Francis Ford Coppola: Winery Godfather to MegaFlopolis, Part 2 - Magalopolis (2024)

Here’s PART TWO of our coverage of Francis Ford Coppola’s Alpha and Omega of his career. Make sure you check out PART ONE where we cover The Godfather (1972) and the rise, almost fall, then final sell-off of Coppola’s winery empire in Napa, Sonoma, and Oregon.

Here in PART TWO we cover the Omega, MEGALOPOLIS (2024). And taste two well-aged Coppola wines - a 1998 Niebaum-Coppola “Cask” Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2000 Niebaum-Coppola Cabernet Franc! - and say which wine pairs best with which film.

We opened these two bottles at Curated Wine Shop (go follow them on IG!) We brought them randomly, spur of the moment, this was not planned or mentioned to the Curated folks in advance. And when we arrived, and told them what we had and why we were opening them, they said: “Oh, Megalopolis? The Production Designer, Bradley Rubin, is sitting right over there!”

Soooo…yeah. We sure as shit called him over and he graciously allowed us to talk his ear off about his exeperience on making the film!!! Note that this was a very impromptu recording, so the audio is muddy, music and background noise abound, and Brad is a soft spoken person, but it’s all legible!

Enjoy, my friends.

Chapters

• 3:40 Overview of Part 1 and What We're Covering in Part 2
• 8:15 History of Megalopolis
• 35:10 Let's Talk About This Goddamned Movie
• 50:48 Megalon and Modern Technology
• 59:01 Comparisons to The Congress (2013)
• 1:04:11 It Coulda Been a Contender
• 1:07:32 The Most Curious Line in the Whole Movie
• 1:14:14 George Lucas' Take on the Power of the Creator
• 1:19:25 The Wines!
• 1:31:14 Production Designer Bradley Rubin Extro

Transcript

0:05

Are you not entertained? He's Dave and I'm Dallas and this is Ventertainment. We have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes those opinions are spot on. Sometimes they go down easier with a glass of wine. This is entertainment, the wine and entertainment pairing podcast. Welcome back to another Wine and Entertainment pairing for Y'all Vintertainment. This is of course the podcast where we delude ourselves into thinking you want to hear what we have to say about different pieces of pop culture and art, but know for a fact that you need to hear what we have to say about wine because man, wine is complicated. You think all you need to know is the name of a grape, but even more important is where was it grown? And even then, you still can't depend on any given flavor profile without knowing what kind of container was it aged in. Was there skin contact or no skin contact? Cold or warm fermentation? Whole cluster or destemmed? What's the alcohol level? How long has it been in the bottle? Okay, you don't actually need to know half of that, but you do definitely need to know the other half of that to know what you're getting in any given bottle. So what better way to get to know more about wine? and about more wines than to hear one W set level three certified wine professional and one normal person who puts up with him natter on about specific wine details, flavor profiles, and the stories behind them all couched in terms of how well they may or may not go with certain kinds of entertainments. And what better way to learn about the art of entertaining, storytelling, and world building than to listen to a professional writer, world builder, and one normal person who puts up with him matter on about mood, theme, artistic intention, and poetic notion all couched in terms of how well they may or may not pair with specific ones. Because whether you're talking about wine or entertainment, you get the most out of either when you have an adventurous spirit and an open mind explore different corners of what an art form has to offer. Wine itself is an art form. It's history and culture in a glass. And in most cases, a winemaker's passion, just as entertainment is history, culture, and an artist's passion on a page, screen or record, which is why they go so goddamn well together. That's right. Now. Please be sure to give this podcast follow or subscribe. And even better, leave a rating and or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you're listening to this on, both the rating and a review. If you can be bothered with it, the more you do, the more the algorithm loves us, shows us to others who also listen to wine or entertainment podcasts. And that's how we grow. Also, please tell a friend or family member about this podcast if you think they'd enjoy it. Send them to our podcast, to our Instagram, VentertainmentPod, Ventertainment P-O-D on the I-G. and or to our home base of operations, which is Substack. And you can find that at entertainment studios dot com our glorified vanity URL that will nevertheless take you to a Substack. And there you will find a directory of all our episodes directories of all the wine and entertainment pairings broken down by category bonus pairings not featured on this podcast articles about the wine and entertainment industries, including an article on Dracula 1992 directed by Francis Ford Coppola. We covered that actually. parts of it in part one of this episode that you are listening to today as we chronicled all of Coppola's winery empire, where it came from, when he directed The Godfather, ah how he got the cash, how he almost lost it, how Dracula rescued it, and then how we got all the way to where we are today where he sold a major portion of it to finance what we're gonna talk about today, Megalopolis. So make sure to check that out over on our Substack. You will also find guest collabs with other wine and entertainment writers, interactive polls. I mean, I'm telling you folks, if you enjoy this podcast whatsoever, you simply must go follow us on Substack at entertainmentstudios.com. It is the best place to get to know us better. And today, part two of our epic chronicling of The Godfather and Megalopolis. This is where in part one, we talked a little bit. about the wines that we are going to be pairing with these two. got our hands on some very old Nibam Coppola wines. So it was good stuff. His high end wines, that first winery that he ever bought with the cash from the Godfather part one. And we found a 2000 Cabernet Franc in a 1998 quote unquote cast Cabernet Sauvignon. We opened them up together at a local LA place called Curated Wine Shop. Shout out to Curated Wine Shop here in LA. Now Curated Wine Shop is owned by an ex-production designer here in the industry. So we brought them there to share because old wines, when you open them, they're really probably not going to last after day one when you open them. They're going to oxidize much faster than younger wine will. They won't hold up for long. So I kind of like we shouldn't each drink a full bottle of wine in one sitting. So let's bring more people into the mix so we can actually drink all of this once we open it. And there, of course, was also a little bit of a risk. They wouldn't even be good. at that point anymore, but let's take the risk and let's share it with others. Sharing wine is also a big part of what makes it so great. So we brought it there, we opened it, and it just so happened a fellow production designer was sitting at a nearby table. The production designer of Megalopolis was sitting at a nearby table. So we called him on over and he sat down and chatted with us. um We whipped out our phones. He allowed us to take a little impromptu recording of his experiences with Megalopolis. He got to try the wines and decide which might pair with which. So we have some snippets. This is Bradley Rubin that we're going to be talking to today or who we talk to. Right. And you're going to hear today because we recorded some of those clips. Now note when we play those clips, there's going to be background noise. This was in a there was music playing in the background. gorilla audio, but we did our best to clean it up a little bit and to make sure Bradley could be heard. He actually has a very soft speaking voice, which made it a little difficult. He's very soft spoken and me and Dallas are not. And so we have very booming voices, podcast voices. And so, and of course we were holding our phones. Our voice was right up against the phone and his was like across the table. So I was like, Ooh, yeah, bad setup. Next time we got to put the phone in the middle of the table. Whoopsie. But We're going to do our best with all of that. And you're going to hear from Bradley here today. Also, one of the ladies who works at Curated knew an actress who worked in Megalopolis. so we're going to we she offered to put us in touch. We she reached out to her. We will be interviewing her next week. So part three will drop next week as well. And that will be a bit of a it's not going to be part three. It's going to be a companion interview. with her about her experiences getting cast in Megalopolis, what it was like filming. um And I can guarantee you this, whoever you think this actress is, it's not. It's gonna be a special little ventreview. We are going to be, and I even know that we have a special kind of exclusive ventreview with her because when we set up the time and date to record. She basically is like, and by the way, I've never done this before. So she's never done an interview on a podcast before. So I'm like, okay, here we go. So this is gonna be fun. This is gonna be fun. But for today, we are here to talk about Megalopolis. Dallas, why don't you tell us, give us a little bit of history, a little bit of background on Megalopolis to get us started. Let's do a quick flyover. I like to call these little flyovers of Megalopolis here. um So Megalopolis is a multi-decade long work, 40 years, if not 50, depending on some uh of the data out there, set in a near future New York City and centers around the work and obsessions of a visionary architect. and his efforts to build a new utopia from the ashes of a failed capitalist civilization while encountering the friction of deeply unyielding politicos. And if you're paying attention to politics right now, we are definitely dealing with deeply unyielding politicos. uh In the 70s, Coppola envisioned an operatic epic of a future city. At the center of that idea, like the center of some of his other ideas, was the concept of imperialism. Again. If you're paying attention to the news today, idea, concept of imperialism may ring true after the success of a bottle. time he was thinking more like the Vietnam War. uh yeah, as a matter of fact after the success of Apocalypse Now, he was emboldened to begin fleshing out this operatic