The Man and His Dream “a parade of boner-inducing images.” Loath though I am to think of his erect cock, the man is right.
Francis Ford Coppola's relentless upbeat movie about how the idea of American free enterprise is a sham. Storaro's images are as unreal as anything on his 80s very artificial work, the rhythm suggests a musical cut short and the movie is pitched in an absurd tone with the very high energy is matched by the cloudy crushing paranoia behind them. A movie that exists in the images of advertised ideology that understand how much of that is just selling an idea more than the real thing but can't fully shake the mirage. It is obviously very thinly autobiographical movie about his American Zeotrope experiences although it is worth pointing out that his interest in a Preston Tucker biography date to…
not to state the obvious, but...
coppola is a fucking genius.
the fact that this hasn't had a major revaluation is a cultural crime of the highest order
The first thing I thought while viewing this pleasing little biopic: a blue collar version of The Aviator. I felt completely validated when Dean Stockwell showed up as Howard Hughes. The second thing I thought was that this is a film about Francis Ford Coppola. It’s about Tucker yes, but it’s just as much about Coppola’s frustrations as an artist in the film business. The failure of One from the Heart broke his heart, and Tucker’s fifty cars represent that.
I don’t mean to bore you with these college thesis style descriptions, all I’m trying to say is that 80s Coppola truly deserves to be considered underrated. Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a nostalgia fueled, patriotic blue collar film that’ll leave…
Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a loving ode to the American build-it mentality that created immense prosperity post-WWII, but also created a wall to not let new competition enter the fold once prosperity had been consolidated to “enough companies.” Tucker (Jeff Bridges) designed cars that should have been allowed to compete with the Big Three (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) but their bigness gave way to big corporate protections within the very halls of government. Think of the last two big bailouts this century and how many potential Tuckers and their dreams have gone unrealized because the U.S. government favors the establishment. Too Big to Fail first set its teeth in America post-FDR.
Francis Ford Coppola's automotive epic…
Car Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
I don't know anything about the real Preston Tucker or his case but as a fictional emblem of good sense and innovation being crushed by big business he's ideal, played by Jeff Bridges with a perfect balance of charisma and neurotic genius. The autobiographical implications for both Coppola and Lucas are so obvious that they aren't even really subtext, but it's interesting to note that they both (Lucas especially) did what Tucker never did and essentially joined em after failing to beat em, which might be why this seems to have such a strange, distant urgency humming all the way under it. An amazing visual style that I can only describe as clean as hell, this movie looks as sexy as the Tucker automobiles did, and check out Dean Stockwell's one scene wonder as Howard Hughes!
This movie appeared on John Waters' list of top 10 underrated films. I was pretty into it in my early 20's. Tucker's Jimmy Stewart-like optimism and tenacity was endearing. Everything is so shiny and Rockwell-Esque. While it's certainly a great technical achievement it's a little too squeaky clean for my taste today. But it borders on self-parody, which is why I think Waters took to it. Maybe it is a little underrated but it's still a Coppola film. I always feel a little cold after watching Peggy Sue Got Married, and I get it a little bit of that from watching this too. Some kind of detachment and an "I don't care" sensation. Maybe I'm just getting tired of men and their dreams.
