It’s been a very long road for Francis Ford Coppola Megalopolis, the film he had wanted to make for 40 years. And finally, on Thursday night in Cannes, it had its premiere, with a standing ovation before and after the film, the latter lasting about seven and a half minutes.
“It’s a little surreal,” Coppola said. “Finding yourself in that situation and also understanding that, OK, after whatever happens, this is the moment of truth where I’m going to find out whether everything gelled or not. So you can imagine, it was a bit of a dream. Of course, I hope it goes well. And from my point of view, it went very well, so I was very grateful.
Much has been made of the film, with Coppola’s decision to self-finance to the tune of $120 million, and the film’s current lack of a distribution deal in the United States. Mixed, but mostly positive, reviews emerged during the film’s festival debut, but they also followed plenty of gossip.
In an interview Friday for Deadlines’ Cannes studio, Coppola was asked what he thought about all this talk.
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“I don’t know,” he said. “I am aware that we live in a post-Internet era where many things are changing. One of the things that is changing is journalism. We are going through trauma: how will journalism survive? A lot of stuff, how will it survive?
He also exposed the state of the film industry. “What will happen to the cinema? Will it stay as it is, or will it always turn into sequels and the same movie over and over again? If the people who are the gatekeepers think that a film must have certain commercial elements, otherwise it cannot be made. Does this mean that certain films can no longer be made?
Coppola said that given the experience of encountering many obstacles throughout his career, he had “tried not to adhere to the rules and tried to live by my own rules.”
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“When I was young, I remember wanting to do a musical and being told, ‘Well, you know, we don’t do musicals anymore.’ And I said, ‘Well, why not? Is it because they decided that musicals weren’t a good thing… and then later, I wanted to do a western, and I was told, “Well, westerns aren’t made not really now. I developed a whole western that I thought was a really wonderful script with the writer who wrote it, and no one – they said they didn’t make westerns and so I lost it, but luckily, Clint Eastwood bought the script and directed it. In unforgiven. This was the scenario that no one would let me do. So I don’t understand this idea that certain films can be made, and certain films can’t be done. Why can’t everything that is alive be created? And so, I tried to live my life in a way that, at least for me, would be possible.
Megalopolis takes place in Coppola’s imagination of a New Rome Manhattan, with Adam Driver as Catalina, the forward-looking president of the Design Authority. Catalina clashes with the town’s mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who opposes Catalina’s utopian plan to rebuild the town with a renewable material that could potentially uplift the working classes, while Cicero wants to stick to tradition and concrete.
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The driver called to make Megalopolis “one of the best filming experiences I’ve ever had.” It wasn’t his first time seeing the film, he said, “but I hadn’t seen it with an audience and I hadn’t seen it, in this case, with DB Sweeney walking into the interactive press conference portion” – referring to the moment when Coppola breaks the fourth wall in the film.
“Every time I saw it, it was the same aspect ratio,” Driver continued, “so, I was really moved in a way that I had never been before, which I think , is a testament to the films that Francis makes. He has very strict principles in creating scenes and dialogues and he makes sure that the characters are shown and not told. And that’s part of the reason his films have. a longevity, because there is always something to discover about them And with this one too, I was moved in moments that I had never experienced before.
As the mayor’s daughter, Julia, who falls in love with Catalina, Nathalie Emmanuel said making the film was “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
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“It’s been really special and a very unique experience unlike anything I’ve had before,” she said. “And to be given the role of a character in a film that had been an idea for 40 years, it was a huge responsibility and it was really special. The actors, Francis and everyone were very collaborative and supportive. This What I’ll take away from it is how dedicated everyone was and that sense of service to this vision of Francis. Just that real commitment and everyone really invested and really surrendered to the process.
Aubrey Plaza plays Wow Platinum, an ambitious journalist who was first romantically involved with Catalina and then married to Jon Voight’s very wealthy Hamilton Crassus III. She fondly remembers the games the actors played on set. “So many games,” she said. “I’ll never forget Francis making Jon Voight and I play a game where we had to intertwine our bodies.” Gesturing to Driver, Plaza said, “I think we did that too, right before we did our scene.” Where we had to become one organism and talk the same way and say the same thing at the same time and move our limbs and become some kind of creature. And I like things like that.
The premiere was Plaza’s first time seeing the film. Were there any surprises? “It was all a surprise,” she said, “it was incredible. It was very moving, very challenging, but beautiful. It was very, very surprising to see it like that the first time. I’m glad that’s how I saw it.
Deadline understands that in its recent European distribution deals, Coppola notably denied television and VOD rights to buyers. Is a streaming deal something he would ever consider? “Since I took the risk,” he said, “I want to own this, which I do, so I’m not interested in selling it to anyone else. I want to be able to control it.
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“Streaming is a funny word,” he says. “Back with The GodfatherI was sent by Paramount, who made The Godfather at that time, going on tour to introduce the idea of home video to the public. I went around and showed: “Here The Godfather on a disk. And then later it became DVDs, and streaming is just home video. I don’t know why they call it streaming, it’s home video. Everyone knows what it is. And of course, people now have nice TVs in their homes with good sound. Of course, there will be a life for that. But that’s where the long-term money is for movies. It’s the 40 years of people buying the same movie over and over again, which is what happened to Apocalypse now.”
The Deadline Studio is presented by Neom.