I Am So Fucking Ready For Megalopolis
In The Fractured Mirror, the book I spent a seeming eternity writing and will reference in every article I write going forward, I discuss how people were surprised by 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply’s modest scope.
Warren Beatty is a ferociously ambitious filmmaker. Even when he was making popcorn entertainment like Dick Tracy, he set out to make the classiest, most beautiful comic strip movie ever made.
Beatty ranks among our most beloved and least prolific filmmakers, so it's a big deal when he has a new movie coming out.
Rules Don’t Apply was the first film Beatty had written and directed since the 2001 flop Town & Country.
Real-life movie personalities don’t come bigger than Howard Hughes, but Rules Don’t Apply is a decidedly modest movie. It’s not a two-fisted epic that tries to tell Hughes’ whole story, like The Aviator or The Carpetbaggers.
When Beatty makes a movie every fifteen years or so, he tends to swing for the fences as an actor, writer, producer, and director, but Rules Don’t Apply is a single motion picture.
It’s easy to see why Beatty wanted to play Howard Hughes. He’s a great character. In Rules Don’t Apply, Beatty delivers a memorable performance in a forgettable little movie.
Rules Don’t Apply is, after all, one of only three movies Beatty has made since 1994’s Love Affair. The others are 1998’s Bulworth and 2001’s Town & Country.
Filmmakers were expecting something more along the lines of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a self-financed one hundred and twenty-five million dollar passion project the eccentric filmmaker has been working on for decades.
Like Beatty, Coppola stopped making movies regularly a long time ago. They even stopped making movies irregularly a long time ago.
In the twenty-seven years since Coppola blessed us with a real movie, namely the 1997 John Grisham adaptation The Rain Maker, Coppola has directed three movies before his Herculean return to the big time with Megalopolis.
But those movies don’t count because nobody has even heard of them, and they might not actually exist. Do you remember watching 2007’s Youth Without Youth? Of course you don’t! You haven’t seen Youth Without Youth, 2009’s Tetro, or 2012’s Twixt because no one has seen them.
Even Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t seen these movies, and he made them. If you were to ask him about Twixt or Teatro, he would get confused and assure you that he has never made a movie called Twixt and thinks that it would be dumb to make a movie about a candy bar, no matter how delicious.
While making tiny little movies that barely exist and that no one has seen or heard of, Coppola became a very successful vintner. He made a fuck-ton of money selling booze to the Basic. He’s all about giving Karen something sparkly and light to drink for Sunday brunch.
All the while, Francis was planning his big comeback, one last towering epic, before he headed to the great Studio Lot in the sky.
In The Fractured Mirror, I write extensively about the deathless, inspirational archetype of the Obsessive Artist Willing to Risk it All on a Dream. Coppola epitomizes this archetype as much as Orson Welles does. They’re our two biggest and least practical geniuses.
Say what you will about Coppola; the man does not lack passion. He does not lack ambition. He does not lack audacity. He does not lack drive. He does not lack vision. He does not lack talent.
Coppola is once again willing to risk it all on a crazy dream. Will it turn out as well as Apocalypse Now? Of course. Not even Francis Ford Coppola could make another Apocalypse Now, especially now that he is an old man raging against the dying of the light.
Judging from its trailer, Megalopolis looks disconcertingly Objectivist in theme. It looks like a tale of individual genius triumphing over groupthink and cowardice whose allegorical elements are so heavy-handed they’re text rather than subtext.
I quite like King Vidor’s adaptation of The Fountainhead because it is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It’s clearly the work of artists who have nothing but righteous, correct contempt for Ayn Rand’s work and ideas.
Megalopolis looks nuttier than a squirrel’s diet. It looks crazier than a shithouse rat. Coppola is once again in world-beater mode, trying to change everything with a massive manifesto a la The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart.
He’s amassed a crazy cast that includes sister Talia Shire and his nephew Jason Schwartzman but not, puzzlingly, Nicolas Cage.
True, they haven’t worked together since Peggy Sue Got Married, but it seems crazy that Coppola is making a crazy-ass movie that might be a masterpiece or might be the most embarrassing sack of shit ever filmed and didn’t recruit someone who specializes in those kinds of all-or-nothing propositions.
I was put on earth to write about movies like Megalopolis. I can’t wait to see it for Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas tonight and for My World of Flops in about a month. I have no doubt that I’ll have plenty to write about for The A.V. Club piece even after covering it for my Substack.
Cinema is back, baby! And for once, I am not being sarcastic or smartass when I write that. Coppola’s big move might be a total abomination. I wouldn’t mind at all. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be personal, distinctive, and gloriously messy.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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