Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 musical "One from the Heart" opens with the rattle of a roulette pill over a black screen. The shouts, dings, hopes, and lamentations of the casino are nowhere to be heard. It's just that damn ball clattering across that spinning wheel, daring bettors to pick a number and a color. When the rotation slows, and the pill finds its slot, the red-light logo of Zoetrope Studios cuts through the dark of the theater.

Coppola's wager? Everything. He'd pushed all-in on the outsized dream of an artist-controlled movie studio nestled in the heart of Hollywood. Everyone who bought a ticket to see the film on opening day knew that the most celebrated filmmaker of the 1970s had risked it all to revolutionize an exclusionary industry. He wanted every craftsperson of every cr

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