opus. Then in the 1980s, still connected to all things Italy, he came across the mention of the Catalanarian conspiracy and ancient coup that would become a theme of his work. And like any good idea hoarder, I am. know what that conspiracy is. Yes, uh I do. have another note here. Yeah, we'll circle back at the end because it actually it actually it actually is important to the tale of uh Megalopolis so later on we'll circle back to it. Okay, and like any good idea hoarder he stacked away thousands of bits of ideas ribbons of incomplete scenes notions and themes and to folders which would eventually form the script. But as mentioned earlier, the bankruptcy associated with the 80s films, uh like One from the Heart left a little room in the coffers for Megalopolis. uh And if you listen to our earlier uh episode, the previous episode, you will know uh very clearly why there was very little money in the coffers. So go back and check that episode out. Eventually, the heart he put a lot of his own money. It was the first finance essentially. know, which, you know, apparently he didn't learn that lesson. So, hey, you know, right. Eventually in the 90s, after a few of the aforementioned successes, he began to hold table reads of early drafts of the Mecalopolis screenplay featuring familiar names from his body of work like De Niro, DiCaprio, Gandolfini, Baldwin, Crowe, among others. Then 9-11 happens and brings everything to a halt. It finally ramps up speed again around 2003 and held workshops with the likes of Ryan Gosling, even going so far as to ask composers to create symphonies for the work, which up until that point did not actually exist. Then knee deep in the auteur's nightmare, as it is called, which is basically having a long range project that grows a thousand arms and takes more time than you care to ah devote to it. It becomes its own monster. That is the auteur's nightmare. He decided to take a break from the Megalopolis pre-production and make a novella adaptation called Youth Without Youth. You can find that. I think the entire thing is on YouTube at the moment, I believe. uh And is that Youth Without Youth? was a film adaptation of a novella? It was a film adaptation of the War. I wasn't sure if you meant he wrote a novella as an adaptation of Megalopolis. story is a friend brought it gave him a copy of the novella and, you know, essentially said, check this out. And he was inspired and went ahead and made a film adaptation of Youth Without You. So definitely check it out. It's a fun little piece. Then finally, in 2019, he announces that he had completed the screenplay for Michaelopolis and will self. finance the project. ah thing about that, that he announced that in 2019 is the sale for his winery wasn't until 2021. He was like, how am I going to do this? That was step two, right? I believe that the conversations as far as I can find, the conversation of the sale had already started. the film premiered at Cannes on May 16th and hit theaters September 27th, 2024 with opening global gross of $14 million on $130-some-odd million. Yeah. Oh, mostly self-financed. This is just making every cell in my body cringe. I'm definitely the person who would self-finance, for sure. 100%. I just say like in in this movie, there are a lot of these little cement blocks in sort of Roman or Germanic language that like are title cards. Yeah, pop up in the very first one that does in the movie is a title card that says debt. Some large families were completely destitute. That's how the movie starts. I'm like, wow. I'm like, yes. I'm like, okay, you were, yeah, living the dream, man, but also writing about what you were doing to yourself in that moment. But yeah, if you listen to part one, where we really chronicle oh Coppola's career and how almost or bankrupt he did go, how he had to completely declare bankruptcy for his first production company, Zoetrope, rebrand as American Zoetrope much later. This is not new to him. This is what he does. This is his thing. This is part of process. Yeah. So Coppola has a quote. My greatest fear is to make a really shitty, embarrassing, pompous film of an important subject. And I am doing it. I will tell you right straight from the most sincere depths of my heart. The film will not be good. Now, that film he was talking about was Apocalypse Now. And it was good. And that brings us to Megalopolis. Basically it does. Cast members, talking about Megalopolis, cast members, including Adam Driver, have spoken positively of their experience on the film. according to other sources, its making was almost as fraught and chaotic as that of Apocalypse Now. Much time and effort was allegedly wasted. Crucial crew members quit halfway through. and Coppola made things even worse and more complicated by embarking on a property redevelopment at the same time. As one crew member put it, quote, it was like watching a train wreck unfold day after day, after week, and knowing that everybody there had tried their hardest to help the train wreck be avoided, unquote. Now, can I just say we had a quote like this is very similar. to the experience Coppola had on The Godfather, his very first major film, when he was in the bathroom and those crew members came in and they're like, this is a shit job, this is a train wreck, it's all going wrong. So that's just to sort of restate that Coppola is used to people thinking this and saying this and everything, all evidence to the contrary or all evidence showing that yes, it is a problem, it is all going wrong. and a masterpiece coming out the other end. mean, Apocalypse now even more than The Godfather, but this is something he's very used to. Now, to be fair, by the time he was filming Megalopolis, he was also used to the opposite. One from the heart, uh the cotton club. had all the experiences. Yes, he's had all the experience. He's had these things go wrong. We were talking in part one that like he doesn't have a great ratio of hits to misses like this version of what he does to make genius work is seems to not work as more often than it does. And yet he stuck to it his whole career. So Coppola has described Megalopolis as his quote unquote dreamscript. He first had the idea while making Apocalypse Now fueled by the same concerns about US imperialism. He has framed it as a, quote, Roman epic set in modern America, transposing oh your conspiracy to overthrow the rulers of the Roman Republic. There it is. To overthrow the rulers of the Roman Republic in 63 BC to a sci-fi future. We'll get to that. The plot hinges on an idealistic architect played by Driver. trying to build a utopian city on the ruins of New York against the wishes of the mayor, played by Giancarlo Esposito, with the mayor's socialite daughter, played by Nathalie Emanuel, caught in the middle. The cast is star-studded Chaya LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, John Voight. Can I just say John Voight? I do not want to give this motherfucker credit because of who he is. He is the best performance in this movie. He's so in the role. Somehow, and he's delivering, I don't know if it's because, you know, he's relegated himself to the far crazy right wing propaganda pieces these days where no one else. Yes, but I don't know if it's because he knew this was his shot at being relevant again for one more movie, but he is giving it his all. it. He's turning it in man. He is turning it in he is reminding everyone why he was such an amazing actor in the first place, regardless of what a scummy human being he became in his later years. Or maybe he was always scummy, that I don't know. But he's always been a very good actor. And wow, every line he delivers in this movie is fucking pitch perfection. And both serious and hysterical and satirical. And he has all the best lines in this movie. He delivers them impeccably with comedic timing that I'm just like, what is going on? How is he this good? It's incredible. I hate giving him this credit. My God, he's good in this movie. the project first came into the front burner after the failure of Coppola's 1982 musical One from the Heart, which, as we've already mentioned, he self-financed. Then, and he opted in that one to direct it remotely from a custom built trailer known as the Silverfish. He did this on Michaelopolis as well, so remember that. ah He did this in order to test out new video production technology. As one industry figure put it, he took an $8 million project and used the latest advances in video to bring it in for 23 million. So in the early 80s, he talked about it a lot, says the sound designer and longtime Coppola collaborator Richard Beggs. and he was already thinking big. At one point it was going to be staged sort of like Wagner's Ring Cycle. The film was going to be screened over four nights. The audiences would come and they would book themselves into a hotel and see this thing in a gigantic outdoor purpose-built theater. oh sign me up, I want this experience, damn it, yes. uh He was thinking of something like the Red Rocks Amphitheater. Okay. Now there was a tiny bit of this in the theatrical performances or some of the theatrical screenings for Megalopolis where there would be an interactive element in the screenings. Dallas, you saw this in the theater. Was there any interactive element when you saw it in the theater? Not other than, uh the, I think there's a point when one of the characters looks directly at the screen and talks to the audience, but other than that, eh, no. No, Okay, someone's supposed to come out with microphone and do this thing where it's like you're talking to the audience, but then it's taking like audience feedback type of a thing. Okay. Oh, did that happen? No, it was supposed to, but it didn't. it was supposed to, but it didn't. OK. Well, they tried this. think I don't think it was particularly successful. I don't think anyone particularly responded to it. So a lot of places just stopped or didn't do it. I'm not sure on this. Anyway, various personnel came and went over the years. 