Francis Ford Coppola, waiting for an offer he cannot refuse for ‘Megalopolis’ | Culture

When at the end of the morning last Thursday, March 28, the first — and to date the only — showing at the cinema ended IMAX Universal Citywalk from Los Angeles Megalopolis, The 300 guests stood up to applaud furiously, according to some of those attending that private session. They cheered its director, Francis Ford Coppola, because at 85 years old (84 that day, because his birthday is April 7) he has managed to capture on the screen his dream of four decades, the script that he began to concoct during the production of Apocalypse Now. Now, can it be seen throughout the world? The same people who praised his creative risk that day also wrote about the complexity of his economic side: Coppola has put the $120 million of his budget out of his own pocket, selling part of his wine business. But what Hollywood studio or what distribution company is going to pay that money and another 100 million more destined for its launch (between copies and advertising), if Twixt, the director’s previous feature The Godfather, raised only 1.3 million dollars in 2012?

There were Al Pacino, Nicolas Cage, Spike Jonze, Shia LaBeouf, Darren Aronofsky, Anjelica Huston, John Favreau, Roger Corman and Andy García, as well as friends and family, like his sister Talia Shire, for example, or his son Roman, who He has helped his father on filming as head of the second unit. Her daughter Sofia, who has dedicated herself to caring for Eleanor Coppola in recent months, the filmmaker’s wife, who died last Friday, the artistic and vital support of her husband, was not seen. A witness said that García—who ends up leading the Corleone family at the end of The godfather 3— he shouted to the audience when the applause died down: “This man is the reason why all of us make movies.” An attendee assured that the drama will not be a popcorn blockbuster, but “that there is a stratum of fans who will want to see it, especially if the critics support it and if its premiere is accompanied by a huge advertising campaign.” Another understood that “its audacity will make some love it and others reject it, and its launch will require careful and loving handling, which would seem an impossible task in today’s market.” The film is shot to be seen in IMAX theaters, and at one point in the footage an actor physically gets up in the stalls, goes to the screen – at least that happened that Thursday in Los Angeles – and from there Adam Driver (its protagonist) He responds as if he heard him. A third spectator defined Megalopolis like a cross between a Coppola film and a work by Ed Emshwiller, Pioneering visual artist in experimental cinema and science fiction illustrations.

Director Gregory Nava (Selena) counted on IndieWire which is “a brilliant and visionary masterpiece.” “He left me so overwhelmed that I couldn’t do anything for the rest of the day but think about Megalopolis and feel its powerful and uplifting message. Mike Figgis, who has been in charge of the documentary about its filming in the last three years, defined it as “Julius Caesar intersects with “Blade runner.” Another witness to the event, Mike Fleming, editor-in-chief of deadline, highlighted the influence of Ancient Rome, which is reflected in the characters’ hairstyles.

What is it about Megalopolis? Driver is Cesar, a visionary architect, a character similar to the one he has embodied in recent years in Ferrari and The Gucci house, and that Coppola already drew in Tucker, a man and his dream: a tortured innovator, a transcript of Coppola himself. Nathalie Emmanuel plays Julia, the woman who lives in contradiction between her love for Driver and respect for her father, Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a conservative man in his vision, and who clashes with the more progressive architect. and who wants to rebuild New York after its devastation following the patterns of a utopia. Lawrence Fishburne (a teenager in Apocalypse Now) is the narrator; Aubrey Plaza, Emmanuel’s love rival, and Jon Voight, Shire, LaBeouf, Jason Schwartzman (Coppola’s nephew) and Dustin Hoffman also participate. They are the ones who have finally appeared in a film that half of Hollywood has gone through.

Also at that screening were those responsible for the major Hollywood studios, Netflix and Amazon MGM Prime Video… And so far, none of them have made an offer for the film. On the other hand, Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of Cannes, announced last Thursday with immense joy that Megalopolis will be screened on May 17 in the French festival competition, just 45 years after Apocalypse Now will win the Palme d’Or. There the next fight will begin: Coppola hoped that from that pass Megalopolis came out with global distribution closed at a stroke, something almost impossible in these times, and now the director and Barry Hirsch, his lifelong lawyer and now producer, will have to do like most of the filmmakers of the cinema. author: convince local distributors in the competition market to sell the exhibition rights of their film territory to territory. And so they may also find someone to show it in the United States.

A journey of four decades

The journey has been very long, because it began in 1979 with the original idea, and in 1983 the filmmaker announced his first script. Six years later, Coppola considered filming Megalopolis in the Roman studios of Cinecittà, and even the production design genius Dean Tavoularis opened an office in the Italian capital to finalize sketches and build sets. But other films began to sneak in, like The Godfather III, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jack either Self defense: There was neither a complete script nor closed financing. Coppola flirted with a possible injection of Arab money, petrodollars that never flowed. In 2001, in an interview, the filmmaker pointed out that the libretto projected the plot of Lucius Sergius Catilina, who wanted to achieve power in the Roman Republic in the year 63 BC. C. by military means, in a New York of the future. And that’s why he began filming with a second unit in the American city, to accumulate material, a few weeks before 9/11. After the terrorist attack the images were discarded. At that time, he met an actor at the peak of his fame, Russell Crowe, at a dinner in Paris, a bombastic name at the time. Since then, over the decades, Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio (another possible protagonist), Robert De Niro, Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Paul Newman, Kevin Spacey, Uma Thurman have performed different script readings at various casting meetings. .. and others. In 2002, thanks to high definition, Coppola accumulated more material from big cities, and when a friend handed her the book The ageless man, by Mircea Eliade, put his adaptation before Megalopolis.

Since 2007, Coppola’s career has behaved like a roller coaster: neither Tetro neither Twixt were neither commercially nor critically successful, a respect that was regained with the new montage of The Godfather III. Their negotiations to produce Megalopolis They failed, just the opposite of their wineries. Thanks to the sale of part of this wine empire, it has become self-produced, and was finally able to announce the start of its project in 2019… although in the summer of 2021 it continued to change actors; This time those enrolled were Oscar Isaac, Forest Whitaker, Cate Blanchett, Jon Voight, Zendaya, James Caan, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange.

Of this cast, only Jon Voight has survived, and the deceased Caan has been replaced by Dustin Hoffman, in the filming of a drama, which they say moves between epic and opera, which took place from November 2022 to March 2023 in Atlanta (Georgia). The director’s original idea was to use StageCraft, the technology that became fashionable with Batman and The Mandalorian, and that surrounds the actors with gigantic LED screens; Economic hardships have forced him to return to the traditional green screen.

And for that change of course, Coppola decided to change the crew: the penultimate tremor—before the frustrated sale to some major studios—in the production of Megalopolis He suffered that January 2023, when he fired part of the technical team. The Hollywood Reporter spoke in a report about “chaos”, after the departure of the production designer, the art director, the visual effects supervisor and their entire team. The director and Driver responded quickly to the article by calming the waters, and Coppola’s fans remembered that the same thing happened halfway through the filming of their Dracula, without its quality suffering. Finally, last summer, some shots were retaken and a handful of new shots were filmed.

Now we just have to wait for May 17, when the lights go out at the Grand Lumière Theater in the Cannes Festival Palace and the almost 140 minutes of Megalopolis. That day will have ended the longest cinematic journey of Coppola’s career, a creator who has already navigated economic disasters such as Hunch and bankrupted his production company three times, American Zoetrope. He will only have to wait for someone to make him an offer for his film that he cannot refuse.

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