Francis Ford Coppola is coming out with a new film, and in a word, it looks insane.
The Godfather director has been working on it for 40 years and as the first reviews are coming in, it is dividing critics.
Reviews range from calling it a masterpiece to an incoherent flop, but the story behind the movie is as bats**t as the film itself.
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Check out the trailer here:
The film in question is Megalopolis, a sprawling epic set in New York which the Godfather filmmaker has spent $120 million of his own money to make.
In a report in The Guardian however, it said that Ford Coppola had an insane method whilst on set: locking himself in his trailer for hours smoking marijuana.
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An anonymous crew member told of the director: “He would often show up in the mornings before these big sequences and, because no plan had been put in place, he would often just sit in his trailer for hours on end, wouldn’t talk to anybody, was often smoking marijuana.
“Hours and hours would go by without anything being filmed.”
The film has a bonkers story behind it, however. Ford Coppola has been marinating on the idea for four decades, and self-financed the movie after no major studio would make it.
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This involved selling a portion of his expansive California wine estate in order to fund it.
Megalopolis’ cast is equally crazy, with Adam Driver in the starring role joined by Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman, and Nathalie Emanuel.
Early screenings had bonkers reactions – with one source calling it ‘bats**t crazy’.
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Variety said: “Coppola’s long-gestating script is armed with ambiguous moral codes, sex, drugs, violence and reflections on the uncertain future of America”.
This reportedly includes shocking sexual scenes, with Aubrey Plaza playing a dominatrix, incest between two characters, and an extended scene of Jon Voight’s erection.
The film received a 10-minute standing ovation at its premiere last night at the Cannes Film Festival, with the applause reportedly having boos mixed in from the crowd.
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Reviews varied wildly, with Deadline Hollywood calling it a ‘masterwork’, whilst The Guardian said: “For me this is a passion project without passion: a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film, full of high-school-valedictorian verities about humanity’s future.”
Whether it turns out to be a masterpiece, a dud, or somewhere in between, it looks certain that Megalopolis is set to be one of the most talked about films ever when it finally comes out.
Topics: New York, Film, Aubrey Plaza, TV and Film, Cannes Film Festival
Michael Slavin