1989, production was rumored to be starting at Rome's Senesita Studios, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, with Coppola's trusted production designer, Dean Tavolaris. and the comic book artist Jim Sterenko, who had worked with Coppola on Dracula designing sets. Coppola regularly held table readings of the latest draft of the script with actors including Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, James Kahn, Edie Falco, and Uma Thurman. The cinematographer, Ron Frick, whose documentary, uh if I can pronounce this, Coyanes Quatzi? Coyanes Quatzi, yeah, yeah, uh So Coppola produced that. Everyone knows the one I'm talking about, No one knows how to pronounce it exactly, but everyone knows what I'm talking about. Reportedly shot more than 30 hours of second unit unit footage around New York for the film. They were in the city shooting when 9-11 happened, which says Coppola prompted a major rethink. Quote, How do you make a movie about the center of the world without dealing with the fact that it was attacked and thousands of people were killed? Now. Yes, there is something in the movie that is plainly referencing 9-11. OK, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. uh About 300 rewrites, 40 years of preparation and one winery sale later, he finally had the means to make his dream script come true in autumn 2022, shooting commenced over several sound stages at Atlanta's Trillith Studios. I have no idea where Francis gets his energy from, says the British director Mike Figgis, who has known Coppola for 30 years. About 18 months ago, Figgis jokingly suggested making a fly in the wall documentary of the making of Megalopolis. A few months later, Coppola contacted him out of the blue saying, when can you be here? Can you come over now? That's very, according to Figgis, that is very Coppola. arriving in Atlanta, Figgis was impressed. So I want to see this documentary. Apparently, Figgis did film this. Yeah, the episode four, the way, go on. This is the hearts of darkness for this, you know, documentary for this movie. um Figus says, watching an 84 year old guy hold together this massive team and to have enough brains to be able to direct the actors, the camera and everything. He was up every morning making notes on his way to the set or he's discussing his idea with Roman, his son. And by the way, Roman Coppola gets an almost kind of co-director credit on this movie. It's sort of sort of an acknowledgement that he was very, very instrumental in that. At the end of the day, he's also the producer, so he's thinking about his interest rate." And if that wasn't enough, Coppola made life even harder for himself. When he arrived in Atlanta, he was looking for accommodation for his extended family, and he wasn't finding anything in particular that he liked. So he bought a drive-in motel, which had just closed, and decided to renovate it while filming. So all the while, Of course, because it's all through the shoot. He lived there. The construction noise started at six in the morning when Figus, who opted to stay in a different hotel, asked Coppola how he handled it all. He said, Coppola just said, look, it's all the same thing. Movie business, construction business. It's telling people what you want and making sure they do it. Oh, that is Coppola in a nutshell right there. Let me tell you, motherfucker. So and this goes back to what we said in part one of The Godfather where He had to stay in this motel with a very pregnant wife and all his screaming kids and he couldn't sleep and at the time he hated it. And now he seeks it out. Now he literally invents the issue to occur so he can live in that chaos. Or something, I don't get it. So by the sound of things, the Megalopolis shoot became a clash between Coppola's old school approach, privileging spontaneity. Spontaneity? Spontaneity? May. It's hilarious though. Spontaneity, privileging spontaneity and finding magic in the moment and never digital filmmaking methods. and newer. uh Seriously. Should have stuck with Dracula style, right? Build the city. Build a whole city, Francis. what's crazy. That's my major gripe with the film. If he had made this as practically as possible, I think it would have been a better film. By the sound of things, the shoot became a clash between Coppola's old school approach, privileging spontaneity and finding the magic in the moment and newer digital filmmaking methods such as filming actors in front of virtual CGI landscapes in a quote unquote volume, effectively a giant wall of LED screens. Today's technology enables directors to realize anything they can dream up, including utopian cities of the future, but working this way demands. Preparation and collaboration. So quote, I think Coppola still lives in this world where as an auteur, you're the only one who knows what's happening and everybody else is just there to do what he asked them to do suggested one former crew member who did not wish to be named. Love that. So the crew member sometimes found Coppola's approach exasperating. Another quote, we had these beautiful designs that kept evolving, but he would never settle on one. And every time we would have a new meeting, it was a different idea. When the crew member insisted they needed to do more work to determine how the film was going to look, they say Coppola replied, quote, how can you figure out what Megalopolis looks like when I don't even know what Megalopolis looks like? I love that. Unquote. Ah, so good. So, and we mentioned this when we talked to Bradley, the second production designer, who had to come in halfway through the shoot and pick up where the previous production design team left off. Anyway, a lot of time was apparently wasted. A second crew member recalls, quote, he would often show up in the mornings for these big sequences and because no plan had been put in place and because he wouldn't allow his collaborators to put a plan in place, he would often just sit in his trailer for hours on end like a fucking actor. I swear to God. He wouldn't talk to anybody, was often smoking marijuana, and hours and hours would go by without anything being filmed. And the crew and the cast would all stand around and wait. And then he'd come out and whip something up that just didn't make any sense. Damn right. that didn't... Dallas is like proud auteur artist over there. And then... and didn't follow anything anybody had spoken about or anything that was on the page. And we'd all just go along with it, trying to make the best out of it. But pretty much every day we just walk through shaking our heads, wondering what we just spent the last 12 hours doing. And as a third member put it, crew member puts it, quote, This sounds crazy to say, but there were times when we were all standing around going, has this guy ever made a movie before? Unquote. So Adam Driver's first day on set was particularly memorable. A source suggests one aspect of the story involves Driver's character's body fusing with some of the futuristic organic material called Megalon. So rather than just using digital effects, Coppola wanted to achieve this effect through old school methods, using projectors and mirrors, which as he had done on Dracula 30 years earlier. That's great, said one crew member, except nobody can move. So they basically strapped Adam Driver into a chair for six hours. And they literally took a $100 projector and projected an image on the side of his head. I'm all in for experimentation, but this is really what you want to do with the first day with a $10 million actor. Yes. The effect would have been quick and easy to create digitally, they say. So he Coppola spends literally half the day on what could have been done in 10 minutes. Quote, we were all aware that we were participating in what might be a really sad finish to his career. but he was just so unpleasant towards a lot of the people who were trying to help facilitate the process and help him make the movie better. Now, things came to a head in December, 2022, roughly halfway through the 16 week shoot when most of the visual effects and our teams were either fired or quit. Who saw that coming? I think he had to work quite hard to then figure out how to replace them. I think this is Mike Figgis, the director and friend who was doing the docu, the behind the scenes documentary ah says, I think he just wanted to liberate himself while he was shooting. So we didn't have to wait for stuff. And then he'd say, I'll fix it later. I'll fix it in post, which I guess he's done before. the virtual volume, the led screens was abandoned in favor of more traditional green screen technology. According to one source, his dig at us was always, I don't want to make a Marvel movie at the end of the day. That's what he ended up shooting. Now, during the time he was shooting Megalopolis, Coppola was also contending with the fact that his wife, Eleanor, had become ill. And this is the lady who shot the Hearts of Darkness documentary, basically doing what Mike Figgis is doing for this Megalopolis movie. she's been ride or die with him their whole lives. Every time he's almost gone bankrupt, mean, they asked her, what do you think about this? And she was always like, we'll figure it out. We'll be fine. Like she just never, never said bupkis. She was. Ride or Die with Coppola. And I do wonder, she became ill. She was on set and location during the making of the film until her illness prevented her from being there. And she did pass away in April of 2024, shortly before the film's release. And I don't know how much of her illness did not, either was part of why he had to dive into, I don't know if she was actually ill before they started shooting. And I don't know if this was something they might have been able to see coming. And I don't know if her illness was something that had mortality on Coppola's mind. And so he's like, do or die, make this fucking movie, because none of us are here forever. I don't know if it was a little bit of an escape to think about something else that wasn't his ill wife. I don't know, but it does make me wonder because of her illness and the timing of it. And if. I do think Coppola makes movies and does things like this craft in the same way that he creates this chaos around him to survive anything like this, where it's like he is not a he is not a sit in silence contemplating in the stillness. You know, renovated a fucking drive in motel to stay in while he did this. Now, that said, he had his little trailer, right? He also kind of hit out in. But so it's I guess it's a little bit of both, but it does make me wonder in any event. Like by the way real quick According to Wikipedia at least Eleanor was diagnosed with thymona in 2010 while her doctor told her they could remove it by shrinking it with three months of chemo She declined the treatment So it seems as if it was connected to that Just grew from there. Okay. uh I mean, 14 more years, even after noticing it, that's not bad. But I wonder how rough, because as it grows, of course, different, uh you, your body notices it more and more and start to go wrong. In any event, early reactions to make a lot of lists have of course been mixed. uh Late reactions to