‘Megalopolis’ is about U.S. heading in ‘fascist’ direction, Coppola says

This article contains spoilers for the movie “Megalopolis.”

Cannes, FRANCE — Near the end of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” - a baffling sci-fi epic that cost the director $120 million of his own money and was 40 years in the making - Shia LaBeouf’s slimy rich-kid politician is exposed as a false prophet to the poor masses of New Rome and strung upside down by his feet.

Throughout the film, he’d been presenting himself as an alternative to the two warring leaders of the city: Adam Driver as a visionary architect who wants to build a utopia, and Giancarlo Esposito as a mayor who thinks the status quo is just great, though it could be raking in more money. He writhes and protests as the crowd, whom he had told he would lead out of poverty, pelt him with objects. The last thing that hits him is a red hat: “Make America Great Again.”

Is Coppola scared of people like Donald Trump being at the helm of American society, a journalist from Barcelona asked Friday, at what was by far the most crowded and anticipated news conference of the festival?

“Men like Donald Trump are not at the moment in charge … but there is a trend toward the more neo-right, even fascist tradition, which is frightening,” Coppola said. “Because anyone who was alive during World War II saw the harm that took place and we don’t want a repeat of that.”

He kept turning to Jon Voight, an old friend who plays New Rome’s richest man: “Jon, you have different political opinions than me,” he said as the press room burst into laughter.

Voight is one of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives and had urged his fans not to support the certifying of the 2020 election. He’s called Trump “the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.” He’s also come out in favor of Israel defending itself in the war in Gaza and has endorsed Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2024.

He did not, however, take Coppola’s bait. The film, he said, was about how we can make the world better, and he’d been deeply moved by it, as someone who’d first heard Coppola talk about it 25 years ago, back when Voight was a central figure of the American counterculture - which he’s since repudiated. “I agree with this film, Francis’s vision that says human beings are capable of solving every problem we get ourselves into … we must bond together, we must help each other, we must listen to each other and we must take this on,” Voight said.

Unlike many directors here trying to sell a film, Coppola hadn’t given a single interview about “Megalopolis,” despite the fact that he’s yet to find an American distributor and had to sell part of his successful winery to come up with the funds to make it. This news conference was journalists’ first opportunity to pepper Coppola with questions of why and how he had made such a head scratcher. (At an earlier screening, the audience gasped and burst out giggling, for instance, when Voight’s billionaire character, on his deathbed, pretends to have an erection and instead produces a tiny bow and arrow, perfectly suited for a vengeful rampage.)

The film has MAGA parallels, sure, but it’s also Coppola’s way of comparing the downfall of American society to the fall of Rome - under the framework of something like a Greek tragedy or Shakespearean play, replete with incest, star-crossed lovers and two warring houses, with Driver’s and Esposito’s characters essentially representing the allures of art and science, and LaBeouf as someone who’s preying off those disillusioned by both.

Why did Coppola want to do “a Roman epic, but set in modern America”? “Because America was founded on the ideas of the Roman Republic,” he said, explaining that much of our architecture is based on Rome, including the original Penn Station, modeled on the Baths of Caracalla.

“I had no idea that the politics of today would make that so relevant, because what’s happening in America, in our republic, in our democracy, is exactly how Rome lost their republic thousands of years ago,” Coppola said. It wasn’t politicians who’d be the answer, he added, but artists who would illuminate what’s happening, “and allow people to see it, because you can’t act on it if you can’t see it.”

Coppola dismissed concerns that he’d squandered his personal fortune on this project. His children had careers and would be fine, he said. “Money doesn’t matter,” he said, providing a life lesson to the room. “What matters are friends.”

And he seemed quite comfortable about his lack of U.S. distribution. He could wait. He didn’t want to send it to streaming, “which is what we used to call home video,” he said, mentioning the dominance of companies like Apple and Amazon. He wanted an audience to see it together and become one. “I fear that the film industry has become more a matter of people being hired to meet their debt obligations,” he said, “because studios face great debt and their job is not to make good movies. Their job is to make sure that they pay their debt obligations.”

And he also put to rest the idea that “Megalopolis” is a coda to his career. “I’ll be here in 20 years, I think,” he said, mentioning that he’d already started writing another film.

At 85, criticism has long ceased to matter to him. “So many people when they die say, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done that,” he said. “When I die, I’m going to say, ‘I got to see my daughter win an Oscar and I got to make wine and I got to make every movie I wanted to make.’ And I’m gonna be so busy thinking of all the things that I got to do that when I die I won’t notice it.”