Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” comes from the heart

TORONTO (AP) — Francis Ford Coppola thinks he can stop time.

It is not only a characteristic of the protagonist of Coppola’s new film “Megalopolis”, a visionary architect named Cesar Catilina ( Adam Driver ), who can freeze the world for a moment with a yell of “Time, stop!” and then restore it with a snap of his fingers. And Coppola doesn't mean his ability to manipulate time in the editing room. He means it literally.

“We've all had moments in our lives where we achieve something that could be called happiness,” says Coppola. “There are times when you have to go away, work, whatever. And you just say, 'Well, I don't care. I'm just going to stop time.' I remember actually thinking I was going to do that once.”

Coppola thinks a lot about time. He is now 85. Eleanor, his wife of 61 years, died in April. “Megalopolis,” dedicated to her, is his first film in 13 years. He has been thinking about it for more than four decades. The film begins, appropriately, with the image of a clock.

“It's funny, you live your life going from a young person to an older person. You look that way,” Coppola said in a recent interview at a Toronto hotel before the North American premiere of “Megalopolis.” “But to understand it, you have to look the other way. You have to look at it from the perspective of the older person looking at the younger person, and you're moving away from that.”

“I’m kind of thinking about my life backwards,” says Coppola.

You've probably heard a lot about Megalopolis by now. You may know that Coppola financed the $120 million budget himself, using his lucrative wine empire to realize a long-held vision of a Roman epic in modern New York. You may know the film enthusiastic reception by critics at the Cannes Film Festival In May, some saw in it a great folly, others the wild ambition to admire her.

“Megalopolis,” a film that Coppola first thought about, “Apocalypse now” in the late 1970s, was for years the subject of intrigue, anticipation, gossip, a lawsuit and sheer disbelief.

But what you may not have heard about “Megalopolis” is that it is an extraordinarily sincere message from a master director nearing the end of his life. Giancarlo Esposito, who first read the script 37 years ago with Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup, calls it “a deep, deep dream of consciousness” from Coppola.

At a time when many are consumed by bitter partisan politics and fear of climate change, Coppola has taken every opportunity this year to invoke the idea that we are “one human family.” His film, a madcap dream of the future, is a ponderous but deeply felt fable about the limitlessness of human potential. As implausible as optimism may seem in 2024, it is Coppola’s cri de coeur—one he links less to his elder statesman perspective than to his enduring, childlike sense of possibility.

“I realized that human ingenuity is most evident when we play with our children. We are so creative when we play,” says Coppola. “In the cave paintings you see hands, but there are big hands and small hands.”

“Megalopolis” hits theaters Friday, including many IMAX theaters, from Lionsgate, bringing to a close what is arguably Coppola's biggest gamble — which is saying something for the filmmaker who shelled out millions to shoot “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippine jungle and bankrupted his production company Zoetrope to make 1982's “One From the Heart.” That title has remained emblematic of Coppola, a filmmaker with a distinctly personal touch who often shot his best work from a high angle.

“At one point on our first day of shooting, he said to everyone, 'We're not brave enough,'” Driver recalled in Cannes. “That was what fascinated me for the rest of the shoot.”

In the film, Cesar (Driver) clashes with backwards mayor Franklyn Cicero (Esposito), but falls in love with his daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). Cesar's powers as a time-stopper and architect come from a substance called Megalon, which could change the fate of the metropolis known as New Rome. A lot of people get into the mix, including Aubrey Plaza's TV personality Wow Platinum and Shia LaBeouf's Clodio Pulcher. Coppola spent years compiling a scrapbook of inspirations for the film, though one might wonder if Cesar isn't ultimately derived from himself.

“I thought about Francis, but I didn't think I would do a version of Francis,” Driver said. “I feel like all films depend on their directors in some way.”

Esposito was surprised that the script had hardly changed over the years. Every morning he would receive a text message from Coppola with a different old story. On set, Coppola preferred acting, improvisation and following his instincts.

“He takes his time. In today's modern world, we are used to getting an answer right away and needing to know the answer,” says Esposito. “And I don't think Francis needs to know the answer. I think the question is sometimes more important to him.”

Reports of unrest on the set led Driver to claim that, in fact, it was one of the best filming experiences of his career. Later, just before the film's premiere in Cannes, a report accused Coppola of behaving inappropriately with extras. Variety later published 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 over to hug, kiss on the cheek or whisper to several women.

Beginning of the month Coppola sued Variety, and claimed the report was false and defamatory. The trade publication said it stood behind its reporters.

When asked about the reports from Toronto, Coppola said, “I don't even want to talk about it. It's a waste of time.” Later in the interview, he also noted, “I have a lot of respect for women, I always have. My mother always taught me, 'Francis, if you ever hit on a girl, it means you're disrespecting her.' So I never did that.”

None of the major studios or streaming services (“Another word for home video,” says Coppola) wanted to buy “Megalopolis” after CannesHe also presented it for the first time to executives and friends in Los Angeles before the festival, but it met with little interest.

“I am a creation of Hollywood,” says Coppola. “I went there because I wanted to be a part of it, and by all means possible they let me be a part of it. But that system is dying.”

Even though Coppola is betting big on Megalopolis, he doesn't seem to be worried about it. It will be virtually impossible to recoup his investment in the film; he could lose many millions. But talking to Coppola, it's clear that he's full of gratitude. “I couldn't be happier,” he says.

“Everyone is so worried about money. I say: give me less money and more friends,” says Coppola. “Friends are valuable. Money is very fragile. You could have a million marks in Germany at the end of World War II and not buy bread with it.”

Coppola has been watching a lot of films from the 1930s lately ( “The terrible truth” is a favorite). But his thoughts are mostly on the cinema of the future. In recent years, Coppola has been experimenting with what he calls “live cinema,” trying to imagine a form of film that is simultaneously created and seen. In festival screenings, “Megalopolis” included a live moment in which a man comes onstage and asks a character on the screen a question.

“The films your grandchildren will make will not follow the same formula as today. We can't even imagine what it will be like, and that's the wonderful thing about it,” says Coppola. “The idea that there are a set of rules for making a film – you have to have this, you have to have that – is fine when you're making Coca-Cola, because you want to be sure you can sell it without risk. But cinema is not Coca-Cola. Cinema is a living, constantly changing thing.”

Coppola hopes to incorporate the live moment into nationwide screenings. Details about those screenings were not available as of Tuesday. He has even developed a way to “simulate an experience for the home that is a little bit theatrical,” he said. Regardless of whether moviegoers will flock to “Megalopolis,” it is clearly a passionate late-career statement from a titan of American cinema, shot without a hint of an algorithm, and embodying a line heard several times in the film: “When we throw ourselves into the unknown, we prove we are free.”

“There have to be filmmakers,” says Coppola, “who make the film without taking any risks and jump into it and say, 'Well, this feels right to me, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right, it doesn't matter. It's what I care about.'”