make a lot of lists has of course been mixed. um There was, after a private screening in Los Angeles, uh one executive described it as quote unquote bat shit crazy. Another told reporters quote, there is just no way to position this movie. A third said quote, it's so not good and it was so sad watching it. This is not how Coppola should end his directing career. Now others uh have almost oversold the damn thing saying the opposite. One said, quote, I feel I was part of history. Megalopolis is a brilliant visionary masterpiece. Another said, quote, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't do anything for the rest of the day. Another one said, quote, This film is like Einstein and relativity in 1905, Picasso and Guernica in 1937. It's a date in the history of cinema. I mean, yeah, I agree with that. Absolutely. Now in a interview, Francis Ford Coppola did say, quote, I don't think things through. I feel them through. And I know that half the time it might not land right. And maybe there's a pleasure in that. But in my life, I have to say that served me well. When you're this old guy dying, you don't want to say, I wish I had done that and that. When you're this- In my case, I did it. Wow. Yeah. when this old guy died. Sorry, sorry, I'll just take a moment. Read that line again, with this old guy dying. When you are this old guy dying. Great line. Fucking line. Yeah. Okay. And when you are that old guy dying, you don't want to say, wish I had done this and that. In my case, I did it. I did all the things other people would just regret and they didn't try. Because in the end, you die. You don't get any award for just being conservative. Damn right, Francis! So that said, let's talk about this goddamn movie. So Dallas, you saw it before me. You saw it in the theater. What were your initial thoughts? Okay, so as I said, uh I'm one of those guys who, if it's an artist, an auteur that I sign up for, because he is one of those guys, it's like, look, whatever you give me, I'm gonna be thankful for it. Thankful for it, I am. I may not like it in terms of the narrative or its structure or something, some, you know. uh but I'm going to enjoy whatever the vision is, whatever feeling or emotion you put on the screen. And so going in, I didn't have high hopes. I didn't have expectations even. I didn't go in thinking, this is going to be great. This is going to be good. I went in thinking, okay, this is going to be Coppola, whatever the fuck that means. and uh it is such an expansive. epic, it is sort of a life affirming work from this artist, this author, because he is essentially affirming himself, he's affirming his POV, he's affirming his talent, his skill, his emotion, his creativity. And it does sort of stand as a punctuation. punctuation to an epic career and an epic life. And like you said in the quotes, like we said in the quotes, you know, he doesn't necessarily think things out. He feels them out. And I'm a person who thinks everything out. uh Feeling is just not there for me in my writing. And because of that, I appreciate people who are purist in that way. I appreciate that purity. ah So going in, like I said, I had no expectations other than give it to me, daddy. You know, whatever it is, give it to me. same in terms of expectations. And I was like, I mean, obviously I knew it had bombed. knew people were very, the best most people had with this movie is like you, they were appreciative that it existed. But I don't think anyone particularly thought it was well made. And so I'm like, and I mean, it, production value, it's $130 million movie. value wise, more outside of a few shoddy visual effects compared to other visual effects, like some of them are really good and some of them, the visual effects, like one of my favorite moments of the movie, and I thought the effects were so elegantly, perfectly done. When they're going through the city and the statues are sagging. And like, like falling down and leaning on things. And they're all statues that represent things like justice and law and mercy and like those Roman Greek statues of those gods that all represent those things. was just a visual metaphor for like in a corrupt society, in a dissolving society, in a culture that is an empire that is dying. Like here's how it dies is these are the These are the elements that are no longer strong enough and being held up well enough. And so they're lying down to die. They're lying down to sleep or just barely able to stand on their own. And even just the way it looked, was like, yeah, this doesn't look like they spent $300 million on it or anything like that. But it works. It works exactly the way it should. And I'm like, God, this is right. This is exactly what this movie needs to meet now. When I watched this movie though, I heard a lot of people say like there isn't really a story there. And I disagree with that. There is 100 % of story here. It's telling a very specific story. The characters and characters, there's a plot, all those fun things. Like it's not, it's not even hard to follow the plot. It just doesn't work. And there's a difference where the one thing that I feel is I also appreciate someone who feels things through rather than thinks things through. do want to point out though, going back to a Bob Evans quote about the Godfather, where he told Francis not to be so goddamn cerebral. And it's interesting that then Francis at this point in time, maybe even back then, now thinks that he doesn't think things through, he feels things through. And I wonder if that changed at any point, or if that is always his version of being cerebral was feeling things through versus what you know, really, maybe he didn't ultra intellectualize things. He just would always be poetic. Instinct, a poetic instinct. yeah, I get it. yeah. And I'm not sure which, but it was interesting that he had this quote now, whereas other people called him super cerebral back then. When it comes to feeling things through, obviously it has served him well sometimes. It worked really well in Dracula, where so much of, I think, doing a horror fantasy that was very heavily inspired by German Expressionism, I think there's a lot to feel through in that, that way it works really well. Apocalypse Now, same thing. You took this incredibly frankly, boring as shit novel and like found that it was about a very serious topic and just gave it cinematic reality through vibes. I going back to our vibes line that we like to like so much about that movie is just vibes. It's contemplating these things, but not actually going anywhere with them. It just contemplates them. think and I Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to tie that back. So in Megalopolis, I think it served him well in some movies. The problem with Megalopolis is it has a thesis. It's trying to prove it like it's like this is how we create utopia. It's literally trying to say how we create utopia and Heart of Darkness doesn't have a conclusion. Heart of Darkness doesn't have an end point. A this is how you come out of the darkness. It wasn't trying to say any of that. It was just showing you the darkness. And that's why it works. Whereas in something like Megalopolis, you can't feel it through because it's literally a fucking literary essay on utopia. And then you just, it just happened. literally he's like, and we create utopia by drum roll, please. creating it. And you're like, wow, thanks, Grantsus. Yeah, exactly. Anyways, what were you about to say? ah No, I think you're right. think the reason Megalopolis does read and feel like a thesis, because it really does. It reads and feels like a straight thesis, is first of all, I don't think it was initially meant to be. I think collectively he had to sit with this grand feeling. an idea of Megalopolis because I do think it probably fit more early on and through the years it fit into his habit of feeling his right way through creativity and ideas and notions. So, but by the time he had to then start to start processing 25, 30, 40 years of, you know, inspiration. and feeling and notion and idea and textures and themes and characters and you know, the romance of it all. At a certain point, I think he did have to sit down and intellectualize all of this stuff to create a coherent quote unquote, or at least defined thesis. And that's what this film feels like to me. It feels like a ton, decades worth of inspiration, which is what it is. of sort of collecting these notions and ideas and creativity and sort of spark. It is such a hodgepodge at this point. And then he had to sit with them in order to make something coherent out of them. And I think that's that sort of dissonance for the experience of the film, you know, particularly with what you're saying, sort of the punctuation of the film being sort of, and this is how we make Civilis era, our utopia, you have to actively do it and make it, know, ha ha ha ha. Then he he is. Right. Right. You know. and I'll like, it won't just happen magically. And I'm like, yeah, we know that. I also believe he was feeling that mortality actively and feeling his place in the cultural landscape because he is the elder statesman, right? He's been a proper guard of cinema and storytelling and narrative and creativity for 50 years. And at 80 some odd years, his wife dying, you know, I think he's probably feeling, huh, well, what exactly do I have to say? What is the final thought I may want to leave with? Not to say that it was the entirety of the mission behind this piece, but when you factor in this, again, this 40, 50 years of creativity that you then have to sit with and say, all right, we get two hours and 30 minutes to make a movie. What's the fucking thesis? This is kind of how it evolved for me. I see, I don't think that's how it happened. