Francis Coppola’s $120million self-funded epic Megalopolis panned as an ‘abomination’ by critics following allegations of chaos on set as crew members claim legendary director smoked marijuana in his trailer and ‘pulled young women onto his lap’
He is revered as the director of the legendary Godfather trilogy and as a beacon of ’70s cinema.
It also features the talents of an ensemble cast including Shia LeBouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza and Laurence Fishburne.
In addition to directing the feature film, Coppola wrote the script and serves as one of the project’s producers. The filmmaker reportedly spent $120 million of his own funds to finance the film.
Initial screenings of the upcoming film have drawn mixed reviews from critics – with some even giving the film a paltry score of one star out of five.
But the latest offering from infamous Hollywood screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola, 85, has been labeled “bloated,” “boring” and a “head-scratching abomination” by critics.
The problems don’t stop there: crew members who work with Coppola have also come out to accuse him of “wasting time,” smoking marijuana in his trailer and “pulling women to sit on his lap.”
The staff even claimed moments on the disastrous set when they wondered, “Has this guy ever made a movie before?”
Speak with The guardsaid one insider that Coppola confused tech-savvy production workers by sticking to outdated methods that took hours to complete.
They recounted actor Adam Driver’s first day and captured a scene in which his body is fused with futuristic material.
The director reportedly insisted on using mirrors and projectors to achieve the effect, as he did thirty years earlier with his film Dracula, rather than having the staff do it digitally – which would have taken ten minutes.
“So they tied Adam Driver to a chair for six hours, and they literally took a $100 projector and projected an image onto the side of his head,” they said. “I’m all for experimenting, but this is really what you want to do on the first day with your $10 million actor?”
They also discovered that Coppola’s staff was exhausted by his design indecisiveness, and that he would keep changing his mind and ideas about the film’s vision.
Another source told the network that the filmmaker would reportedly show up without a plan for shooting a major sequence.
Speaking to The Guardian, an insider said Coppola confused tech-savvy production workers by sticking to outdated methods that took hours to complete.
Coppola would then “come up with something that didn’t make sense,” causing the crew to “try to make the best of it”
“He would often sit in his trailer for hours, not talking to anyone and often smoking marijuana,” they alleged. ‘And hours and hours passed without anything being filmed. And the crew and the cast were all waiting.”
Coppola would then “come up with something that didn’t make sense,” causing the crew to “try to make the best of it.”
“This sounds crazy to say, but there were moments where we all stood there thinking, ‘Has this guy ever made a movie before?'” a third commented. He was also labeled as ‘unpleasant’.
Insiders also commented on Coppola’s “old school” behavior towards women, claiming that he pulled women down to sit on his lap.
Elsewhere, it was claimed that while filming a ‘bacchanalian nightclub scene’ for the film, he ‘tried to kiss some of the topless and scantily clad female extras’ – in an attempt to ‘get them in the mood’.
However, executive co-producer Darren Demetre told the story Guardian that Coppola “successfully produced and directed a huge independent film.”
Referring to his behavior while shooting the festive club scene, Demetre said Coppola “walked around the set to establish the spirit of the scene by giving friendly hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.”
Megalopolis – which premiered last night at the Cannes Film Festival – centers on a super-powered architect who tries to rebuild New York City into a modernist utopia. Pictured from left to right: Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Francis Ford Coppola, his granddaughter Romy Coppola and Adam Driver
This would ‘help inspire and establish the club atmosphere’. Demetre insisted he was not informed of any complaints during filming.
While making the film, Coppola also had to deal with the illness of his wife Eleanor Coppola, who died last month at the age of 87.
Eleanor was on the set of the film “until her illness prevented her from being there,” a spokesperson told the network.
In addition to the behind-the-scenes turbulence, Coppola’s film has failed to impress critics – despite receiving a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes on Thursday.
Giving only one star, Kevin Maher’s The times called it “all hot air and waffle, barely held together by filmmaking at its most threadbare.”
Meanwhile, Peter Bradshaw has received two stars for it The guardsaid the film came across as “a passion project without passion: a bloated, boring and bafflingly superficial film, full of high school valedictory truths about the future of humanity.”
However, not everyone was so quick to trash the film – The Telegraph awarded it a respectable four stars.
Robbie Collin said it was a “sensory, full-body bath film that follows a struggle for power among the elites of New Rome.”
Here, FEMAIL looks at the mixed set of reviews that Megalopolis has attracted…
THE TIMES
Kevin Maher from The times played the film and called it ‘138 stultifying minutes of ill-conceived themes’ and ‘half-finished scenes’.
He also destroyed the actors’ ‘nails along the chalkboard performances’.
The critic then elaborated on the film’s “bizarre” expose, saying it’s also “not a great movie” for women, men, or “people in general.”
GUARDIAN
Peter Bradshaw said that although the film was “ambitious and meant to be serious” – and “contains some flashes of humor and verve” – it was ultimately “a Coppola failure”.
To write for The guardhe was also unimpressed with the cast’s acting and the “cheap VFX work.”
However, Peter added that the film “does ask a fair question” about the sustainability of “the American empire.”
The critic awarded it only two out of five stars.
THE TELEGRAPH
Robbie Collin scores four stars The Telegraph praised Aubrey Plaza’s “fantastic” performance in the film.
However, he felt that it was clear that the film had undergone several metamorphoses.
“The final result feels like something so stretched, wrung, and kneaded that straightening it out would be impossible, and also largely beside the point,” the reviewer wrote.
DAILY MAIL
The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner awarded the film just one star and praised the vision – but not the execution – of Megalopolis.
‘The 85-year-old director has rightly been put in the spotlight on the Riviera this week. He is an industry colossus whose 1970s output alone – The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now – elevates him to the top ranks of filmmakers,” he wrote.
“But with that mighty talent comes a mighty ego, and the clear expectation that “Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: A Fable,” to give it its full and vain title, will once again astonish us at his genius.
“Instead, let’s cry for his hubris.
“It’s not that there isn’t a powerful springboard for his story: the idea that America in the near future, and New York City in particular, could be like ancient Rome as decline and decay set in. He calls his metropolis New Rome. , a place undermined by greed, and where men only intend to enrich themselves.”
However, he found the plot ‘hugely confusing’ – and labeled it a ‘mega-flopolis’.
THE INDEPENDENT
Writing for the IndependentGeoffrey Macnab said that despite mixed reviews, Megalopolis is “not a car crash.”
“The Francis Ford Coppola-financed $120 million epic is certainly not yet another Godfather or Apocalypse Now, but it is certainly bursting with ideas,” he wrote.
But the critic – who gave the film three stars – found that despite a great cast, most of the big names offer “mannered and sometimes neglected performances” that don’t mesh well with the director’s storytelling.
FINANCIAL TIMES
The Financial timesRaphael Abraham awarded the film one star, claiming that viewers had witnessed a “spectacular fall from grace of another great cinema of the 1970s.”
He noted that Coppola’s “painful labor of love” was imbued with “aggressively theatrical lines, rendered with arched eyebrows and theatrical gestures.”