There are many stars in Francis Ford Coppola’s batshit crazy and, some would say, botched $120-million dystopian epic from last year, Megalopolis, which the legendary Hollywood auteur paid for out of his own pocket.

But there is really only one star in Mike Figgis’ fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of that film’s extremely ambitious and chaotic shoot, and that’s Coppola himself. The Godfather director steals the show here as an energetic, pugnacious and visionary circus ringleader who put his money where his mouth was for a project that wound up flopping critically and commercially. And he did so, as he keeps telling everyone, “to have fun.”

Megadoc

The Bottom Line

Chaos reigns.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Venice Classics)
Director: Mike Figgis
1 hour 47 minutes

Megalopolis, the film, may not be lots of fun to sit through, but its making-of, Megadoc, is a blast, offering a rare inside glimpse at a major movie artist at work. And unlike many behind-the-scenes exposés, this one actually shows how the sausage gets made, detailing the disarray, frustrations, ego-tripping and squabbles — especially between Coppola and Shia LaBeouf — that took place over months of shooting, pushing the mega-production to eventually go over budget.

Fans of Coppola will no doubt be reminded of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the classic 1991 making of Apocalypse Now that was inspired by the diaries of the director’s late wife, Eleanor. (The latter passed away a month before Megalopolis premiered in Cannes, and she appears in a moving scene toward the end of Megadoc.)

Both documenatries showcase an all-consuming filmmaker who, in Figgis’ words, “seems to thrive on chaos,” surrounding himself with talented actors and technicians helping him turn that chaos into cinema. But nearly half a century has passed between the two movies, and while Coppola appears to have the same outsized vision and chutzpah (albeit with less anxiety and girth), Megalopolis is a very different beast than his Vietnam War masterpiece, which has managed to stand the test of time despite its two years of production insanity in the jungle.

There is so much creative and logistical effort on display in Megadoc, whether from the then 83-year-old director, his committed young actors or veteran crew members, that it’s unfortunate that the final result wasn’t better. Still, there is much to glean from Figgis’ movie, perhaps the major takeaway being that Coppola remains an artist of incredible stamina and insight, offering up tidbits of wisdom as he attempts to make his mad dream of a movie come true.

One such tidbit is: “Cinema is the only art that kills what it’s trying to preserve.” Coppola says this about midway through Megalopolis’ months-long shoot on Atlanta soundstages and streets, and what he means is that there are so many factors working against a director on set — time, money, egos, fatigue, uncertainty, technology, bad weather, more egos — that it’s almost a miracle when great art manages to emerge from the process.

Figgis interviews Coppola several times, also speaking with key cast members (especially LaBeouf and a cheeky Aubrey Plaza), as well as a few long-time collaborators like George Lucas, who doesn’t expect anything less from his old friend and fellow Hollywood maverick. (“When he lands on his head, I’m not surprised,” Lucas quips.) A respected filmmaker in his own right, Figgis gets his subjects to reveal themselves in ways seldom seen in on-set docs, which usually involve lots of NDAs and full approval by the stars and studio.

But since Coppola is the studio, Figgis has free reign to roam around and capture both the disorder and some of the dreaming. It’s particularly inspiring to see the aging director rehearsing with actors several generations younger than him, doing improv exercises like he did back in his early days. (Coppola majored in theater in college before he studied film.) Megalopolis was shot on the same stages used to make many a Marvel movie, and it’s doubtful the cast of The Avengers was ever able to let themselves go like the actors do here.

Of course, not all of it was fun, despite Coppola’s emphasis on that word. A month or so into the production, he fired the film’s VFX supervisor, prompting production designer Beth Mickle (The Suicide Squad) to quit along with her art department. (The incident was reported by THR in an article that features in the documentary.) Costs quickly ballooned for other reasons — Figgis uses on-screen titles to display key budget figures, which is another rarity in this kind of doc — and the actors tended to either go with the flow or begin to lose it.

The one who loses it the most is LaBeouf, who keeps sparring with the director about motivation, action and other actorly things. “It’s not exactly the easiest environment for a performer like me,” the star says, in what seems to be a major understatement, whereas Coppola complains that he’s “too old and grouchy” to put up with LaBeouf’s antics. The two never quite reconcile, and the director sends the actor a tough if honest email, which LaBeouf very openly reads to us after the shoot wraps.

Archive footage also reveals how Megalopolis had been in the making for a long time — at least as far back as 2001, when we see Coppola doing a table read with Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman and Billy Crudup. Another rehearsal from 2003 shows Ryan Gosling playing LaBeouf’s role. Perhaps one of the problems with Megalopolis is that it took way too long to make, so that by the time Coppola had the resources (gleaned from his mega-sized wine business) to finance it himself, he was no longer at the height of his directorial powers.

Filmmaking is like any other artistic endeavor in that it tends to require some practice. It had been over a decade since Coppola made a feature when he embarked on this one, and it had been several more decades since he directed his string of masterpieces (the first two Godfather films, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now), all of which he made in an eight-year run that remains one of the greatest achievements in post-studio-era Hollywood.

The best thing about Megadoc is that we get to watch such a once-in-a-lifetime artist at work, giving us an idea of what Coppola was like at the top of his game. He clearly was, and still is, a control freak, as so many good directors are. But he’s also open to the unknown, doing lots of experimenting without always understanding where he’s going. At a time when Hollywood movies are predetermined by marketing and numbers and, increasingly, by algorithms, the gift Coppola gives us here — and this is whether you like Megalopolis or not — is how bravely he embraces the chaos.