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, he had this thesis back in the 70s, or so he says. Like the thesis was there from the get go. He did not have to come up with it. He already knew he wanted to compare American imperialism with the fall of the Roman Empire. And he was like, this is what we're doing here. This is the point. And by doing that, by this megalopolis, a utopian city that would be something different. So like that whole core concept was there from the get go. I actually think the problem is he never let that core concept go. And the reason I think that is the problem is one, maybe there was something to 1970s version of American imperialism and the decline that compared to something like what exactly was the fall of the Roman Empire. I think though there's, you can't feel your way through the differences between the Roman Empire and the American Empire because they are still, they are very distinct in terms of what exactly is going on in this point in time, what the structure of the global, because we're not even in these little, especially compared to 1979 also though, but we were already becoming very globalized by 1979. We were post-World Wars, which is when that globalization really began. But even compared to 1979, we are so much more globalized now than ever before. He does not seem to have taken anything about the Internet or social media or smartphones like technology. All this technological revolution that has changed the landscape. I made this comment when we were drinking wines at curated. It's not in our recording. So I'll say this now. But at one point I mentioned that like. kind of his final thesis, like what he says at the very end is something around the lines of, I write this line down? No, I did not. So Adam Driver, the final guy is basically like, we will talk to each other. We will have a conversation. And this is how by by actually talking to each other, we will create utopia. And my very first thought when he said that was talking to each other. is called the internet man. And that hasn't gone very well. Like it has in fact become the problem is we're all incessantly talking to each other at all times. And to the point I'm like, I feel like there's so much about modern technology and everything that has happened since the since the 90s and ohs that he like technologically wise, he just has ignored. And he's still in that 1979 thesis. And I'm like, okay, man, there is, we needed to go much further and not just introduce a fan, and especially here's the other big bummer or the thing that I thought was a missed opportunity. He has a fantastical element called Megalon. Right? And this is the, and I love the fact that he's like, he discovered this element. Doesn't say how, what exactly is the element? No, someone else made a really good point when they were talking about how do we get this element? How do we mine it? from oh What does it cost? What does it do to the environment? What is it like? Nothing. He's just like, and this element that's going to build the future. And it's like, oh, OK, but what that element costs in terms of time, labor, environmental resources, where does it come? Can we mine it here in the states? Like where the city is being built? How can every city be built from it if it isn't just doesn't just exist everywhere? Now, the worst, my favorite part is It was when he dives at the very end when he's revealing about his dead wife, like how she died. And he said, by trying to rescue her out of this car, which he couldn't, I discovered the principle of Megalon. He just says it. Does not explain what that means. It does not show how him trying to rescue her discovered the principle of Megalon. He just says, I discovered the principle of Megalon. Boom, Megalon exists. And is an infinite. uh a recyclable, everything renewable, seemingly resource, no explanation, it just is, which is that problem with like, he's like, you create utopia by having a utopia. It's like, you can't just fabricate something out of nothing. And then see, that's the solution. You will take your narrative inconsistencies and you will enjoy them and will shut your mouth. No, they're not inconsistencies. That's the thing. It's not an inconsistency, Dallas. It's a fabrication that has no basis, but it's not even representing anything. It's just a thing that if you're trying to say this is how we create utopia by inventing something that doesn't exist and could never exist and could never work like anything that does exist. And only if we have this can we have utopia. What are you saying? Yeah, the message is a bit simultaneously oversimplified and also so ridiculously convoluted. And I don't know. So here's my question. Wait for you to do that. I almost forgot the thing about Megalon. So at one point to the pop star comes out wearing a dress made of Megalon. Remember the outfit made of Megalon? The missed opportunity with Megalon. It is a new technology that someone, some genius, some tech bro, AKA Adam Driver, is swearing is going to save everything and be the future. And by modern day, by the time he was filming this in the fucking 2022 to 2023, we had AI, we had smartphones, we had the internet, we had all these things that promised us to be the future, that promised us to solve our problems, that promised to be good for even if it had downsides, it would mostly be upsides and sold to us because you could make money off of it. And so it was sold to us in one way while other things were going on in the background. And in the end, these things wound up being horribly dangerous and had huge downsides that are still being downplayed to this day. And here is Megalon, something that when you wear a dress, it's see-through. Someone can see through you. And I'm like, just like how the online environment, like everything about you can now be seen. Everything about you can be tracked. Your identity can be stolen. I was like, there's so much right there. on the cusp of being a true blue comparison that makes sense in the modern day. He's filming this and he does none of that. Megalon is just a miracle technology that will save everything. And I'm like, Whoa, I feel like I feel like Francis Ford Copeland. Look, he is an older guy. He probably didn't do that much with online anything. But the point is, but that is the world we live in now. And the fact that he had a uh miraculous technology that was going to build the city of the future, which is exactly what now what AI is being sold to us as I was like, but it will actually destroy us. I'm like, this is this is so in my head, I do think this is the wrong movie for the wrong time. It was a movie he might have been able to make back in the 80s. And it would have had some resonance. But by 2024, he was making the same thesis he had in 1979. Yes, he had accumulated all these bits and pieces and new ideas, but the ideas were just sandwich, like uh a quadruple decker sandwich. He just kept adding it to the same fucking sandwich. Didn't matter what the kind of sandwich it was supposed to be in the first place. And in the end, it was something that you just couldn't eat anymore. oh delicious quiet down it's delicious I don't remember that's just funny but I remember I do think I think you're right this film would have been much more potent had it been done in the 90s. This film in the late 90s probably would have had a much greater impact with the idea that that thesis is a holdover from the late 70s and early 80s with the idea that his sort of infrastructure for painting this world is ancient Rome and ancient Greece. uh With this idea that the near future is going to bring about these advances in technology that cure so many of our sort of social ills. All of those things, I think you're right, 20, 25 years ago, this film would have been very prescient, very potent, very interesting. But at the end of his career, with the weight of everything that he has going and his own ego and the old machine, the machinery of it all, and not to mention As we were talking about earlier not having those voices of not necessarily dissent but counterpoint around you because you are self-pointed self-funded Just made for this cocktail of a film that You know, isn't necessarily Delicious, but it is a thing and it's great to look at there are some real I mean real great notions and concepts and ideas and tries and attempts, which never come fully together. ah Every scene feels like its own scene. That was like, cause again, you can see the hodgepodge of ideas where it's like, had this idea somewhere in this 40 years. And this was one that stuck well enough that I stuck. stayed with it. And I'm like, okay, right. I'm like, cool. what does this really work with the larger scheme of things? And again, you know, I would have appreciated this film so much more. If it had just been fucking poetic and abstract, just all feels nothing but mood, mood, atmosphere, contemplations, like Adam Driver looking on to this make like dialogue scenes of just him existing in this megalopolis with his Megalon. And none of it had like it would have been very European graphic novel. It's true. I've worked so much better had he used that open-ended approach, that kind of romantic sit in the moment without contextualizing, without even text that sort of walks you through what it's supposed to be. do. So again, I think somewhere along the line, maybe that was an intent, but when you factor in 40, 50 years of yourself and nothing but yourself with these ideas and the- with that, I disagree that was the intent. Again, from you cannot deny that from the get go, he's always been saying what the intent of this film was since the 70s. And that intent was always the intent we got here. So I cannot I cannot buy this absolution where he's like he meant to be more artistic and then he was cowed into being narrative. And I'm like, no, this was he wanted it to be his great treatise on how to be a utopia. in the modern world, and he could never put his finger on it. He could never get that. He had idea. He had all these disparate images and visuals. And I do think like and he's always been like one from the heart, the musical and with Dracula, where he wanted the costumes and sets to be minimal, the costumes to be big and the sets to be most. He's always been very visual. He's good with that. And I think he brought some of that here, but he also still couldn't put his finger on like, what is this utopia look like? And that's why the. The sets unfortunately do look very generic. They're not that interesting. They're pretty enough. They're well enough made to look at. It's not an ugly looking film, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. And it's... It got away from him. got away from him. That's the only way I can sort of, you know, paint that picture. It got away from him. Well, and I think, you know, obviously a lot of people said Adam Driver, obviously a stand in for Coppola, right? He is the creator. He is the inventor. And the one of the points the movie was trying to explore and trying to state was creation and imagination is what saves humanity. It just could not figure out how. I'm just saying. imagination and creation saved humanity. It's like it does it just just go with it like Megalon I invented that it's like right but it's like you make a movie you create something I'm like creation saves you right if you're a creator that's what creation saves like you need