{"id":116548,"date":"2025-08-28T16:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116548\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T16:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:34:08","slug":"mike-figgis-behind-the-scenes-megalopolis-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116548\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Figgis’ Behind-the-Scenes ‘Megalopolis’ Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere are many stars in Francis Ford Coppola<\/a>\u2019s batshit crazy and, some would say, botched $120-million dystopian epic from last year, Megalopolis<\/a>, which the legendary Hollywood auteur paid for out of his own pocket.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut there is really only one star in Mike Figgis\u2019 fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of that film\u2019s extremely ambitious and chaotic shoot, and that\u2019s 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, \u201cto have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMegadoc\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tChaos reigns.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Venice Film Festival (Venice Classics)
Director: Mike Figgis
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 47 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMegalopolis<\/a>, 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 expos\u00e9s, this one actually shows how the sausage gets made, detailing the disarray, frustrations, ego-tripping and squabbles \u2014 especially between Coppola and Shia LaBeouf<\/a> \u2014 that took place over months of shooting, pushing the mega-production to eventually go over budget.<\/p>\n

\n\tFans of Coppola will no doubt be reminded of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker\u2019s Apocalypse, the classic 1991 making of Apocalypse Now that was inspired by the diaries of the director\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth documenatries showcase an all-consuming filmmaker who, in Figgis\u2019 words, \u201cseems to thrive on chaos,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere 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\u2019s unfortunate that the final result wasn\u2019t better. Still, there is much to glean from Figgis\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne such tidbit is: \u201cCinema is the only art that kills what it\u2019s trying to preserve.\u201d Coppola says this about midway through Megalopolis\u2019 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 \u2014 time, money, egos, fatigue, uncertainty, technology, bad weather, more egos \u2014 that it\u2019s almost a miracle when great art manages to emerge from the process.<\/p>\n

\n\tFiggis 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\u2019t expect anything less from his old friend and fellow Hollywood maverick. (\u201cWhen he lands on his head, I\u2019m not surprised,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut since Coppola is the studio, Figgis has free reign to roam around and capture both the disorder and some of the dreaming. It\u2019s 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\u2019s doubtful the cast of The Avengers was ever able to let themselves go like the actors do here.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, not all of it was fun, despite Coppola\u2019s emphasis on that word. A month or so into the production, he fired the film\u2019s 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<\/a> that features in the documentary.) Costs quickly ballooned for other reasons \u2014 Figgis uses on-screen titles to display key budget figures, which is another rarity in this kind of doc \u2014 and the actors tended to either go with the flow or begin to lose it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe one who loses it the most is LaBeouf, who keeps sparring with the director about motivation, action and other actorly things. \u201cIt\u2019s not exactly the easiest environment for a performer like me,\u201d the star says, in what seems to be a major understatement, whereas Coppola complains that he\u2019s \u201ctoo old and grouchy\u201d to put up with LaBeouf\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tArchive footage also reveals how Megalopolis had been in the making for a long time \u2014 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tFilmmaking 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<\/a>, Apocalypse Now), all of which he made in an eight-year run that remains one of the greatest achievements in post-studio-era Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019s also open to the unknown, doing lots of experimenting without always understanding where he\u2019s going. At a time when Hollywood movies are predetermined by marketing and numbers and, increasingly, by algorithms, the gift Coppola gives us here \u2014 and this is whether you like Megalopolis or not \u2014 is how bravely he embraces the chaos. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are many stars in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s batshit crazy and, some would say, botched $120-million dystopian epic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[35657,88,20354,29008,25417,15741,73834,24350,24388],"class_list":["post-116548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-adam-driver","tag-entertainment","tag-francis-ford-coppola","tag-megalopolis","tag-shia-labeouf","tag-venice","tag-venice-2025","tag-venice-film-festival","tag-venice-film-festival-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}