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Eleanor Coppola, matriarch of a filmmaking family, dies at 87

Eleanor Coppola, who documented the making of some of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic films, including the infamously tortured production of “Apocalypse Now,” and who raised a family of filmmakers, has died.

Eleanor, who grew up in Orange County, California, met Francis while working as an assistant art director on his directorial debut, the Roger Corman-produced 1963 horror film “Dementia 13.” (She had studied design at UCLA.) Eleanor documented much of the chaos in what would become one of the most famous making-of films about moviemaking, 1991’s “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.” In 2016, at the age of 80, Eleanor made her narrative debut in “Paris Can Wait,” a romantic comedy starring Diane Lane.

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