Francis Ford Coppola Offers Dallas Some Cinematic Hope for the Future

When you have a reputation as one of the world’s best directors, expectations for a new film exceed common standards. So, when Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was released last year to unfavorable reception, many cinephiles were left scratching their heads.

The legendary director is so passionate about ensuring that time allows for Megalopolis to be viewed correctly, though, that he is currently on a seven-date tour of independent theaters across America. Last night, he engaged Dallas audiences with a “Hope for the Future” post-screening lecture that included a whiteboard of topics scribbled by his assistant, Los Angeles-based actor Justin Sintic.

Highly stylized yet deeply personal, the film tells the dreamlike story of a genius artist, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who has the ability to stop time and hopes to transform the dying empire of New Rome into a socialist utopia. An obvious dupe for New York, this particular empire is clearly in its dying throes of greed, excess and corruption (sound familiar?), yet our hero perseveres.

Laden with references to Hamlet, Siddhartha and Marcus Aurelius, the tone is philosophical and the visuals psychedelic — at one point during a wedding scene, it felt more like Baz Luhrmann directing Caligula than something distinctly Coppolian.
Yet on closer viewing, it’s clear Megalopolis resembles nothing so much as the inside of Coppola’s eager, autodidact mind. Having mulled over the project since his 1982 shoot for The Outsiders, he was determined to bring the film to the screen his way, even if he had to spend $120 million of his own money to do it.

But Megalopolis is not just a passion project, it’s a middle finger to a studio system that prioritizes superheroes in spandex to parables of humanity. As Coppola owns the movie outright, he can (and will) do anything with it, including making subtle cuts that make the trajectory of the story “more weird” and insisting it can only be seen on the big screen.

As an eager audience of fans, aspiring filmmakers and local crew members entered the Texas Theatre for a special screening event on Tuesday night, they were greeted with a one-sheet that encouraged them to “laugh when you want, shout out at it, be moved to tears… because when you’re willing to open and enter a new door, you may well reach somewhere you’ve never been before.”

And the sold-out crowd did just that. The event capped off the film’s 138-minute runtime with an even longer chat with the director that began with a rendition of the song “Big D” from the musical The Most Happy Fella — an apt introduction to a heartfelt (if a tad rambly) discussion that covered practically every important topic known to man.

Coppola began by stating Megalopolis ends on what he “would like to call a joyous note, and that’s because, [being] this old grandpa that I am, what I imagine for you is a future that would be beautiful, because you’re entitled to that, you’re capable of making it that way. And I wish it so that you have a paradise to live in, no matter what’s going on in the immediate present. That’s my attitude, and that’s what this film is trying to say.”

Beginning, literally, with the origin of man, the director shared that, due to our shared evolution as humans, all the audience members “are [his] cousins. So, hi, cousins.” Coppola then launched his ideas for achieving the utopia he envisioned with Megalopolis. In the process, he touched on everything from money, politics and education to law, war, art, sport and celebration.

During this “wander through [his] brain,” Coppola admitted, “I sometimes explain things by talking about other things.”

As circular as the lecture sometimes was, the overarching takeaway was the director’s underlying optimism for humanity's future despite all current evidence to the contrary.
Like Megalopolis’ protagonist, Cesar, Coppola feels this future lies in a casteless system where education is free for all citizens, 12-year-olds get quarter votes in elections, wars are fought by 50-year-olds (if at all) and idealistic communities spread like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

Funny and wry in equal measures, the director took questions after his lecture, telling one audience member, “I don’t know if I lived my life going left to right — this is in the realm of Kierkegaard. I’m reading about how to understand at 85 years old, what is this thing we call life really, and I don’t know. I think it’s more that my work and I will fade away and be dust and all that will be left is the things I’ve [done] and that is what will be.”

But what glorious things they are — Megalopolis included. The director plans to release a graphic novel companion and a forthcoming documentary about the film (shot by Mike Figgis), slated to drop this fall. Hopefully, a larger audience can be exposed to the themes and ideas he continues to explore.

Bookending the experience with another jolly rendition of “Big D,” the auteur made his way into the night, but not before taking the time to sit to sign posters and DVDs for film fans just outside the stage door.

As a tween-age boy headed up the line, we could only hope this glimpse of Coppola’s expansive, personal vision might have been what’s needed to inspire a new generation of directors to craft more epic, hopeful fantasies of the future. Even if they’re ahead of their time.