Article by Marcus Siu

After failing to obtain a distribution deal for the $120 million dollar budgeted “Megalopolis”; a film forty years in the making and his first film in thirteen years, director Francis Ford Coppola was asked at the 77th Cannes Film Festival press conference last May to comment on the film industry.

“I feel the film industry is about people getting hired to meet debt obligations — their job isn’t to make good movies, but to pay their debt,” Coppola said, “These new companies — Amazon, Apple, Microsoft — they have plenty of money. But the studios that we know for so long, may not be here in the future.”

Historically for Coppola, this is nothing new regarding his dealings with movie studios in the past. Even with his highly regarded cinematic masterpieces, such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”, studios always had problematical issues with Coppola when it came to producing large scale films.

One just needs to watch the brilliant 1991 documentary, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse”, about the making of “Apocalypse Now”; the movie that nearly destroyed Coppola’s life and career that was directed by his late wife Eleanor, who recently passed away – a month before the premiere. “Megalopolis”, was dedicated to her.

In order to finance and fund and be true to his artistic vision of “Megalopolis”, Coppola sold off part of his highly prized winery business in a massive deal estimated to be worth around $500 million, in which he owned 25% of it which gave him the $120 million of disposable income.

“There’s so many people when they die, they say oh I wish I’d done this” … “but when I die, I’ll say I got to do this and I got to see my daughter win an Oscar and… I got to make every movie I wanted to make”, Coppola said.

Luckily, it wasn’t a total loss for Coppola while he was at Cannes. Later the same day after the press conference, “Megalopolis” secured a limited global IMAX release, regardless of who becomes the distributor. The following month, Lionsgate would secure the distribution rights and Coppola would own the movie rights all together.

BAD PRESS

Unfortunately, during its run at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was in competition, “Megalopolis” was marred with mixed reviews as was the case at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

The Lionsgate marketing team combatted this issue by coming up with an unusual strategy for the movie’s first trailer. It used negative quotes from reviews by renowned critics (Roger Ebert, Owen Gleiberman, Pauline Kael, Vincent Camby) of some Coppola’s classics, giving the impression that Coppola movies were generally misunderstood at the time of release, but were deemed masterpieces decades later, such as “The Godfather”, “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”.

However, the quotes were completely fabricated and Lionsgate immediately pulled the trailer out of circulation within 24 hours.

Additionally, it probably didn’t help when Lauren Pagone, a dancer in the film, was suing Coppola for civil battery and civil assault. She alleges Coppola kissed her cheek and touched multiple parts of her body without her consent during the club scene back in February. In July, it was reported by Variety there were allegations of misconduct on the set by various crew members and extras accusing Coppola of on-set conduct as unprofessional and included a video shot from a crew member during the nightclub scene of Coppola attempting to kiss the female extras.

Two days later, Coppola retaliated and filed a lawsuit against Variety asserting its report was false and libelous and is seeking $15 million in damaged.

U.S. PREMIERE

Last Monday night had a very exclusive advance screening of Coppola’s “Megalopolis” as part of a special presentation of the 62nd New York Film Festival (NYFF) with Lionsgate and IMAX Live preceded by a live pre-screening chat with the iconic director.

It was also the official U.S. premiere of the film, with many of the stars of the film gracing the red carpet including Aubrey Plaza, Chloe Fineman, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Grace VanderWaal, Dustin Hoffman, and D.B. Sweeney.

The live pre-screening chat that streamed in 65 theaters in the United States and Canada excluded the actors in attendance, and instead, Coppola was joined by two iconic New York filmmakers who happen to also be his very close friends and colleagues – Robert DeNiro and Spike Lee. The interview was moderated by Dennis Lim, the Artistic Director of the NYFF.

THE PRE-SCREEN CHAT WITH COPPOLA AND FRIENDS

It was an enduring conversation with topics ranging from Coppola’s early days in the theater where he would let his actors freely improvise in rehearsals in order to create authentic and lifelike characters through his experimentation and development of his own personal style that would prepare him for the world of film.

“You know, this idea that a director gets a performance out of the actor is not true. The actor does all the work. The director is more like a coach.” Coppola continues, “Wanted to say something that might be helpful at that, given moment. So basically, I, I did a lot of work on using rehearsal to help evolve, especially a movie that you didn’t know how to make, because if you don’t know how to make a movie, if you listen quietly, the movie tells you how to make it.”

It was Martin Scorsese who introduced Robert DeNiro to Coppola in the early stages for his casting for “The Godfather”. At the time, DeNiro auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone, which of course, went on to James Caan. Coppola recalled,

“That’s how I first met Bobby…did a wonderful, unforgettable audition for Sunny Corleone. That was so in advance of what I even could imagine, because he really nailed that kind of a guy.”

