It's impossible to shake the feeling of deja vu. It's a bright Paris morning. After waiting in the street, I'm ushered into a quiet, darkened little bistro. It's empty save for the barman and a bulky figure at the far corner table, formally dressed, waiting to receive me. I have an audience with the don himself: Francis Ford Coppola. If I had a dishonoured daughter, I'd ask him to avenge her. If he was wearing a ring, I'd probably kiss it.

The suspicion that Coppola has engineered this encounter to resemble the opening scene of The Godfather evaporates when he starts talking, though. Rather than mumbling imperiously, Brando-style, he's chatty, open, and even self-critical. "I'm a good enough director, I think," he says at one point. "The area I'm most vulnerable in is my own confidence as a writer. I wasn't given that type of God-given talent, but I'm joined at the hip with myself as a writer." This is a man with three Oscars in his heaving trophy cabinet purely for screenwriting (Godfathers I and II and Patton).

If Coppola had wanted to play the don, you'd be happy to oblige him, but instead he's like a young man again. He's now 71 years old, with a bushy white beard and a girth that attests to his success as a wine-maker, resort entrepreneur and all-round living legend. His career has roller-coastered through the highest highs (The Godfathers, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation) and the lowest lows (disasters like One From The Heart and The Cotton Club, financial ruin, and the death of his son, Gian-Carlo), with many an interlude of megalomania, manic depression and Hollywood excess in between, as anyone who's read Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls or watched Hearts Of Darkness, on the making of Apocalypse Now, will know.

Coppola will make a great biopic subject one day, but not before he's added another chapter. Just when his career was fizzling out with director-for-hire dreck like The Rainmaker and Jack, Coppola has returned to his roots. Just as he once turned out cheap quickies for Roger Corman, he's making his own low-budget indie movies, self-financed this time. It started with 2007's erratic Youth Without Youth, which appositely enough, tells the story of an old man who miraculously starts getting younger. Now comes Tetro, a striking, semi-autobiographical story of estranged brothers (Vincent Gallo and newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) and family secrets. Handsomely shot in black and white (mostly), in real Buenos Aires locations, and given to stylistic flourishes, operatic tragedies, and bizarre digressions, Tetro is a little rambling but wildly inventive; the work of an old dog learning new tricks.

'If you make the conditions similar to what a more youthful artist would have, then you suddenly become more youthful'

Francis with daughter Sofia Coppola in 1989. Photograph: Brian Hamill/Premium Archive

"Well, if you work with no money, that's similar to what young people have to deal with," he laughs. "And if you work with subject matter you have no total assurance about, you're not so confident about what you're doing. So you make the conditions similar to what a more youthful artist would have, then you suddenly become more youthful."

This is what Coppola always said he planned to do. It's what all the New Hollywood generation said they planned to do: become auteurs like their French New Wave idols. But few of them ever achieved it. They either crashed and burned early (Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin) or grew in stature to unwieldy proportions. Scorsese turns out bloated thrillers like Shutter Island, Spielberg is the fully fledged studio mogul, George Lucas, whose early hits Coppola produced, is busy counting his Star Wars bucks, Altman is gone. Success derailed them all, none more so than Coppola. Post-Godfather, Peter Biskind painted an unflattering picture of him, cavorting with various women in the pool in his San Francisco mansion "like a newborn porpoise". "Being the director of The Godfather was like a trip!" Coppola admits. "I was young and I was, like, the king of the world for a moment, and I'd never had money in my life, never had fame. It was an adventure. But on the other hand it made opportunities come to me that I should have turned down. That's the part I really regret. It took me away from what I really wanted to do. But I really don't feel like I lost it because even then I never thought I had it! I still don't feel I have it. So nothing has changed."

Tetro certainly feels like a personal film. Not just because it throws in scenes you can't imagine any studio approving of – "do we really need the risqué avant-garde transvestite theatre production of Faust halfway through?" – but also because its characters are loosely based on Coppola and his elder brother, August, who died last year and whom Coppola looked up to "like he was my father". Like the real-life Coppolas, the film's brothers also have a classical musician father – although in the movie he's a domineering monster. The Coppola movie Tetro most resembles is Rumble Fish, but then families, sibling bonds and paternal rivalry are recurring themes in Coppola's movies. It's not difficult to see where they came from. The Coppola dynasty now extends through three generations and countless branches of the Hollywood network, all thanks to Francis. As well as giving breaks to a whole generation of newcomers like Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane and Laurence Fishburne, he's regularly employed his father (Carmine, composer), his sister (Talia Shire, AKA Connie Corleone), his nephew (Nicolas Cage) and innumerable extended-family members. And, of course, he's literally daddy to the movers of the new New Hollywood.

Sofia Coppola has distinguished herself as a director in her own right, but who would dare mess with her with Francis as her producer? "She's very small, Sofia, very petite. She's made of steel but she's a tiny, soft-spoken person," he says, beaming with paternal pride. "So I made sure on those first films she was surrounded by people who would protect her. But after a while it was so clear that she had a knack for it."

'Sofia said to his casting person she had this cousin and he was so funny. Jason wasn't even thinking about being an actor'

…and with nephew Jason Schwartzman. Photograph: Marion Curtis/Getty

There's also his son Roman, his father's regular right-hand man, but also director of music videos for the Strokes and Daft Punk, among others, and co-writer of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited. Then there's his other nephew, Jason Schwartzman, whose big break in Rushmore was also thanks to Uncle Francis. "Jason came to Wes because for a while I would do nutty things with the kids," he explains. One summer holiday he got Roman, Sofia and Jason to write and direct their own one-act plays. He wrote one too, to get them going. "Mine was the worst, Roman's was the best. But a few years later when Wes was stumped finding an actor for Rushmore, Sofia said to his casting person she had this cousin and he was so funny. Jason was a writer and a musician. He wasn't even thinking about being an actor."

It sounds like The Royal Tenenbaums round the Coppolas' gaff. Or perhaps Stella Street. One imagines Thomas Mars out of Phoenix (Sofia's partner) picking up some nappies. There's George Lucas bringing round some Star Wars toys. There's Nicolas Cage playing table football with Vincent Gallo. Spike Jonze is packing some old clothes he left here. Oh hello, Wes, just borrowing a cup of sugar? But Francis denies he's hipster Hollywood's Godfather. What, no horses heads in studio bosses' beds? "Absolutely not! They're out there making deals by themselves!" he says. "I'm usually the last one to know what's going on. These kids that were all in awe of what I was doing once, now they're not even interested. So I have to say I was a good parent in an artistic sense because they don't need me any more."

Coppola doesn't need anyone any more, either. He's turned down offers from the studios to return to the fold. He's currently writing his next movie, whose budget will be determined by the success of the new vineyard he's opening in California next month. He's unconcerned by commercial success, he says, "What matters to me more is what people will think of it 20 years later." It's a pity some of his counterparts haven't done what he's done. "I think he will blossom with some more personal films," he says of his old friend Scorsese. While Lucas he describes as "a terrific experimental film-maker". It's unlikely either of them still share Coppola's appetite for adventure, though.

"You have to continue to jump off a cliff," he says. "I don't think things through; I feel them through. And I know that half the time I might not land right, and maybe there's a pleasure in that, but in my life I have to say, that's served me well. When you're this old guy dying, you don't wanna say, 'I wish I had done that and that.' In my case I did it. I did all the things other people would just regret that they didn't try. Because in the end, you die. You don't get any award for just being conservative."