Mike Figgis’s documentary takes us on to the set of the director’s passion project to give as raw and intimate a portrait of an auteur at work as we’ve had for some time
‘D
o you know why I’m doing this movie? What do I get out of it?” an exasperated Francis Ford Coppola asks Shia LaBeouf on the set of Megalopolis. “I don’t get money. I don’t get fame; I already have fame. I don’t get Oscars, I already have Oscars. What do I get that I want?” LaBeouf eventually gives up. “Fun!” Coppola says. “I wanna have fun!”
Making Megalopolis doesn’t look like most people’s idea of fun as Coppola attempts to corral actors, crew, costumes, locations, lavish sets and special effects all in service of a sprawling sci-fi-meets-ancient-Rome story that no one fully understands. Throw in the fact that the film-maker spent $120m of his own money on the passion project by selling off part of his winemaking business to raise funds, having spent nearly 50 years trying to get it made, and that the production was beset with delays, technical headaches and bust-ups, and you feel this is more than most 83-year-olds should have to go through.
But watching Coppola making Megalopolis often is rather fun – perhaps more fun than the end product, to be honest. Just as the documentary Hearts of Darkness captured the chaos and strife behind the making of Coppola’s legendary Apocalypse Now back in 1976, so Mike Figgis’s new film Megadoc takes us on to the set of Coppola’s latest, grandest adventure. If we don’t quite get heart attacks and typhoons this time round, we do get as raw and intimate a portrait of an auteur at work as we’ve had for some time.
