“I have money. I already have fame,” Francis Ford Coppola says in the new documentary Megadoc, about the making of his film Megalopolis.
“I already have Oscars,” he continues. “Do you know why I’m doing this movie? Fun. I wanna have fun.”
Megadoc is directed by another great director, the Oscar nominated Mike Figgis, whose work includes Leaving Las Vegas and Internal Affairs. In the teaser trailer for Megadoc, he poses one of the questions he sets out to answer about Megalopolis:
“How can someone spend $120 million of their own money on a film?”
Coppola spent decades imagining last year’s Megalopolis, a story inspired by the Roman Empire. Set in New Rome, a kind of science fiction New York City, the film follows architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) as he clashes with Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) as Caesar tries to revitalize New Rome by building a futuristic utopia.
Despite a cast that included Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman and many more, the costly, uncompromising film struggled to find a distributor when Coppola offered it up last year. It was eventually picked up by Lionsgate, and earned a disappointing $14 million at the box office.
Francis Ford Coppola, Mike Figgis, and Megadoc, the Story of Megalopolis
Megadoc is being distributed by Utopia, which provided the following synopsis: “a raw, fly-on-the-wall documentary about Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long journey in creating his self-financed passion project, Megalopolis.
“The bold and unrelenting epic returns in Mike Figgis’ portrait of Coppola’s creative process — weaving together archival material, unfiltered cast interviews, and a close-up view of how the legendary filmmaker drew from Roman history, political allegory, and his own singular vision to shape the world of Megalopolis. This isn’t a record of a production on the brink, it’s a personal memoir unfolding in real time,” Utopia added.
Megalopolis continued a feast-or-famine cinematic tradition for Coppola, indisputably one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. From 1972 to 1974, he made The Godfather, Conversation, and The Godfather II, establishing perhaps the best creative period for any filmmaker.
The Conversation is highly respected, and the first two Godfather films are widely considered among the best ever made. The first earned Coppola and Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the second won him Oscars for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Also Read: Francis Ford Coppola, Adam Driver Defend Megalopolis Set: ‘All Good Here!’
But then Coppola took an incredible creative and financial risk: He traveled to the Philippines for the long and arduous shoot of Apocalypse Now, even without knowing, for much of the production, how he planned to end the Vietnam War film.
Coppola’s late wife, Eleanor, recorded his intense physical, psychological and emotional travails in footage that was later crucial to the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse. And last year writer Sam Wasson went into even greater detail — about how Coppola nearly lost everything in the making of Apocalypse Now — in the book The Path to Paradise, featuring blunt interviews with Coppola.
The book recounts how Apocalypse Now turned out to be another huge successes — but was followed by the daring and unsuccessful One From the Heart. Still, Coppola hedged his bets by purchasing a vineyard, and its tremendous success put him in a position to finance Megalopolis on his own.
Megadoc continues the proud tradition of movies, books and TV shows about the making of fiercely daring Coppola films: 2022 brought us The Offer, which fictionalized the making of The Godfather and starred Dan Fogler as Coppola.
Coppola who is 86, is presently working on a musical adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel, The Glimpses of the Moon.
Megadoc will world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and open in select theaters on Friday, September 19.
Main image: Francis Ford Coppola, left, in Megadoc. Courtesy of Utopia