Francis Ford Coppola, like his contemporaries Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, studied films and filmmaking in college. Coppola's first break came as a screenwriter; he won his first Oscar for writing Patton, the movie based on the life of George S. Patton, Jr. By the late 1960s Coppola had formed his own production company, and in 1972 he released The Godfather, a box office smash and often hailed as one of the best movies of the 1970s (along with two of his other films, 1974's The Conversation, and 1979's Apocalypse Now). In spite of what is now a spotty record, Coppola is considered one of the greats in the American movie business, more active as a producer these days than as a writer or director.