Francis Ford Coppola isn’t shying away from controversy when it comes to his latest feature “Megalopolis.”
While “Megalopolis” has been critically divisive, the film was also plagued by allegations that Coppola was inappropriate to female extras on set, including kissing and hugging actresses against their will. Coppola has deemed the accusations “untrue.”
And that’s not even getting to the eclectic ensemble cast. While Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nathalie Emmanuel lead the film, supporting stars Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, and Dustin Hoffman have made for some albeit interesting choices. Voight and co-star LaBeouf have infamously butted heads, but that’s not all: LaBeouf has been publicly accused of assaulting former partners, while Voight has drawn criticisms for his devout support of former President Donald Trump. Hoffman has allegedly assaulted co-stars as well.
Writer/director Coppola told Rolling Stone, however, that his casting choices were intentionally controversial.
“What I didn’t want to happen is that we’re deemed some woke Hollywood production that’s simply lecturing viewers,” Coppola said. “The cast features people who were canceled at one point or another. There were people who are archconservatives and others who are extremely politically progressive. But we were all working on one film together. That was interesting, I thought.”
Coppola added that LaBeouf especially had a more Method process that he respected.
“I did a weird thing with ‘Megalopolis’ because I could only rehearse with about a third of the cast, maybe a little more. I had Aubrey Plaza. I had Nathalie Emmanuel. I didn’t have Adam. But I had given everybody understudies like it was a play,” Coppola said, “and I said, ‘What I’ll do is, I’ll do the rehearsal, and regarding the actors I don’t have, I’ll use the understudies.’ It was a very creative, interesting week of rehearsals. You could see the actors find the characters. Shia [LaBeouf] really took to it.”
He continued, “I had no experience working with him prior to this, but he deliberately sets up a tension between himself and the director to an extreme degree. He reminds me of Dennis Hopper, who would do something similar, and then you’d say, ‘Just go do anything,’ and then they go off and do something brilliant.”
And while Coppola did admit that he and Voight have different politics, that made the set more interesting, especially since the plotline involves January 6-esque protests. Voight told Variety that he does not believe his “Megalopolis” character was based on Donald Trump, and that he would have told director Francis Ford Coppola he was “out of line” to use him for a Trump satire.
To Rolling Stone, Coppola shrugged off the differing views.
“This steers me toward politics, and my publicist will yell at me if I start talking about politics,” he said. “This movie won’t cure our ills. But I honestly believe that what will save us is the fact that we’ve got to talk about the future. We want to be able to ask any questions we have to ask in order to really look at why this country is divided right now, and that’s going to provide an energy that will defeat those people who want to destroy our republic. I made this film to contribute to that. And all I want is for this movie to start a conversation. You can’t have a utopia without a conversation.”
