‘He’s a jump-off-the-cliff kind of guy’: inside Francis Ford Coppola’s chaotic Megalopolis shoot | Movies

‘Have you learnt why I’m doing this film? What do I get out of it?” an exasperated Francis Ford Coppola asks Shia LaBeouf on the set of Megalopolis. “I don’t get cash. I don’t get fame; I have already got fame. I don’t get Oscars, I have already got Oscars. What do I get that I would like?” LaBeouf finally offers up. “Enjoyable!” Coppola says. “I wanna have enjoyable!”Making Megalopolis doesn’t appear like most individuals’s concept of enjoyable as Coppola makes an attempt to corral actors, crew, costumes, areas, lavish units and particular results all in service of a sprawling sci-fi-meets-ancient-Rome story that nobody totally understands. Throw in the truth that the film-maker spent $120m of his personal cash on the eagerness undertaking by promoting off a part of his winemaking enterprise to boost funds, having spent practically 50 years attempting to get it made, and that the manufacturing was beset with delays, technical complications and bust-ups, and you are feeling that is greater than most 83-year-olds ought to should undergo.However watching Coppola making Megalopolis usually is relatively enjoyable – maybe extra enjoyable than the tip product, to be trustworthy. Simply because the documentary Hearts of Darkness captured the chaos and strife behind the making of Coppola’s legendary Apocalypse Now again in 1976, so Mike Figgis’s new movie Megadoc takes us on to the set of Coppola’s newest, grandest journey. If we don’t fairly get coronary heart assaults and typhoons this time spherical, we do get as uncooked and intimate a portrait of an auteur at work as we’ve had for a while.That’s partly right down to the character of the undertaking and the personalities behind it – however it is usually a testomony to Figgis’s talent as an intuitive, self-effacing, and observant film-maker. “I’ve an enormous downside with the way in which documentaries are shot now; they’re shot like dangerous B-movies,” says Figgis, simply earlier than Megadoc’s premiere on the Venice movie pageant. “I do know from my very own expertise that so as to get funding for a documentary, it’s a must to type of submit a script, which appears to me the antithesis of what a documentary ought to be; it ought to be a journey of discovery.”Figgis says he has recognized Coppola for many years. They first met within the Nineties, after he solid Nicolas Cage – Coppola’s nephew – in his hit film Leaving Las Vegas. When he heard Coppola was about to start out work on Megalopolis finally, Figgis wrote to congratulate him. “Virtually as slightly afterthought, a little bit of a joke, I stated: ‘For those who want a fly on the wall, simply let me know.’” Just a few months later, he recollects, Coppola known as him out of the blue saying: “‘When may you be right here? Do you have got a visa? Are you able to come now?’ It’s a really Francis factor.”‘The method for him has at all times been one in every of experimentation’ … a view via the digicam throughout the filming of Megalopolis. {Photograph}: Elliefilm Megadoc LLCDays later, in November 2022, with a small crew and his smallest digicam, Figgis arrived in Atlanta the place Coppola and his solid had been simply getting began on rehearsals. “Once I first turned up, I wasn’t launched, so no person knew who I used to be.” In addition to seeing Coppola at work, Figgis’s movie is a window on to his actors, together with Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Giancarlo Esposito and Laurence Fishburne. We get to see them out and in of function, interacting with Coppola, with one another and with Figgis. Driver retains his distance, Plaza is mischievous and playful, nevertheless it’s LaBoeuf that Figgis zeroes in on pretty much as good materials.The place a lot of the solid respect and belief Coppola and associate with his needs and whims, LaBoeuf “was the one actor that basically – very bravely, really – challenged the method on many, many ranges”, says Figgis. LaBoeuf, a notoriously unstable determine, persistently questions Coppola’s course, his character’s backstory, his blocking, even his personal efficiency (“a few of these takes are simply trash”). LaBoeuf additionally confesses he’s frightened of getting fired, conscious that Coppola famously changed Harvey Keitel with Martin Sheen a month into taking pictures Apocalypse Now. He survives, and there’s even affection between the 2 males, however by the tip Coppola is so exasperated with him he throws up his arms and walks off the set, saying: “For those who don’t want me tonight, I’m joyful to go residence.”As Figgis readily admits, “all of the actually good docs about film-making have been tales about disasters, so each time one thing unfavourable occurred I used to be considering: ‘Oh, that’s good for the documentary.’”Fortuitously for Figgis, if not for Coppola, there have been extra crises on the horizon. The manufacturing virtually collapses midway via when Coppola fires the visible results supervisor, Mark Russell, and half the artwork division go away with him. At its coronary heart, the break up was maybe a conflict of two incompatible kinds of film-making: the artwork division had been accustomed to engaged on large, state-of-the-art results motion pictures, resembling Marvel movies, which require a number of planning and collaboration (and cash); Coppola’s most popular mode is extra like experimental theatre, permitting for intuition and spontaneity. “That’s the place the scale of the movie didn’t do him any favours,” says Figgis, “as a result of the pliability that he must go together with that mindset isn’t supported by such a giant manufacturing.”The online consequence was a number of frustration and wasted time, all on Coppola’s dime. “Day by day his regime was, he would stand up early, make tons and plenty of notes, after which he’d flip up and make everybody a bit loopy by going: ‘I’ve modified my thoughts. I don’t wish to shoot that right this moment really. Can we get Adam Driver?’ ‘No, it’s his break day.’ ‘How lengthy is it going to take to get him on the set?’ ‘Three hours.’ ‘OK. What ought to we do?’” Figgis recollects. “He’s in his 80s, so he’s mainly simply sitting there ready, which for me was a pleasure, after all, as a result of in these intervals, he’s very joyful to speak, have a moan or inform tales about Brando or no matter.”‘Each time one thing unfavourable occurred I believed: “Oh, that’s good for the documentary”’ … Coppola and Mike Figgis filming for Megadoc. {Photograph}: Elliefilm Megadoc LLCMeanwhile, all through the shoot, Coppola was staying in an previous Atlanta resort that he had purchased and determined to renovate – so he would go residence each night time to a different, parallel undertaking. “He invited me to reside within the resort,” says Figgis, “and somebody stated: ‘Mike, they begin work at six within the morning. There’s mud in all places. It’s so noisy, you received’t get any sleep.’ So I declined and acquired a resort in Atlanta.”When Figgis suggests to Coppola that he appears to thrive on chaos, nevertheless, he instantly rebuts the notion. “He says: ‘I’m excellent with chaos. I make order out of chaos.’ However he then dodges the query of: ‘Did you really create the chaos so as to repair the chaos?’ However that’s commonplace for film-makers or artists basically, who type of throw every part up within the air and see the way it lands.”There was one other troubled side of the shoot that Figgis’s movie doesn’t deal with. Once I spoke to former crew members who had labored on Megalopolis earlier than its premiere at Cannes final yr, a number of reported issues about Coppola’s behaviour on set, not least a bacchanalian social gathering scene throughout which witnesses say the director tried to kiss a few of the topless and scantily clad feminine extras. The movie’s government producer Darren Demetre instructed the Guardian on the time that Coppola “walked across the set to ascertain the spirit of the scene by giving type hugs and kisses on the cheek to the solid and background gamers. It was his manner to assist encourage and set up the membership environment.” Some extras recalled their expertise of engaged on the movie in a different way; one solid member described it to Selection as “tremendous bizarre and uncomfortable”.Figgis didn’t witness any inappropriate behaviour, he says. “My obsession was film-making and the method. There are lots of of individuals [on set], and there’s adoring followers in all places who wish to take a selfie with Francis and all the remainder of it. And he likes that. Outdoors the film-making factor, he’s a really heat and affectionate particular person. So I had no sense of what emerged later. And, you recognize, I used to be slightly bit puzzled by it, I’ve to say.”Some critics praised Megalopolis, others had been much less enamoured (the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw discovered it “bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow”). Even Figgis admits he by no means totally understood the script: “It was like studying a Russian novel.” The film has not been a business success: so far it has made $14m. However then Apocalypse Now was not hailed as a basic till lengthy after its preliminary launch. Maybe Megalopolis will endure an analogous means of rehabilitation, with its themes of authoritarian management, political scheming and utopian idealism. If it does, Figgis’s movie will likely be part of that.A final, defiant moonshot … Adam Driver in Megalopolis. {Photograph}: 2024 Caesar Movie LLCWhatever his views on the script, Figgis is stuffed with admiration for Coppola as a film-maker. “The method for him has at all times been one in every of experimentation and truly, placing that into perspective, who else is doing that? No person. Whether or not you just like the movie otherwise you don’t just like the movie, no one in every of that stature is doing it.” Others agree. Within the documentary, George Lucas tells Figgis: “My complete profession relies on watching Francis.” However he says they’re full opposites: “I’m a plodding alongside, cautious what I’m doing, plan it out … and he’s a jump-off-the-cliff man.”Watching Coppola cope with all of the challenges and setbacks on set, making his manner via a irritating four-month shoot, contending with the sickness of his spouse of 60 years, Eleanor (who died in April 2024), all whereas sustaining superhuman power ranges for an man in his 80s, it feels as if merely getting Megalopolis made, and strolling the Cannes crimson carpet one final time, was success sufficient for Coppola. Maybe it’s going to come to be seen because the final, defiant moonshot from a larger-than-life film-maker who at all times cared extra about artwork than cash.Does Figgis assume Coppola had enjoyable? “Properly, he didn’t look very joyful a number of the time,” he says. “However there have been instances I noticed him chuckling and I believed: ‘Oh, he’s kind of having enjoyable now.’ As a result of he’s acquired a bunch of actors round him, they’re all type of vibing with one another, it’s raining, and there’s, like, this chaos to be handled. He would have had extra enjoyable had everyone been extra ready for what he really needed, besides he didn’t fairly know what he needed on the outset. However in the end, I feel he’s glad he made the movie, as a result of it was one thing that was sitting there on his again burner, and he needed to get via it and articulate these concepts.” He laughs. “However I feel all of us have a unique concept of enjoyable.” Megadoc screened on the Venice movie pageant.