Francis Ford Coppola admitted to the hospital for suspected heart surgery

In a statement issued hours after the reports broke, he was taken to the hospital for suspected great heart surgery, he clarified that he was “good” and only had a routine procedure to update the treatment for atrial fibrillation.

A source told us that said: “The fear he felt when he was driven to the hospital in Italy, reminded him of his experience with polio.

“That was almost more frightening for him than his fear of health.”

Coppola said that he was overwhelmed by a wave of childhood memories – from Gurneys in hospital corridors, crying children in iron lungs and the night stopped his legs – when he was hit by polio.

The director was only nine years old when he was struck by the disease – a highly contagious disease that in some cases causes paralysis.

In an earlier interview, he described the beginning as “a fever that affects you only one night”, but whose damage can be life -changing.

“I remember that night. I was feverish and they took me to a hospital department,” he said.

“It was so crammed with children that Gurneys had been piled up three and four high in the corridors because there were so many more children than there were beds.”

He added: “I remember the children in the iron lungs, who you could see their faces on mirrors, and they all cried around their parents. They did not understand why they suddenly were in these steel cupboards.”

Polio cases rose at the beginning of the 20th century, before massive immunization with the SALK and Sabin -vaccines the disease almost extended in the late 1950s.

Coppola has admitted that his experience in a busy New York department has left a mark that he is wearing to this day.

“I looked around and when I tried to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and I realized that I couldn’t walk,” he said. “I couldn’t get up.”

He has credited his father, composer Carmine Coppola, with finding alternative treatments that helped him recover from the disease and expressed admiration for the doctors who developed the vaccine.

“Both doctors – Dr. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin – they donated the patents of their vaccines to the public,” he said. “That’s real heroism.”

Coppola said that he remains disturbed by the recent rise in anti-vaccine sentiment around the world in the aftermath of the Covid Pandemie.

“To see (polio) disappear … It makes it so absurd, the idea that they would now consider considering the course about vaccines,” he said.

His short stay in the hospital came just like MegalopolisIn the lead role Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Shia Labeouf, his controversial rollout continues after a mixed critical reception and modest income from the cash register.

Nevertheless, Coppola has shown little concern.

Speaking on stage at the film festival in Calabria, he said to the crowd: “Young people tell me that the world is a mess, but I tell them that there is no problem that humanity cannot solve. We have to build a great new future and do it together.”

He spent a large part of the summer in Italy exploring new film locations and continues to live part of the year in Bernalda, the southern city where his grandfather Agostino was born. Coppola became an honorary citizen there in 1989.