Faced with the criticism, controversy and uncertain financial prospects swirling around his self-financed speculative epic “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola gave an affable shrug to the press at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday.
“I don't care. I never cared,” the 85-year-old filmmaker said when asked about the alleged $120 million fortune he invested in the film. “Money doesn't matter. Friends are what's important.”
Those friends, along with his sister Talia Shire, his son Roman Coppola and his granddaughter Romy Mars, flanked the “Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” filmmaker on stage and during the making of the film, in which he credited its cast and crew as co-directors and starring Adam Driver as one of its most active co-editors.
As for Hollywood, which was reportedly scratching its head over “Megalopolis” at early screenings for potential buyers, the director had less friendly words.
“The job is not so much to make good movies, but to make sure they pay off their debt obligations,” said Coppola, who would be open to distributing the film through a streaming platform but would prefer a theatrical release. “It could be that the studies we knew for so long (some wonderful ones) won't be here in the future.” (The film will be released in IMAX, a representative confirmed to The Times on Thursday, but details are unclear until U.S. distribution is secured.)
“Megalopolis” stars Driver as ambitious architect and inventor Caesar Catilina, who hopes to use his discovery of a powerful new “miracle” material, Megalon, to create a utopia, Megalopolis, in place of the decadent New Rome (think contemporary New York City). with a Caesar haircut). Against him are Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a political machine desperate to protect his status; Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBoeuf), the dissolute grandson of a business magnate who turns to violent populism to shore up his power; and Catilina's former lover, the amoral fame-seeker Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who teams up with Pulcher to get revenge.
But “Megalopolis” is, in fact, much, much stranger than the synopsis above, or even the name Wow Platinum, might begin to suggest. One scene shows a person with a microphone walking onto the movie stage and asking Driver a question during an on-screen press conference, which the actor proceeds to answer.
Driver, Plaza, Esposito, narrator Laurence Fishburne and Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Catilina's love interest, suggested that the creative process mimicked the film's unpredictability.
“It was a challenge at times to walk into my character, because I was trying to see her the way Francis had imagined, and there was a journey to that,” Emmanuel said, comparing the experience to that of a directed musician.
“Getting into his mind was kind of a loss of trust,” Plaza added.
What Driver described as the director's generous approach on set extended to the stand, as Coppola, the day's main attraction, repeatedly attempted to include his cast in the conversation. He lobbed a question about the film's politics at conservative Jon Voight; Fishburne sent another on Coppola's behalf. At one point, he even asked the assembled press, “Please ask my sister Talia a question.”
Perhaps the most anticipated film of the entire festival, “Megalopolis” arrived at Cannes with a backstory worthy of, well, “Megalopolis.” With the cost partially defrayed by the sale of several of his wine businesses, the allegorical drama, rife with allusions to Sappho and “Entertainment Tonight,” John Wilkes Booth and Elvis, had unfavorable word of mouth as soon as buyers were sought. in March. “There's just no way to position this movie,” said one distributor. he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Coppola hinted Friday that he was prepared for this reaction and was not intimidated by it: “I knew the movie wasn't like other movies that have been released,” he said. “That's how I felt the movie should be, and since I was paying for it I thought I had the right [to do it my way].”
Since then, the headlines have had less to do with the film's box office prospects than with conditions on set. On Tuesday, the British newspaper The Guardian published a long story about the film, detailing a production “almost as tense and chaotic as 'Apocalypse Now,'” a shoot so notorious it inspired an accompanying documentary, “Hearts of Darkness,” directed by Coppola's late wife, Eleanor, who died last month. .
More worryingly, The Guardian alleged that the director “lured women to sit on his lap” and “tried to kiss some of the topless and scantily clad female extras” during a nightclub scene. Darren Demetre, executive producer of “Megalopolis” he told THR that he was “never aware of any complaints of harassment or misbehavior during the course of the project” and explained Coppola's behavior “as gentle hugs and kisses on the cheek” designed to “inspire and establish the atmosphere of the club.”
When the film finally premiered in competition here on Thursday, it unsurprisingly polarized critics, who alternately described it as the grandiose, incoherent waste of a filmmaker past his prime and a bracing, belated paean to the possibilities of cinema from one of its greatest. practitioners.
“[Coppola]”He doesn't come out with something tame and careful, but with a charged, vigorous, seething story about the roots of fascism that only an uncharitable viewer would call a catastrophe,” said Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf. he wrote in his Cannes review. “It may be the most radical film I've ever made.”
The filmmaker himself does not seem to treat “Megalopolis” as a final statement, alluding, like its protagonist, to the work still to be done.
“The reason I often re-release my films is because I own them. If you ask why I own 'Apocalypse Now,' the answer is that no one wanted it,” said Coppola, who also revealed that he has already started writing his next movie. “I would never edit 'The Conversation' again because I like the way it is. “I never re-edited 'The Godfather'… there's a scene I might add one day.”
But although he assured, half-jokingly, that “he will still be here in 20 years,” Coppola is pleased with his list of accomplishments.
“There are so many people who when they die say, 'I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that.' When he dies, I'll say: 'I got to do this.' I have to see my daughter [Sofia Coppola] “I won an Oscar and I was able to make wine and make all the movies I wanted to make.” he said. “I'm going to be so busy thinking about all the things I have to do that when I die I won't notice.”