Ironically, Coppola never wanted to make a sequel to “The Godfather”, which Paramount Studios desperately wanted him to do after its phenomenal success at the box office becoming the highest grossing movie ever at the time. After he finished co-writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo, he campaigned for Martin Scorsese who had just completed “Mean Streets” to direct “Part II”, but with the studio pushing harder for Coppola to direct, he counter-offered a sum and other demands that he himself thought considered outrageous and that would be rejected, which they later accepted.

“So I said, I want $1,000,000 and I want to call the movie, I don’t want to give it one of those titles. I want to call it ‘The Godfather Part Two’, which had never been done— a number on a movie”, Coppola continued…”so they pushed back on the title. I said, then forget it, I won’t do it”. Of course, Paramount knew it was an offer they couldn’t refuse. “And I’m the idiot who started this thing with movies having numbers after that. So I apologize.”, Coppola recalls.

Even with its non-imaginative movie title, “Part II” went on to win six Oscars, doubling the three that went to the original “Godfather” film, with Coppola winning three of them: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay shared with Mario Puzo, along with DeNiro winning Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Vito Corleone.

Ironically, nearly thirty years ago, Coppola initially approached DeNiro to play the role of Catalon (the Adam Driver role), and asked him to do a table reading.

“Francis asked me if I read the script and I said, No, I didn’t, but I don’t have to.” DeNiro recalled. “It’s okay. And he was mad at me because I didn’t read it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know. If I had known I would have read it, but I just knew that reading it would give me everything. It’s called sight reading and it actually works. I’ve learned that in acting school.”

Joining onstage with DeNiro and Coppola was writer/director Spike Lee who provided some comic relief. He recalled being in Los Angeles during his internship with Columbia Pictures while he still working on his Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) attending NYU Graduate School after experiencing “Apocalypse Now” at the very first screening in 1979.

“I never experienced a film like that.”, Lee exclaimed with enthusiasm. “And your guy Walter Murch, man there’s hella’ cops. So I’m looking around like, where these fucking helicopters coming from all round, and that’s what really cemented that I want to be filmmaking.

Lee, a tenured professor at NYU at Tisch School of the Arts for the last thirty years, was able to show the IMAX version “Megalopolis” to his students last week with Lee’s brother hooking up a screen provided by Coppola, all in forty seconds.

“If they want an “A” they better show up!”, Lee joked.

COPPOLA’S THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S AMERICA vs NEW ROME

“Well, today and America is wrong, and they’re about to go through the same experience for the same reasons that that Rome lost it’s it’s Republic and ended up with an emperor and emperor. So, you know, I mean, this this movie is perhaps was very present to do about America as Rome because this is going to happen in a few months.”, Coppola continued.

“And it was the same reason that the Rome of that time was so prosperous, group making lots of money. And so the senators were actually very interested in their power and their own wealth then they were managing the country. Well the same thing has happened here. Our senators and our representatives are all wealthy and manipulating their own power rather than running the country.”

But for Francis, he remains an optimist on the future of humankind.

“We’re all one family and whether you want to admit it or not, we’re a family of geniuses. And there’s nothing like the creative gifts we have,” Coppola continued, “There’s nothing we can’t solve. And that’s all I want is my feeling is there’s a line in the movie, “It’s time for us to have a debate about the future.” And I want everyone to be in on that debate and I want no questions to be not permitted. We have to talk about the future. And you know, we do, because otherwise we will.”

“Because I say very clearly that I believe that I am optimistic about the future. And I hope the film explains to some degree.”, Coppola concluded.

In contrast, DeNiro, an outspoken Trump hater, still remains more cautious. “I’m worried”, DeNiro exclaims. “And I see the the thing is, in Francis’s film about that parallels and so on and to me it’s not over till it’s over and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to beat the Republicans. Those Republicans are not real. Republicans. Beat Trump.”

Though at age 85, his highly ambitious passion project, “Megalopolis” was not meant to be Coppola’s last hurrah. He is still currently working on two potential projects: one that will be financed and shot in England, and the other – “Distant Vision”, the story of three generations of an Italian family during the time television was invented, which he will finance himself.

“I would finance it with whatever “Megalopolis” does. I’ll want to do another roll of the dice with that one.” Coppola said.

Indeed, who would have imagined one of the all-time greatest filmmakers who was responsible for some of the greatest films would continually have a problem with finance and distribution?

But without risk takers, there would hardly be any great filmmakers like a Francis Ford Coppola.

The film opens this weekend at 1,854 theatres across North America, including 238 IMAX screens and 45 Premium Large Format Screens.

Synopsis: MEGALOPOLIS is a Roman Epic set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.