When you’re a legendary filmmaker like Francis Ford Coppola, there are few things left to do in the industry after creating ground-breaking cinema, earning top-tier awards, and working alongside the biggest names in the business. However, what about returning to why you got involved in filmmaking? Imagine making a movie for fun! It’s a wild concept in today’s film market that thrives on competition, trend-chasing, and merchandising tie-ins. In Utopia‘s MEGADOC teaser trailer, Francis Ford Coppola takes us into the heart of his self-financed flop Megalopolis, and the filmmaker is as unapologetic as ever about his choices. I love that for him.

Here’s the official synopsis for MEGADOC:

“A raw, fly-on-the-wall documentary about Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long journey in creating his self-financed passion project, Megalopolis. The bold and unrelenting epic returns in Mike Figgis’ portrait of Coppola’s creative process – weaving together archival material, unfiltered cast interviews, and a close-up view of how the legendary filmmaker drew from Roman history, political allegory, and his own singular vision to shape the world of Megalopolis. This isn’t a record of a production on the brink, it’s a personal memoir unfolding in real time.”

Academy Award nominee Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Internal Affairs, Time Code) directs MEGADOC. Figgis is a filmmaker, writer, photographer, and composer based in London. After studying music and touring extensively with the experimental performance group “People Show,” Mike started directing films and made his breakthrough with Stormy Monday. His body of work includes writing, directing and composing the scores for the films Internal Affairs, Leaving Las Vegas (for which he received 2 Oscar nominations), Miss Julie & Timecode (the first real-time digital film ever made); directing episodes of “The Sopranos” and “The Affair”; and authoring the books “Digital Filmmaking” & “The 36 Dramatic Situations for Film” which address the challenges of the new cinema and story structure.

In our review for Megalopolis, Chris Bumbray says the film is an “unwieldy mess,” though he was reluctant to join the chorus of haters. “In the last forty minutes, Megalopolis becomes a real disaster, with so much jam-packed into the movie’s third act that it becomes almost impossible to keep up with it. It becomes nonsensical as it races towards its ending. Again, one can’t fault Coppola for his ambition. He financed the movie with money he earned, so he had every right to make exactly the film he wanted to make. But it’s hard to imagine this ever connecting with anyone other than hardcore Coppola devotees or maybe connoisseurs of bad cinema,” Chris writes.

Wow! Well, at least Megalopolis will make for a great documentary subject. I’ve not seen Megalopolis, but I’m fascinated by its production nonetheless. I also admire Coppola’s passion for something so bizarre and fraught with confusion, which sounds right up my alley. I love watching “bad” movies. The more someone tells me something is a disaster, the more I want to watch it. I’m a sicko like that.

What about you? What do you think about Utopia’s MEGADOC teaser trailer? Have you seen Megalopolis? What did you think about the movie? Let us know in the comments section below.

Source:
Utopia