to do it and you need to fulfill yourself and you need to get your thoughts and ideas and whatever out there does it save others not necessarily maybe a few but like the whole the culture, like creators often have an overinflu... Because they live in their course. They live in their... Not just their own works. Not just their own works, sort of, sort of, but more than that, the industry. Hollywood people exist in Hollywood. Hollywood has an overflated sense of how amazing it is to the rest of the... And how important it is to the rest of the world. I watched a movie not too long ago called The Congress. It's an animated film. um It was half a of partly live action in like the beginning and end. And the middle part is all when they go into the Congress, it's all this animated thing based on a film on a Stanislav Lem novel. So I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's from 2011. I want to say something like that. It was a movie that and they did this. The movie did this. The novel had nothing to do with this, but the movie was basically like. movies Hollywood like is what keeps civilization civilized. It's like without it, we lose we lose our way completely. And I'm like, so like literally nothing else is involved in civilization. And it was such a head up our ass view of what fiction and movies meant to people where it's like calm the fuck down, no. One, we already know with humanity that it's only when our basic needs are met that art even enters into it. It's like that's when humans have the ability to, they have the time and the luxury to explore art. And if we have that time and luxury, absolutely, it's human nature, we always do. It's the first, it's what we start doing and what we become if we have the enough ease of life to make that happen. But if we don't, We don't and that the end like it's not it's a part of culture of civilized culture But it is not the keystone It is not the thing that keeps it together and I really hated that that thesis of that movie I thought it was really just because again gave no credit to a single other thing now like nothing about law or order or justice or know, morality or anything or, you know, empathy or like just fiction, creation. And I'm like, my God, fuck off. So, but Adam Driver is plainly the creator. But here's the thing. It's like we don't even see him creating that much or that often. We don't see what he creates when he creates something. It's just kind of something random that sort of like floats out there and is there when the in order for him to create. This was one of the more interesting things. I don't even know if it was intentional. But of course, 9-11 sparked this scene, this story idea of the satellite that falls down and blows up half the city, right? And Coppola wanted to put that in there because of 9-11, but it was weird because of course, 9-11, we know that 9-11 happened because we did not take action on intelligence that we had, right? And the postmortem of intelligence postmortem, We do know that we're like, we were given warning and we did not take it seriously enough, but we could have, which is the real tragedy of that, right? Now in the movie, they're like, yeah, it's happening. We can't say for sure. And there's nothing we can do about it. And then it just happens. And I'm like, that's not what 9-11 was my man. um It was one, an attack. And two, it was something we could have done something about, but we didn't, we chose not to. Like we were a little too lazy, a little too self satisfied, a little too like this would never, we couldn't believe it could happen. Right. And then it happened. And I feel like it needed something to because again, he was talking about a dying decaying city, a culture that was on the way out because of its ways and its complacency and its corruption. I'm like, well then make that about the corruption and complacency, missed opportunity at every single. Fucking scene. It's like he didn't know his own thesis uh I think the thesis was just as we decided, as we decided. As we decide, I still won't, it was there from the beginning. saying it's it was clearly there from the beginning. I do just think that reflecting on that mountain of creativity 40 years later when you're trying to put a stamp on and tell a two hour two and a half hour long film, it just probably seemed impossible. Honestly, I think he just was his own worst enemy. It seemed impossible because even as we sort of in the moment, fix all of the know the glaring issues you know it's one of those things that would end up being a nightmare for production so I totally understand what you're saying and I agree with most of it for sure but it just will say, do think there's no way this movie wouldn't have been unwieldy. And right. Right. Right. Right. don't I don't think there's a way to have just made it a tight little neat ball of perfection. But. The themes could have worked like the core theme could have translated well enough. Yeah. And it's just I feel well, in one thing, I do wish that he would have just jettisoned. Like this is movie that after 40 years, he needed to have started. He needed to be like, I know what I've been inspired by over 40 years, right? It's in there. It's in me. So now, especially for someone who says, I don't think things through, I feel things through. Awesome. Jettison the whole thing and feel your way through it now. Yeah, right. After 40 years, sit down and write this script now. And I don't think he ever did that. No, I don't think so. I think that was an impossibility for the kind of creator he is. It's because he seems like the kind of guy like you said, once he has an idea, I think it also seems like even what the stories of him firing the the collaborators, you know, mid production, as far as I can tell, in a lot of that he has a lot of ideas on a daily basis on set. We heard those quotes. So I feel like, don't know, I feel like this guy could have, but he loved. I mean, again, when you call the shots is the problem. Like you can't cut a page, you can't cut a word, you can't get rid of an idea. And that can be the kiss of death for a lot of things because you can't you personally can't see the forest for the trees. And the more time passes, the worse it gets. That's why you need to like just go with. I know what the story is supposed to be. do. I've been sitting on it for 30 fucking years. Let's start over. Your other drafts are there. Don't burn them. Don't delete them. Just leave them there and see what happens if you try starting from scratch. Nothing is harmed in trying it. So what we essentially have here is a guy who is amassed 40 years of pre-production. Right? That's what this is. 40 years of pre-production and once it goes into production, he gets to fund it and direct it. That's where we live. That's just a recipe for this, honestly. That's recipe for this. That's a recipe for I suppose, although I wish, but again, he just had his theme tighter in his head, like because of how long it's been, it's been the same theme. I'm like, motherfucker, you've been thinking about it for 40 years. Like, how do you not have ideas that work with each other after all this time? But a couple last things here that I just wanted to mention. So one of the big things also is that creating utopia So, you know, the 9-11 event happens. It does destroy half the city. That creates the land and the less people so that they can build the utopia, which is also such a weird thing where it's like, okay, so we only get utopia if half the population is decimated. Interesting, not sure about that. I don't think you f***ed one out or maybe you did! Maybe he did. But you know, okay, here's something I wanted to run by you actually, because I'm not sure if I'm... So Adam Drivers, at one point, he is, there is a attempt to smear his name by showing a video that he's sleeping with an underage girl, a pop star, right? Now turns out the pop star is not underage. She just sold herself as underage, but she was actually 23. So that wasn't a problem. But then they say, and the video is doctored. It wasn't real. Or the photos, quote unquote, they say, it wasn't real. But then when we finally hear about Adam Driver's dead wife, right? He has this little monologue that he says to, um I forget her name, the main love interest. um He's telling her about his dead wife and he says, she came home and saw something that inflamed her jealousy. And then hopped in the car and then took off in the car. And I'm like, that's all he ever says about it. He does not say what she saw that inflamed her jealousy. And I'm like, were you sleeping with someone? And then he runs, cause he's so. guilt-ridden over this thing too, right? And then, so I almost feel like there was my take on it, honestly, I think, I think he did sleep with that pop star. I think that maybe that thing was doctored to try and smear him, but you'll also notice the pop star never really tried to deny it. And he never really tried to deny it. And... Then this she came in, I feel like something got lost in the mini drafts or the edits or something. I feel like this was a point because I think it was to show that he was not a perfect person, that he had made flaws in his life. And this is one of the reasons why it was hard to let his dead wife go, who was pregnant with their child at the time. uh Coppola is absolutely obsessed with babies and pregnancy and that being so important to everything. But uh he made that happen. And then, of course, he discovered the principle of Megalon while trying to pull her out of the car and rescue his dead baby in her stomach, blah, But I love the fact she says that line and nothing. I feel like in the cinema there was a scene there. Oh shit, hold on. Alright, we're gonna have to cut this out. Give me thought so too. I went back and rewatched the movie. There's nothing. There's nothing. I feel like there was a brief scene where there was a ghost of an image as the wife came in that she saw him with. There is not. I went back. There's a ghost of her lying her dead body lying in a bed at that moment. It's like this weird montage thing where you're seeing all these images and I went painstakingly through it because I thought the same thing. I'm like, she walked in on him with someone. And then I kept going back and I'm like, no, it doesn't come out and say that or show that shit. But we do know. that she walked in and saw something that inflamed her jealousy and he had not discovered Megalon yet. So he wasn't working on it or I don't know, making love to it, which you probably would expect from this guy at this point. that was such