TORONTO (AP) ā Francis Ford Coppola believes he can stop time.
Itās not just a quality of the protagonist of a visionary architect named Cesar Catilina ( ) who, by barking āTime, stop!ā can temporarily freeze the world for a moment before restoring it with a snap of his fingers. And Coppola isn't referring to his ability to manipulate time in the editing suite. He means it literally.
āWeāve all had moments in our lives where we approach something you can call bliss,ā Coppola says. āThere are times when you have to leave, have work, whatever it is. And you just say, āWell, I donāt care. Iām going to just stop time.ā I remember once actually thinking I would do that.ā
Time is much on Coppolaās mind. Heās 85 now. Eleanor, his wife of 61 years, āMegalopolis,ā which is dedicated to her, is his first movie in 13 years. Heās been pondering it for more than four decades. The film begins, fittingly, with the image of a clock.
āItās funny, you live your life going from being a young person to being an older person. Youāre looking in that direction,ā Coppola said in a recent interview at a Toronto hotel before the North American premiere of āMegalopolis.ā āBut to understand it, you have to look in the other direction. You have to look at it from the point of view of the older looking at the younger, which youāre receding from.ā
āIām sort of thinking of my life in reverse,ā Coppola says.
You have by now probably heard a few things about āMegalopolis.ā Maybe you know that Coppola financed the $120 million budget himself, using his lucrative wine empire to realize a long-held vision of Roman epic set in a modern New York. You might be familiar with the filmās in May, some of whom saw a grand folly, others a wild ambition to admire.
āMegalopolis,ā a movie Coppola first began mulling in the aftermath of in the late 1970s, has been a subject of intrigue, anticipation, gossip, a lawsuit and sheer disbelief for years.
What you might not have heard about āMegalopolis,ā though, is that itās an extraordinarily sincere message from a master filmmaker nearing the end of his life. Giancarlo Esposito, who first sat for a reading of the script 37 years ago with Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup, calls it āsome deep, deep dream of consciousnessā from Coppola.
At a time when many are consumed by bitterly partisan politics and climate change anxiety, Coppola has spent every opportunity this year pleading that we are āone human family.ā His movie, a delirious dream of the future, is an unwieldy but heartfelt fable about the boundlessness of human potential. As implausible as optimism may seem in 2024, itās Coppolaās cri de coeur ā one that he connects less to his perspective as an elder statesman than he does to his abiding, childlike sense of possibility.
āI realized that the genius of human invention usually happened when we were playing with our kids. Itās in the act of play that weāre so creative,ā Coppola says. āThe cave paintings, you see hands but there are big hands and little hands.ā
āMegalopolisā will be released by Lionsgate in theaters Friday, including many IMAX screens, culminating what has been arguably Coppolaās biggest gamble ā which is saying something for the filmmaker who plunked down his own millions to shoot āApocalypse Nowā in the Philippines jungle and plunged his production company, Zoetrope, into bankruptcy to make 1982ās āOne From the Heart.ā That title has remained symbolic of Coppola, an eminently personal filmmaker, regardless of the success of āThe Godfather,ā who has often done his best work far out on a limb.
āOn our first day of shooting, at one point in the day he said to everybody, āWeāre not being brave enough,ā Driver recalled in Cannes. āThat, for me, was what I hooked on for the rest of the shoot.ā
In the film, Driverās Cesar is at odds with a backward-looking mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Esposito), but falls for his daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). Cesarās powers as a time-stopper and an architect are derived from a substance called Megalon that could alter the fate of the metropolis dubbed New Rome. A lot is thrown into the mix, including Aubrey Plazaās TV personality Wow Platinum and Shia LaBeoufās Clodio Pulcher. Coppola spent years assembling a scrap book of inspirations for the film, though you could wonder if Cesar isnāt ultimately derived from himself.
āI thought about Francis but I wasnāt thinking Iām going to do a version of Francis,ā said Driver. āAll movies, I kind of feel, are their directors in a sense.ā
Esposito was surprised to find the script hadnāt changed much over the years. Every morning, he would receive a text from Coppola with a different ancient story. On set, Coppola favored theater games, improvisation and going with instinct.
āHe takes his time. What weāre used to in this modern age is immediate answers and having to know the answer,ā Esposito says. āAnd I donāt think Francis needs to know the answer. I think the question for him is sometimes more important.ā
Reports of disorder on the set led to Driver making a statement that, to the contrary, it was one of the best shooting experiences of his career. Later, just before the film was to premiere in Cannes, a report alleged Coppola behaved inappropriately with extras. Variety later posted a story with a video shot by a crew member showing Coppola, in a nightclub scene, walking through a dancing crowd and then stopping to apparently lean in to several women to hug them, kiss them on the cheek or whisper to them.
Earlier this month, claiming its report was false and libelous. The trade publication said it stood by its reporters.
Asked about the reports in Toronto, Coppola said āI donāt even want to (discuss it). Itās a waste of time.ā Later in the interview, he separately noted: āIām very respectful of women, I always have been. My mother, she always taught me: āFrancis, if you ever make a pass at a girl, that means you disrespect her.ā So I never did.ā
None of the major studios or streaming services (āAnother word for home video,ā Coppola says) . He also first showcased it to executives and friends in Los Angeles before the festival, but found little interest.
āIām a creation of Hollywood,ā says Coppola. āI went there wanting to be part of it, and by hook or crook, they let me be part of it. But that system is dying.ā
If Coppola has a lot riding on āMegalopolis,ā he doesnāt, in any way, appear worried. Recouping his investment in the film will be virtually impossible; he stands to lose many millions. But speaking with Coppola, itās clear heās filled with gratitude. āI couldnāt be more blessed,ā he says.
āEveryoneās so worried about money. I say: Give me less money and give me more friends,ā Coppola says. āFriends are valuable. Money is very fragile. You could have a million marks in Germany at the end of World War II and you wouldnāt be able to buy a loaf of bread.ā
Coppola has lately been watching a lot of films from the 1930s ( is a favorite). But his mind is mostly on the cinema of the future. In recent years, Coppola has experimented with what he calls ālive cinema,ā trying to imagine a movie form thatās created and seen simultaneously. In festival screenings, āMegalopolisā has included a live moment in which a man walks on stage and addresses a question to a character on the screen.
āThe movies your grandchildren will make are not going to be like this formula happening now. We canāt even imagine what itās going to be, and thatās the wonderful thing about it,ā says Coppola. "The notion that thereās a set of rules to make a film ā you have to have this, you have to have that ā thatās OK if youāre making Coca-Cola because you want to know that youāre going to be able to sell it without risk. But cinema is not Coca-Cola. Cinema is something alive and ever-changing.ā
Coppola has hoped to include the live moment in screenings nationwide. As of Tuesday, there werenāt details available on those showings. Heās even come up with a way to āsimulate for the home an experience that is somewhat theatrical," he said. Regardless of whether moviegoers will flock to āMegalopolis," it's clearly a passionate late-career statement from a titan of American movies, made without a whiff of an algorithm, that embodies a line heard several times in the film: āWhen we leap into the unknown, we prove that we are free."
āThere have to be," Coppola says, "filmmakers who make the film without risk and jump into it and say, āWell, it feels right to me but who knows? Maybe Iām wrong, maybe Iām right, it doesnāt matter. Itās in my heart.āā
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
