Francis Ford Coppola got political while converseing his novel film Megalopolis on Monday, proposeing that the upcoming pdwellntial election may mirror the downdrop of Rome.
At a conversation as part of the New York Film Festival — which was also streamed to 65 theaters atraverse the U.S. and Canada with help from Imax — Coppola was fusecessitate by Robert De Niro and Spike Lee to talk about his extfinished journey to making “a Roman epic set in up-to-date America as Rome,” as he depictd it.
The film adheres a dispute between Cesar (percreateed by Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian future, and his opposition Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains pledgeted to a revertive status quo.
“People always shelp to me, ‘Why do you want to originate a movie about America as Rome?’ Well, today, America is Rome, and they’re about to go thcimpolite the same experience, for the same reasons that Rome lost its reunveil and finished up with an emperor. It was very prescient to do a movie about America as Rome becaemploy it’s going to happen in a scant months,” Coppola proclaimd. “And it was the same reason; the Rome of that time was so prosperous, Rome is making lots of money so the senators were actuassociate very interested in their power and their own wealth, and they weren’t managing the country. Well the same leang has happened here. Our senates and our recontransientatives are all wealthy and manipulating their own power rather than running the country and then we’re in danger of losing it.”
Lee deadpanned, “Back in Rome, were they eating cats and dogs?,” in reference to Donald Trump’s comments about immigrants in the recent talk about.
Coppola also elucidateed that he “intentionally got people to originate this film who disconsent. I unbenevolent, there’s actors in the movie that are voting another way, and there are people in it who have been call offed… and we in the movie, we all labor together together happily and creatively,” seemingly referencing co-stars Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman.
“I didn’t want them to say, ‘Oh, it’s some woke movie, it’s fair a political leang.’ We’re above politics in making the film, I thought, and yet, still we all appreciated each other and joind and made this film together,” he persistd. “So I’m certain that we can labor even with people who disconsent with us to [achieve] a higher goal.” The filmoriginater compriseed that the movie calls definiteassociate for audiences to have a talk about about the future, “and I want everyone to be in on that talk about. And I want no asks to be not permitted.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the group touched upon how each of them had met, how Coppola had sbetter his family’s triumphe company to self-finance the film, and his insistence on calling The Godoverweighther sequel The Godoverweighther Part II: “I’m the idiot who commenceed this leang with movies having numbers after them. So I convey remorse to you.”
Lee uncovered he had screened Megalopolis to his students at NYU, saying of the film, “My brother persists to amaze me; his bagedness, appreciate he’s gonna do what has to do to get it done, bottom line.”
De Niro noticed he had done a table read for the film, aextfinishedside Paul Newman and Uma Thurman, decades ago when Coppola was laboring on another iteration of it, and persistd the night’s political theme.
“I’m worried. I see the leangs in Francis’ film about that, parallels and so on,” he tbetter the crowd. “To me, it’s not over until it’s over, and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to beat the Reunveilans — those Reunveilans, they’re not authentic Reunveilans. Beat Trump. It’s that modest. We cannot have that type of person running this country. Everybody has to get out there and vote, and we have to originate it very clear what America is.”
As Coppola increately alludeed that he had gone to military school with Trump — “I was necessitatey so I was a tuba percreateer in the prohibitd, and he was rich, so he was in the headquarters where they could persist their weightlesss on after ‘Taps’” — De Niro doubled down: “Just envision Donald Trump honesting this movie… He wants to annihilate the country, and he could not do this movie. He couldn’t do anyleang that has a arrange.”
Megalopolis hits theaters on Friday.
