Francis Ford Coppola, one of our greatest existing managers, has spent$ 120 million of his own money to make a movie that he has long desired, and the blades are already out to destroy his chances of landing a submission package.
Coppola is an actor who refuses to get controlled, so he must fail.
An all-Copola-esque amazing science-fiction drama called Megalopolis is available. The man who brought us The Godfather ( 1972 ), Godfather II ( 1974), The Conversation ( 1974), Apocalypse Now ( 1979 ), The Outsiders ( 1983 ), Peggy Sue Got Married ( 1986 ), and Tucker: the Man and His Dream ( 1988 ), has written, financed, produced, and directed the biggest gamble of his life.
Better however, he bucked totalitarian Hollywood’s Cancel Bin to throw Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, and Dustin Hoffman.
Is n’t this what art is supposed to be all about — a dreamer dreaming big, taking risks, exiting his comfort zone,  , pushing it all into the middle of the table, and going against the grain ( cape shit ) to bring his vision to life?
Never in Hollywood.
The McCarthyite campaign to shackle Megalopolis in the crib started early and has n’t yet let up by using the left-wing trades like the Hollywood Reporter.
Two articles from January 2023, when the drama was still in production …
Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘ Megalopolis’ in Peril Amid Ballooning Budget, Crew Exodus
Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, the sci- bi- tinged , Megalopolis, has descended into chaos, according to many options. The film, now half through shooting in Atlanta, has in the last week lost key creative skills including its , production artist and supervising art director. That’s in addition to losing the entire group responsible for physical effects in the first half of December.
To some insiders, the production is giving severe , Apocalypse Then  , vibes, and it’s one on which the irreverent 83- year- ancient director is breaking a saint Hollywood rule: Never invest your own money.
Yes, not spend your own cash because fascist studios that are unable to manage your vision will join their sycophants in the trades to issue a warning about the cost you will pay to leave the plantation.
Also media outlets that claim to support independent films were great dogs:
We’ve reached the team stopping, costs exploding piece of Megalopolis ‘ production
None of these troubles are also unexpected, though. Coppola fired his physical effects supervisor on , Bram Stoker’s Dracula,  , The Hollywood Reporter , information. However, the results in , Dracula , are among the film’s most stunning and spectacular elements. On the set of his film, Apocalypse Now, Coppola also famously sent his cast into the depths of darkness. The shoot, which took place in the Philippines, had a litany of problems, including severe weather, grave robbers bringing real corpses to set, and Martin Sheen suffering a near- fatal heart attack. Coppola’s wife, Elanor]sic], captured the whole thing in the documentary , Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which says everything one needs to know about the three- year struggle to get that on the screen.
Coppola and his star, Adam Driver, pushed back hard against these reports. And then, a mere year later, Megalopolis was completed, seemingly on time and on budget. So Coppola’s main goal now is to secure a respectable distribution deal, not the crusade itself.
The self- funded epic is deemed too “experimental” and” not good” enough for the$ 100 million marketing spend envisioned by the legendary director.
…
” Everyone is rooting for Francis and feels nostalgic”, adds another attendee. ” But then there is the business side of things.”
A , third , attendee noted” a conspicuous silence at the end of it”, but stopped , short of writing off the film as a failed exercise. ” Does it wobble, wander, go all over the place? Yes. However, it is incredibly imaginative and does reveal something about our time. I think it’s going to be a small, specialized label]that picks it up ]”.
Did n’t a peculiar, adult-focused film called Oppenheimer recently emerge out of thin air and win numerous Oscar nominations?
We witnessed this in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ ( 2004 ), Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves ( 1990 ), John Cassavetes never was permitted out of the ghetto, John Sayles and John Waters are unable to raise money for their films…
And these geniuses do n’t really work outside the box as much. It is not their status as “independents” that dooms them to hate campaigns, claiming they have already failed. No, their sin is refusing to conform politically. We would n’t have seen any of these headlines if Coppola had told a story about white cops brutalizing “black bodies” or how castrating a young boy into a young girl was something liberating and beautiful. But Coppola does n’t operate that way. He’s his own man. Can’t have that.
Coppola and Apocalypse Now went through the exact same smear campaign in 1979. He won that time with one of the best movies ever produced. The attacks on Megalopolis appear to be a case in point, an opportunity to wipe the Apocalypse egg off their smug faces.
One of my all- time favorite movies ( see: #63 ) is Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream ( 1988 ). It might be his most intimate film, in my opinion, the tale of an outsider and visionary who was destroyed by a fascist government while doing fascist big business’s will.
Maybe Megalopolis stinks. Who knows? However, how many$ 300 million Disney films stink ( answer: all of them ) before We the People have our say?
If you’re not rooting for Megalopolis, you can no longer call yourself a movie lover. Instead, you are broken, compromised, and corrupt.
John Nolte’s debut novel , Borrowed Time , ( Bombardier Books ) is available , today.  , You can read an exclusive , excerpt , here  , and , a review of the novel , here.  ,  ,
