\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI may hold the world\u2019s record for the person who has made the most documentaries about their family directing films,\u201d she said. Her career, she wrote in \u201cNotes on a Life,\u201d a 2008 book, reflected that \u201cI am an observer at heart, who has the impulse to record what I see around me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late in life, Ms. Coppola tried her hand at directing cinematic fiction, with decidedly mixed results. Her \u201cParis Can Wait,\u201d released in 2017 when she was 81, was dismissed by Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times<\/a> as \u201clittle more than an indulgent wallow in gustatory privilege.\u201d While Ms. Coppola\u2019s \u201cLove Is Love Is Love\u201d fared better in 2021, a Times reviewer<\/a>, Teo Bugbee, nonetheless said that \u201cthe movie doesn\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n A source of enduring heartache for Ms. Coppola was the death of her son Gian-Carlo Coppola in 1986 at 22, the oldest of her three children. He was in a speedboat steered by Griffin O\u2019Neal, a son of the actor Ryan O\u2019Neal, who tried to maneuver between two slow-moving crafts that turned out to be connected by a tow line. Gio, as the Coppola son was called, was knocked back by the tow line with such force that he died instantly. (Mr. O\u2019Neal, convicted of negligence<\/a>, was given a 30-day suspended sentence.)<\/p>\n The son\u2019s death filled Ms. Coppola with \u201cunspeakable rage,\u201d she said. She channeled her grief into an art installation called \u201cCircle of Memory,\u201d which over the years has had several stagings. It consists of a chamber whose walls are straw bales, with salt falling in a stream and children\u2019s voices reciting the alphabet. Visitors are invited to recall children who had died or disappeared.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like there\u2019s a circle of order going on in the universe and a circle of chaos,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd every once in a while, they intersect.\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor Jessie Neil was born in Los Angeles on May 4, 1936, one of three children of Clifford and Delphine (Lougheed) Neil. Her father was a political cartoonist who died when Eleanor was 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n