LOS ANGELES — Francis Ford Coppola has given Hollywood some of film industry's most iconic works.
He directed “The Rain People” in 1969 and co-wrote “Patton” in 1970, but it was the release of “The Godfather” in 1972, which earned three Academy Awards, including Best Director, that cemented him among the greatest film directors in Hollywood.
At 85, Coppola has not slowed down and returns to the big screen with perhaps his biggest film gamble, “Megalopolis.”
“I was thought it would be fun to make a Roman epic,” Coppola told Spectrum News. “My whole life, there were Roman epics. The more I worked on it, the more I realized America was Rome today. I thought, why don’t I make a Roman epic set in modern America?”
Making “Megalopolis” has been no easy feat for Coppola. It took decades to turn his passion project into a reality. In fact, Coppola began developing the film in the early 1980s. In 2001, he had begun table reads with an entirely different potential cast, like Robert De Niro, Leonardo diCaprio, Uma Thurman, James Gandolfini and Russell Crowe. When the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks happened, Coppola once again put the breaks on the project saying he could barely consider making a film about the possibility of utopia in New York when everything had become so tragic and uncertain.
In 2007, Coppola considered abandoning the project when he lacked support in developing it.
“All the smart, intelligent movie studios said they were not interested in that [a Roman epic, Roman fable],” Coppola said. “There is always a movie you can make at certain times, or you can’t make. I wanted to make a Western once, but it was a time when there weren’t Westerns. I had a wonderful script. After I let the option go, Clint Eastwood made it as ‘Unforgiven,’ which was a great movie.”
Coppola said when the studios didn’t see something they wanted to make, he said, “to hell with that, I’ll make my own money and I’ll do what I want.”
Reportedly, Coppola spent over $120 million of his own money to finance “Megalopolis.” And it wasn’t the first time Coppola used his own money to finance one of his projects: He did it with “Apocalypse Now,” the Vietnam War epic that experienced an appropriately epic — and challenging — production process.
“To me, it is more important to make the film you want to make, that you are in love with,” he said.
But, personally, Coppola doesn't care for the phrase "passion project."
“All movies are passion projects. You can’t make a film without falling in love with the process. Cinema is that great. You can’t have art without risk. If you have art without risk, you have Coca Cola,” he said.
And as much as Coppola has loved his projects, he hopes his legacy will be to inspire nascent filmmakers.
“That to me is what I most want. That some young person, boy or girl, sees something I did and says, ‘I want to make a movie like that,’ and then makes it. That’s happened to me already a few times. I’ve had that honor, to meet a wonderful filmmaker who says, ‘I wanted to be a filmmaker because I saw your film.’ That’s the highest award, legacy, prize you can get … to be part of this wonderful tradition of art. One generation handing it to the next one. This is a human phenomenon that is wonderful,” he said.
“Megalopolis” stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter and Dustin Hoffman. It opens in theaters and IMAX this weekend.
Click the arrow above to watch the full interview.
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