linguistic:translation, structural:summarization
1960–1969: Early works

After earning his theater arts degree from Hofstra in 1960, Coppola enrolled in UCLA Film School. There, he directed a short horror film, The Two Christophers, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe 's " William Wilson " and Ayamonn the Terrible, a film about a sculptor's nightmares coming to life. He also met undergraduate film major Jim Morrison, future frontman of The Doors. Coppola later used Morrison's song " The End " in Apocalypse Now.

In the early 1960s, Coppola made $10 per week (roughly equivalent to $ 100 per week today). Looking for a way to earn some extra money, he found that many colleagues from film school made money filming erotic productions known as "nudie-cuties" or "skin flicks", which showed nudity without implying any sexual act. At 21, Coppola wrote the script for The Peeper, a comedy short film about a voyeur who tries to spy on a sensual photo shoot in the studio next to his apartment. Coppola found an interested producer, who gave him $3,000 to shoot the film. He hired Playboy Bunny Marli Renfro to play the model and had his friend Karl Schanzer play the voyeur. With The Peeper finished, Coppola found that the cartoonish aspects of the film alienated potential buyers, who did not find the 12-minute short exciting enough to screen in adult theaters.

After much rejection, Coppola received an opportunity from Premier Pictures Company, a small production company that invested in an adult production called The Wide Open Spaces, an erotic western written and directed by Jerry Schafer, which had been shelved for more than a year. Both Schafer's film and The Peeper featured Marli Renfro, so the producers paid Coppola $500 to combine the two films. After Coppola re-edited the picture, it was released in 1962 as the softcore comedy Tonight for Sure.

Another production company, Screen Rite Pictures, hired Coppola to do a similar job: re-cutting a German film titled Mit Eva fing die Sünde an (Sin Began with Eve), directed by Fritz Umgelter. Coppola added new color footage with British model June Wilkinson and other nude starlets. The re-edited film was released as The Bellboy and the Playgirls.

That same year producer/director Roger Corman hired Coppola as an assistant. Corman first tasked Coppola with dubbing and re-editing the Soviet science fiction film Nebo zovyot, which Coppola turned into the sex-and-violence monster movie Battle Beyond the Sun, which was released in 1962. Impressed by Coppola's perseverance and dedication, Corman hired him as a dialogue director for Tower of London (1962), sound man for The Young Racers (1963) and associate producer and one of many uncredited directors for The Terror (1963).