There are basically three reasons people auction off their prized possessions: death, divorce and debt.
The last of these was the reason Francis Ford Coppola was speaking on Friday morning over Zoom.
“I need to get some money to keep the ship afloat,” he said from Rome, while describing the seven timepieces he would be offering for sale on Dec. 6 through Phillips, a leading auction site in the worlds of art, antiques and, especially, watches.
Losing great gobs of money can almost be seen as a Coppola family sport.
In 1982, Mr. Coppola, best known for directing “The Godfather” trilogy, made a costly whopper of a movie musical called “One From the Heart.”
As with many of his passion projects, he put up much of the financing for it himself.
Over the next decade, its failure led to a string of bankruptcies. In 1992, he described himself in a Chapter 11 filing as owing $98 million to his creditors and as having assets of around $53 million.
He re-emerged, kept making movies and became something of a collector. In addition to buying a small trove of Patek Philippes and Audemars Piguets — coveted among watch connoisseurs — he plunked his name on fancy resorts and became the prototype for A-list Hollywood talent in the liquor business by amassing Northern California wineries and bottling the booze.
Then, in September 2024, Mr. Coppola’s latest film, “Megalopolis,” came out.
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