a throwaway line that seems to have so much meaning on this character and on why he was obsessed with his dead wife. um It was really interesting and like no one else seems to have noticed this line was ever said. I've listened to a lot of other, takes on this movie, read a lot of takes on this movie, no one mentions it. And I'm like, that is a profound thing to say out of fucking nowhere and never go back to. But anyway, I wanted to mention that. And um what was it about Adam Driver? Oh, the time thing. We got to talk about the time thing briefly. So the time stopping, which mostly actually we don't have to talk about it very much. It's mostly just about because he loses the ability when he loses faith in himself. So it's just having faith in yourself and blah, blah. But there is a thing where you can stop time and that is like a superpower of creators. Again, I think that's another reflection of uh Coppola's view of himself as a storyteller. ah I think that's just a direct sort of character infusion. And then in his final speech, he says, tear down debt. Leave your slums they've placed you into. He's talking to just like the common people and go where? Isn't that essentially what the homeless people in the world are is leave your slums they've placed you into. Stop, stop paying for it. And it's like, yeah. And do like, you don't have that option if you don't have a lot of money, man. Like that's not something that anyone just gets to do. How is this a solution? And then of course, the craziest thing is of course, this whole movie is about how do you create a utopia for the people, for the people, for the people, for the people. The people are not in this movie. So we're talking about the Catalonarian conspiracy. This is sort of a direct kind of uh import from that. Essentially in 63 BC, was a Catalina, think it's named Catalari, Catalari. uh But he was a disgraced uh elder wealthy person in town. And he decided to overthrow the ruling party by gathering the proletariat and essentially telling them just that he became the kind of the Pied Piper, so to speak. So that's kind of the sort of carry over from that. But again, you're right. The proletariat, for lack of a better term, does not feature in this film at all. only people of means and power. And it's like, this is how we build utopia. And I'm like, I don't know if that's like, again, without them, they never talk to the people like ever. And in fact, the only person who does is Shia LaBeouf's character who's supposed to be a total con job who like does not give a shit about the people. And that's the only person who would ever talk to the people is the person who wants to be populist in a false way. And Yeah, again, just so many things here where I'm just like, I so I you know, I didn't want to play this real quick. Maybe we leave this in the podcast episode. We're already going way over long, but maybe we don't. But I didn't want to play this real quick. This is George Lucas talking about very similar themes. So I'm to play this little clip because I thought this was so interesting in comparison to Coppola being obsessed with making a movie specifically about this for 40 years. When asked about the power of storytelling from a political standpoint, and this was what Lucas decided to say, here we go. there's also the side of you that's a political animal i mean you are among people who know you a billionaire who's not that crazy about capitalism tell me what Well, I grew up in the 60s. I grew up in San Francisco. And so I've been formed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I'm a very ardent patriot, but uh I'm also a very ardent believer in democracy, not capitalist democracy. And I do not believe that the rich should be able to buy the government. That's just the way I feel. that the America you see where the rich have bought the government? Come on, it's been that way for a long time. And it's just, you know, it's not right. And ah it's not gonna work. Well, I hope it changes. I mean, it's hard because you've got human nature. You've got people, you know, basically it's all, we've got a country based on greed. And as long as you've got that, then it's corrupt. And as long as it's corrupt, you're never gonna get uh a uh meeting of the minds on what is best. Why don't you make a film about the America that you are articulating? I mean, why don't you use the power of George Lucas to tell the I don't think I have that much power. I learned my first film was was kind of indictment of art I show you a list of the 100 best films and how many are made by George Lucas? Yeah, but they're not made to... Yes, they have a political undertone. mean, especially Star Wars has got a very, very elaborate social, emotional, political context that it rests in. But of course, nobody was aware of that. Nobody says, my gosh. But if you actually watch the movies, it's there, and you subliminally get the fact of what happens to you if you've got a dysfunctional government that's corrupt and doesn't work. But, you know, most of the fault lies with the media. And I know everybody uses the media's... But the things the media focus on, the sensationalism, the kind of simple answers, the, you know, not really telling the truth, is what creates a society where everybody gets really polarized. where they're afraid. The legal system, the financial system, the political system, they're all based on winner take all. That's not a good society. That's not a good culture. That's a culture that is built out of a caveman mentality, where the guy with the biggest hammer wins. That's not a good society. want to see a society that is defined how? By everybody that comes out? by compassion, say we care about everybody in our society. And what we want to do is what's best for everybody in this society. And we to build the best society where everybody gets the best possible life they can possibly have. Would you call this democracy? Would you call this social socialism? Would you call this some of the ism that we don't have a name for it? Nice. Yes. No, get a George. Look, it's easy to have a point of view about a capitalistic democracy when you have a billion dollars. I'll just say that not to say that he didn't earn it or, you know, it wasn't given to him because of his creativity and work. But I will say when you do compare ah You know where Lucas is in his life and storytelling to where Coppola is in his life and storytelling. It does seem as if Lucas is a hell of a lot more interested in the collaboration uh at every uh turn of the process now. That just think that's the thing is that democracy is a collaboration. That's kind of the key. Right. And I think the problem with Coppola tackling a democratic empire, like how do you say the people is going to be democratic? They have to vote for someone. It's still democratic. And it's like, I don't, maybe it's just his brain isn't collaborative. And so he's like, You still have to have an Adam Driver. You still have to have a creative genius. It's just going to make it happen again, like and tell people this is what they want because how else are we going to do it? And it's but then at the same time, he's like, we have to have a conversation and which so yeah, I mean, it's still very muddy themes, but it is interesting that Lucas is just like, that's not really the place of just some creator, someone making movies. It's like, that's not what that like this is not my thing. I don't know enough about it. I don't have that power. I don't think I have that power. And here's Coppola being like writing things is what will save everything. Making movies of those things is what I do so that will save everything. This is my part, right? You know All right, guys. Well, we're going to wrap this up now. Finally, a long last. Let's talk about the wines and which one goes with Godfather, which one goes with a Megalopolis, either the 2000 Cabernet Franc or the 1998 Cab Sauve. We're actually going to start with the clip from the production designer Bradley. Brad is actually kind of lays out what we're I think we all agree on here. So we're going to listen to this and then we're going to come back in and weigh in. So let's go ahead and take a listen. 2000, Cap Trunk. from Copalini Baum.$21,000. That's actually quite a number. I'm the curry. Yes. Yes, like raisiny. Yeah. I it's like crusty bread at very beginning. I'm with you with that. I'm with you with that And then the flavor afterwards. I don't get the flavor right away. think the acidity is still there. It is? Yeah. It's so good. would go, oh yeah, that's cool. I don't think I'd have a second glass. Really? I'll come back to it. I would have a second glass if I was eating a steak. Okay, fair. Fair. uh it definitely opens up with some fatty protein for sure. What do you think? do you think our designer of, our production designer of Aguilera? I don't know, this feels more like a Godfather wine. There it is there it is we haven't yet we haven't yet ah What's it? 1998? But this feels, this tastes more like revenge. You like that description? Yeah! Actually, yeah. Something more... acerbic. Ooh, that is... What is it not about might be easier. It's a... Yes. He was writing it for a while. Yes. Ooh, 40 years, wasn't it? Originally? think it was 40. Yes. Yes. He was 40, 1982. tried to start filming in 2000. Doing a lot of B-roll footage in New York. He kept his B-roll filming all the 9-11. And then had to shut it down. Yes. And Al Pacino as well, I think, at one point. Which I was really surprised. I was like, why isn't Al Pacino in this movie? Right. Right. Well, the Dustin Hoffman role is nothing else. I was like, why Dustin Hoffman? Why not Al Pacino? What the hey? What the hey? like her audition for it was literally like an open casting call in Atlanta in like a middle school auditorium. yeah, yeah She's an actor, but then she like, I work in a daycare center. they're like, OK, cool. But she actually in that pool. It's less slutty. They had a trainer today. That was like, shot the whole I was told we have to film a car underwater. We want to film it next week. Where's the pool? How do we get the car in? What does it look like? I want it to look like this movie. And she had to train for three days. And then she had a quick weekend training. Wow. it's amazing. in the movie, shot the movie and then like months later it gets a call and was like we need one more shot with you that had to go to three or four days of underwater training to shoot just one- Wow. That is dedication. I agree with you this tastes more like revenge than a 2000 bottle. Yeah, I see it. I get it