CALM AFTER THE STORM; WITH `RAINMAKER,' COPPOLA FINDS RENEWED CONTENTMENT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Calm, rational, almost jolly. Who is this person and what has he done with the real Francis Ford Coppola?

If you've read much on Coppola in the past, you know he has a penchant for mad enthusiasms and suicidal risks.

This is the guy who turned the Philippine location of his hallucinatory Vietnam War epic ``Apocalypse Now'' into something of a war zone itself; who gambled the fortune from his ``Godfather'' films on the before-its-time, high-tech musical ``One From the Heart'' - and lost; who gambled the comeback success of 1990's ``The Godfather Part III'' on casting his daughter Sofia in the film - and barely broke even.

But now, after both professional and personal roller-coaster rides, outstanding successes and disheartening failures, Coppola seems content and in control. You can see it reflected in his latest movie, ``John Grisham's The Rainmaker,'' an expertly crafted piece of commercial filmmaking based on the best-selling author's umpteenth tale of an idealistic young lawyer.

But contentment and resignation are not the same thing. There's an agenda behind Coppola's seeming embrace of safe projects (his last film, the critically reviled cuddlefest ``Jack,'' was a decent moneymaker) that, while not on a par with his wild-eyed past, is nonetheless daring in today's costly, ever more bland corporate film business.

``I'm at the age where I want to kind of finish one phase of my life and begin a new one,'' says Coppola, looking gnomelike with graying beard and curling hair at 58. ``Part of that meant I would make a few studio pictures in a row, and any profits I could make out of that, I could use to fund my own future career as a more independent filmmaker.

``But obviously, each film has its own challenge and its own reasons for why you choose to make it,'' he adds. ``I've never done a film that I haven't felt I could learn something from or seemed like an interesting experiment to me. In the case of `The Rainmaker,' I just read the book and enjoyed it. I felt that it had wonderful characters, which of course meant that I could cast lots of interesting actors and focus on the acting.''

Coppola's troupe

The film's eclectic ensemble features hot young Hollywood flavor Matt Damon (writer and star of the upcoming ``Good Will Hunting'') as well-meaning law-school grad Rudy Baylor; Mickey Rourke and Danny DeVito as the sleazy Memphis attorneys who become his mentors in the skunky realities of practicing law; Jon Voight as Rudy's nemesis, a smooth corporate superlawyer for a huge insurance company; Claire Danes as a battered wife Rudy falls for; Teresa Wright, who won an Oscar in 1942, as Rudy's elderly-but-tough landlady; and many more casting coups large and small.

But even though ``Rainmaker'' concentrates on performance, Coppola was clearly drawn to other aspects of the project.

``I felt comfortable with `The Rainmaker' because, like `The Godfather,' it was a big best-selling book that had a kind of social theme to it,'' he says. ``It wasn't about a hit or a serial killer or whatever, the kinds of things that they offer guys like me. And I liked the fact that I knew nothing about this mangy world of the beginning lawyer, hanging out at hospitals trying to get clients; I thought that was very entertaining. So I was very grateful to have a job on a studio picture that I enjoyed working on.''

Not that Coppola ever really had a grudge against the show-biz establishment, at least according to him. Sure, he made ``Tucker,'' an obsessive film about a visionary auto designer whose innovations were squelched by Detroit's corporate giants - and many saw it as a metaphor for the artist's relationship to Hollywood. You can view scruffy Rudy's ``Rainmaker'' assault on Big Insurance the same way.

But like everything about Coppola, the reality is more complex than that.

``You know, Hollywood always loved me, and they never abandoned me,'' he says. ``You notice that, with all my peccadilloes and stuff, they're always there with an offer, and they've paid me very well. I haven't been squeezed out, I think, partly because I do deliver the picture on budget and on schedule.

``I've had final cut all my career,'' he continues, ``and I never once have tangled with them on it. They know I'm there to serve the movie; if we ever have a problem with a preview or something, I'm the first one in there trying to fix it. So, Hollywood has really looked out for me in a funny way.''

This does not mean that Coppola approves of everything that's done in the name of filmed entertainment these days.

Hollywood reality

``I've been tough on changes because I love the film business, and I hate to see that, more and more, there are fewer opportunities to make interesting pictures, and we just get more formula stuff,'' he says. ``But I think they feel that, too. They're under pressure because they're owned by big corporations, but people in Hollywood love it when there's a breakthrough film or a classic. It's a love-hate thing, as they say.''

Although it sounds like Coppola's current plan may require another Hollywood rescue down the road, he says this time it's different. He won't be putting his beloved American Zoetrope production company or his even more adored Napa Valley homestead on the collateral line the next time he goes off on a personal project.

``I was pretty reckless with my wife and kids in the old days when I put up the house to get movies financed,'' Coppola admits. ``I can't do that, or wouldn't want to do that, anymore. But luckily, the winery (Napa's Niebaum-Coppola vintners) is a big success; it's a much bigger company than the film company. That's safe, and that's the family's. In return, my wife has said to me that I can blow the money I make from the studios on a new film.''

Family, of course, has always been another big concern of Coppola's. From the underlying theme of the ``Godfather'' films, to his rampant nepotism (besides Sofia, he's provided movie work for actress-sister Talia Shire, actor-nephew Nicolas Cage and composer-father Carmine Coppola, among others), to the extended rehearsal periods he hosts at his Victorian home before a film shoot, life, work and family are all inextricably intertwined.

In a complicated pattern, of course.

``All human beings are creatures that need love,'' he says. ``If it's not your mother and your father and brothers, then it's your profession or your team or your platoon. Without other people that you care about and work with and love and want be responsible for, it's like that `Twilight Zone' episode where the guy is the last person on Earth. Who wants to live like that?

Family makes the difference

``My family is very important to me, but like everybody else's it's substantially screwed up, too. It's got people who love each other but can't really talk. There's a heartbreaker with Nic's father (academic August Coppola). He's an incredibly brilliant person who somehow got shafted in terms of ending up with his dorky younger brother becoming successful - and then his son - when he was in a way the originator of our style and what we do.''

And 1997 marks a different kind of family milestone: It's the 25th anniversary of ``The Godfather,'' the Oscar-winning blockbuster that established Coppola's genius. Typically, he feels ambivalent about it.

``That was mainly fun to see all the actors now in their new, older skins,'' he says of events commemorating the mob-movie masterpiece. ``But you know, `The Godfather' was a very tough movie and, personally, it was a nightmare in my life. I think the picture's fine, and I'm proud of it and what it did, but when I think back to it, I just remember sleeping in a cold sweat every night.''

Right now, Coppola would rather look ahead. He's ready to start writing that personal project. And while he's reluctant to divulge too many details, it sounds pretty grand - perhaps a return to that mad old Coppola magic, tempered by time.

``It'll be something that tries to illuminate our civilization, where we're going in terms of all the interesting contradictions: man-woman, rich-poor, artist-businessperson. There are so many things in modern times that I'd love to take a shot at, based on what I've learned about life, myself, my family and risk.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) THE GODFATHER OF FILM

Francis Ford Coppola pulls the strings on `John Grisham's The Rainmaker'

(2) In ``John Grisham's The Rainmaker,'' Matt Damon, left, plays a well-meaning law-school grad, with Danny DeVito as one of his mentors in the skunky realities of an attorney's world.