In “Megadoc,” Mike Figgis, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker of “Leaving Las Vegas,” dishes about the chaotic making of “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola‘s self-produced $120 million experimental epic.
Who better than Figgis to capture the 83-year-old cinema legend’s creative frenzy as he set off to make “Megalopolis,” a long dreamed-about passion project, with his own money and no distributor on board? Aside from knowing Coppola for decades (he met him while directing Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Last Vegas” in 1996), the British filmmaker has also worked in documentaries, tracing the life and career of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood in “Somebody Up There Likes Me” in 2019.
Figgis was on the ground Thursday to introduce the world premiere of “Megadoc” at Venice Classics, and recounted how he found himself embedded with the shoot. It all started after Figgis sent Coppola an email to congratulate him when he heard he was finally making “Megalopolis” and “cheekily” offered to make a fly-in-the-wall doc on the making of the movie in Atlanta. Then shortly before the start of filming, Coppola got back to him and said, “Could you be here next week?”
In the documentary, Figgis managed to speak with Coppola’s late wife Eleanor Coppola, who visited the set and even celebrated their 60-year marriage anniversary there and died shortly before the movie premiered in competition at Cannes. He also nailed some unfiltered interviews with “Megalopolis” actors Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, as well as Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel and Laurence Fishburne.
He also spoke with key members of the crew, such as production designer Beth Mickle, who left the project halfway through shooting, and lifelong pal George Lucas, who describes Coppola as “flamboyant.” Figgis also weaves in archival footage from rehearsals with different cast members in 2001, including Robert de Niro and Uma Thurman, and in 2003 with Ryan Gosling, reflecting the helmer’s previous failed attempts to get the movie made.
Coppola’s long-gestating epic was released in the U.S. by Lionsgate. Produced by Tara Li-An and James Mockoski, “Megadoc” will be released in the U.S. by Utopia.
Here are four things we learned from “Megadoc.”
Francis Ford Coppola and Shia LaBeouf clashed repeatedly on set.
Figgis documents how tensions mounted between LaBeouf and Coppola, to the point where the latter abandoned set before a scene after LaBeouf asked one question two many about some inconsistency in the story. While speaking to Figgis, LaBeouf is still shocked that Coppola called him the “biggest pain in his fucking ass,” but shares that the director sent him a long email to apologize the next day, admitting that he had lost his temper but thanked him for “doing a good job,” even if they will always have “two different viewpoints” on pretty much everything.
LaBeouf also says he got the part after reaching out to Jon Voight to make amends as part of his rehabilitation therapy. During their chat, Voight mentioned he was about to start filming “Megalopolis,” prompting LaBeouf to say how he much he dreamed of making a film with Coppola. But after being charged with misdemeanor battery and theft in 2021, LaBeouf was “persona non-grata” in the industry, as he describes it himself. “I was nuclear,” he says in the doc. But two weeks after their phone chat, he heard back and was told “he wants you to be in the movie.” The actor was initially terrified he would get fired from the set two weeks into shooting.
Aubrey Plaza auditioned for “Megalopolis” during the filming of “White Lotus” in Sicily and went in despite thinking “the movie (was) a nightmare.”
Plaza goes totally unscripted as she describes her first virtual encounter with Coppola. “I had the weirdest Zoom” with him, she tells Figgis, who also shows the actual Zoom call in “Megadoc.” In it, Coppola challenges Plaza to improvise a line and rehearse it over and over as different characters. Plaza comes up with “Do you know why I want this job? Because I have $70,000 of student loans, here’s your fucking answer right there!” She says her first reaction after reading the script was, “This film is a nightmare. Because it was disturbing to me.” She emailed Coppola to tell him what she felt, and “He said, ‘Aubrey, how could you say this, how could you say my movie is like a nightmare, my dear Aubrey. I’m writing something about hope. This movie will change the world. This movie has a positive message.’” At another point, Plaza describes Coppola as “Willy Wonka” and jokes that he’s “repressed” like a “good Catholic boy.”
Coppola lamented the massive scope of the movie over and over before axing part of the crew.
Besides Shia LaBeouf’s constant questioning, the thing that frustrated Coppola the most during filming was the scope of the movie, which he said was out of control, as if he had created a monster that had been in gestation over 40 years. We see Coppola complain about “too many trucks” and his desire to limit visual effects to the minimum, which we see him communicating bluntly to his crew, including Mickle, who had joined “Megalopolis” after wrapping “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” and ended up leaving the movie halfway through. It’s not clear whether she was fired or decided herself to part ways, but she indicates that Coppola had a change of heart regarding key creative decisions and was looking to trim costs.
The filmmaker clearly didn’t envision a minimalistic film when he embarked on “Megalopolis.” Figgis reveals the lavish spending on the movie, including $27 million for production design and $18.8 million for visual effects, plus $9.4 million just for transportation. “This is by far my biggest budget,” he tells Figgis. “Even on ‘Apocalypse Now,’ we had helicopters but nothing like this,” he says with a sigh of exasperation. As Figgis says, instead of crushing Coppola, the dramatic turn of events left him exhilarated. When asked by Figgis if he thrives on chaos, Coppola goes on to explain that he’s not enjoying it but is “confronting chaos.”
Nathalie Emmanuel didn’t want to be filmed eating, Adam Driver hardly wanted to be filmed at all by Figgis, and Dustin Hoffman plays a part that was initially penned for James Caan.
Towards the end of filming, Figgis says he ran into issues with only two actors on the set of “Megalopolis:” Emmanuel, because she didn’t want to be filmed eating, and one of the rehearsal scenes had the actors eat; and Driver, who joined the movie much later, and was uncomfortable with Figgis filming him between takes. Driver, who was nevertheless courteous with Figgis, did agree to give him a quick interview about the making of “Megalopolis,” during which he only praised the “Godfather” director for his generosity with actors.
Coppola’s love for actors was echoed by Hoffman, who admits he was “shocked” when he got a call from him, since Coppola had “never asked (Hoffman) to work with him.” When offering him the part, Coppola told the actor, “’I just wanted you to know that I wrote this part for James Caan, but unfortunately he passed away.’ And of course I took the part not having a clue what it was, and now that I finished it, I’m not sure I feel very different,” Hoffman tells Figgis. He and Plaza had fun on set, improvising a scene where they start arm wrestling, with Hoffman trying to distract Plaza by jokingly asking her if she would like to be romantically involved with him.