there's that a significant... There's loss of... Not at all. There's a there's a darkness there there's a yeah, there's an anchor of hatred there Do we have a taste of that one? But again, I'm thoroughly surprised that this has held up and it tastes as nice as it does. I think it just keeps opening up. Yeah, tomorrow this is going to be fantastic. You know the Godfather it has alfagino taking over or Marlon Brando and so this has that like I won't say Brad but like that Kick to it where I don't know that acidity that a cervic this where it's like yeah I'm gonna be the new Godfather. I'm gonna run this town. I'm gonna do this and of course. It's all tragedy absolutely in the future It's bloody, it's acidic, it's acerbic, it's all those things. I agree. I think it's all that. That could be the Adam Driver thing. We were just talking a little bit about how Coppola's obsessions, how I'm like, don't feel like they've changed much. There's a lot of growth in his... Yeah, there's a lot of growth. uh It's less collaborative simply because. Right. And there it is. I hate us so much. I hate uh us so much. Why's that? Just hearing us pontificate on and on and a lot contexts, it's hilarious to hear it. See, Dallas doesn't edit these podcast episodes. I'm so used to it. I'm so used it. Who are these two? Oh my god, yeah. I have to listen to us all the time. When I create short videos, when I create everything, it's nothing but listening to fucking. listen to my voice more than I have because I hate listening to you. So you heard us think the Cab Franc is probably the Godfather wine. Now, the one thing I will say is, you know, Godfather, it's the wine. think thematically, I really wanted the Cab Sauv to be the Godfather and Cab Franc to be the Megalopolis for two reasons. One, the Godfather is what got him the Napa winery, which of course, and this was the 70s. So this was the decade that Napa was becoming the huge thing it would become going forward. They had just won the judgment of Paris and Cab Sov had just become the grape of essentially America at that point. It was like the new world, the American, the Californian grape to beat. So I really wanted Cab Frank, and also Cab Frank's more old world, the popularity was huge around that time. Cab Frank had really was fading in popularity around that point. but is kind of coming back now in popularity. It's very much, Cab Sauve has been overexposed. It actually doesn't grow in as many places that well. gets a little too jammy and fruity and now it's starting to get kind of like buttery Chardonnay started to get a bad reputation and bad rap because we overgrew Chardonnay because that also became one of the main grapes of California. So I feel like cab frunk is now starting to become it's just become the main grape of Livermore Valley here in California. It's starting to get planted more and just like people fall in love with cab frank was cab solve is like if you're a wine nerd also you have to kind of in a little bit just got too popular. um So I feel like Megalopolis is hitting that era and time period and it's more of your like your cinema your cinephiles gonna be the only people who love. Michaelopolis in any way. like your wine nerd is the one that likes cab francs. It's a little more challenging than cab solve. So I feel like thematically I really wanted it to go that way. But I cannot disagree with Brad here, the production designer cab franc. It tastes like revenge. It is what and not revenge on yourself. It tastes like you're getting like it you know. best served cold kind of thing like CapFranc. It's got that extra, extra something that is challenging, but it's so much more complex. It's so much better. And in that way, The Godfather, it is ultimately more complex. Its themes and its characterizations come together and are on point. Megalopolis is that sloppy, sweet, dense, chewy, but ultimately usually unsatisfying. um you know, assembly where it's like, cabs off can be amazing, but it takes a lot to grow cabs off. Well, you have to grow it in the right place. Cab Franc has this complexity that you have to ease out of cabs off. Cab Franc is one of the parent grapes. So it's cab Franc and Savion Blanc, hence the name Cabernet Sauvignon and cab Franc has all this complexity. The cabs off, you have to tease it out. And if you don't do it well, It's not there and that is Megalopolis in a nutshell. It's like it needed to be teased out and it wasn't and you get this sloppy, oversweet, over dense, over ripe, over dark and brooding and not much else cab-solve. Though that said, this cab-solve was quite good. uh I think it was the age honestly a lot of that was the biggest factor but it was yeah it was surprisingly complex uh not overly complex but it was surprisingly complex and uh I agree with Brad's assessment uh so yeah we were all basically on the same page when it came to the pairing so yeah Yeah. Cabernet Sauvignon. Yep. Cabernet Sauvignon, Megalopolis. find these days. Yeah. Just go find a basic. Absolutely. Now, like some California cab, it'll probably be too sweet and too dense and not lot else going on with it. Chances are, especially if you don't pay too much for it. Bingo. Take that one home. And yeah, for Godfather cab francs, spend something on that one. That should be your sports. Thirty five dollars or above. You're going to get a really nice cab franc. So go. and up a bit. right, guys. and also when in that clip with Brad, oh you heard some voices talk about the actress who had to be weighted down with sandbags in the water for her drowning scene. That's going to give you a hint as to who we're going to be talking to. That's right. Look for that drop in next week. We thanks so much for listening. We are going to exit you on another clip of Brad talking about his time on Megalopolis. That's going to be. The This is a marathon. Thank you so much guys. It's not our longest for being in My tummy is actually slightly hurting because I keep talking, like projecting into the microphone. I'm talking too loud. And so it's like, I need to like let my gut hang out now for like the rest of the day to like give it a break. All right, folks. Thank you so much. We'll check you later. Now listen to this final clip of breath. Later guys. I heard the story in The Godfather where the wedding scene, he wanted helicopters to come in and shoot all that and like he had never done helicopters on a film shoot before so he didn't understand it would whip up all the set and it would just go flying so like a lot of the footage wasn't usable in the ultimate end because he was just like I want it from this angle and I want it this way and then like the whole set was essentially like lifted up into the air and he's like Okay, maybe you're under an NDA, but what was one of your most trying moments on the X-PIC? You don't have to be specific, but... oh The most trying moment was coming in 30 weeks behind everybody, having to hire an entire new team of people to take over for the team that was leaving, while everyone else was running at 200%, and getting caught up. Knowing what was happening, what needed to change, all while trying to hire a whole new team of people to pick up at that speed and take it to the finish line. That was probably the most trying. Getting in and trying so hard not to fall into the same mistakes that the f***ers created. So did you know what the mistakes were? mean, they key you into what the issue was with the previous team? This town is very small. The industry is very small. The relationships that I had built up with the previous f***ers. On the team that was leaving, worked with some of them in past. There was a bit of a handoff in terms of what was happening, what had happened, and understanding how I could help fix the problem. did everything I could to help him get to the finish line however he wanted. A lot of that was to save money and figure out the visual effects. He pushed all of the heavy visual effects moments in the movie to the end of the film. Right. you. My experience was, you know, six and a half days a week, 14 hours a day. So what year did you come into the production? I spoke with him on a Friday, early first week in January, and I was on a plane on that Monday, in January of whatever that is, 23. Wow. That's I believe it, That's true. You get great memories. whole group couldn't have been more welcoming. They been more appreciative and thankful and collaborative and jumped right in and really let me do what I could to help push it through. knew the systems were made and they could really change what they They took it to the end. That was great. out of moving about this, this is, or you don't have to answer this, if this is a question that you can't answer, but from what I've learned from this production, was a lot of finding what the Yeah always changing. could never, he will be the first to tell you he never has done a sci-fi movie. He never had to conceptualize something that hasn't existed. That's lot of history. That's historic fiction. horror sci-fi uh Utopia, yeah. He's the first one to tell you I am not great at that and he looked to everybody to do it. Right. And there is a trove of amazing concept art that runs to gamut of everything from organic to technical, robotic, everything in between. And it went to all those places and it ended up where it ended up, which is interestingly closer towards the beginning of the project. Huh. That is interesting. But it's a lot of it is repeat. Neri Oxman's a biological biologist, doctorate, designer, person, designer in her own way. He hired 15 years ago to basically study what Megalop metropolis could look like. Is this you? That's really it. that's, and he heavily on her and her scientific findings and the organic biological side of it. That makes sense. mean, a lot of the movie I noticed was heavily, like, based on... Getting into banana? It isn't chewy. uh philosophers and history and if I could almost see that sort of need to define this through history through things that had to be because you were saying like you'd never done something that had be and you know in sort of the past and then how to define the future Constant struggle and a constant uh conversation about what it could be, what it should be. uh The phrase that he always says and still say is there's a lot of poetic realism. It's not about what it should look like, it's what you want to look like. Everyone should interpret it in their own way. That's kind of a theme in his work too, yeah. The whole film was poetic, realistic. oh I saw you stick your tongue out of that. I'm like, yeah, nice try, Frank.