{"id":70176,"date":"2025-09-17T19:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T19:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70176\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T19:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T19:49:09","slug":"mike-figgis-on-the-making-of-megalopolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70176\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Figgis on the Making of ‘Megalopolis’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francis Ford Coppola<\/a>\u2018s 2024 \u201cMegalopolis<\/a>\u201d went off like a bomb \u2014 a succ\u00e8s d\u2019estime, film<\/a> maudit, or total disaster, depending on your perspective.<\/p>\n

For his first feature in 13 years, and one decades in the making, the Oscar-winning \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d and \u201cThe Godfather\u201d filmmaker plunged more than $120 million of his own money into reimagining 21st-century New York City as a new Roman empire over which preside a visionary architect (Adam Driver) and a corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito). Production began in earnest at Georgia\u2019s Trilith Studios in November 2022, where Coppola bought out a Days Inn to convert into the production headquarters and the sprawling cast\u2019s (which included Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, and more) living quarters for a four-month-long shoot. <\/p>\n

\"Ava<\/a> \"Mamoru<\/a> <\/p>\n

Controversy followed, crews tussled, the trades reported mass exodus and creative disagreement on set. If you\u2019re reading this, you know the rest of the story \u2014 all the way up to the film\u2019s divisive Cannes 2024 premiere in competition, and the long road to Lionsgate eventually distributing \u201cMegalopolis<\/a>\u201d in the fall to little noise and less box office ($14 million worldwide).<\/p>\n

Filming all the while was Oscar-nominated \u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d and \u201cTimecode\u201d filmmaker Mike Figgis<\/a>, who previously directed five documentaries of his own including one about a flamenco dance troupe. The result, with cameras rolling on set from production and onto quite literally the red carpet heading into the Palais des Festivals for the \u201cMegalopolis\u201d Cannes premiere, is the Venice-premiering documentary \u201cMegadoc<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Closer in spirit to the 1991 documentary about the making of \u201cApocalypse Now,\u201d \u201cHearts of Darkness,\u201d though certainly with less ruination and despair, \u201cMegadoc<\/a>\u201d is hardly your typical behind-the-scenes feature-length featurette. A film IndieWire called \u201ca riveting documentary about the making of a visionary disaster<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s an intimate look at Coppola\u2019s mercurial artistic process and the shifting temperaments and on-set weathers experienced (and created) by everyone below and above the line \u2014 such as a canny episode that witnesses a frustrated LaBeouf unable to meet his grandmaster\u2019s demands. \u201cI don\u2019t know what you want!\u201d LaBeouf yells.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minute you turn on a camera, whether you\u2019re filming a rehearsal, a documentary, a feature film or anything, the minute the camera turns on, reality clicks into another level, always,\u201d Figgis told IndieWire. That\u2019s to say there is a level of performance going on, whether Aubrey Plaza wooing or dismissing the camera or Nathalie Emmanuel requesting that Figgis not film her while eating. It\u2019s a fascinating portrait of celebrity ego and of the inner workings of a movie the outside world deemed doomed from the start.<\/p>\n

Ahead of \u201cMegadoc\u201d hitting theaters, Figgis, while smoking a roll-your-own cigarette over Zoom, talked the making of his own making-of documentary, which actors were the prickliest or most giving, and what he actually thinks of the end product, the movie \u201cMegalopolis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

IndieWire: How did you first come to meet Francis Ford Coppola<\/a>? Was it through Nicolas Cage and \u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mike Figgis: <\/strong>The first time I sat down and had a conversation with Francis was probably the night at the Oscars, at the Governors Ball. I was with the Coppola family. Nic [Cage\u2019s] mother was there, aunties, and things like that. There was so much food, and no one was eating, and I think one of the aunts went, \u201cThis is all going to waste.\u201d She got a napkin and said, \u201cI\u2019m taking this home.\u201d That\u2019s how I met the extended Coppola clan. I knew Sofia a little bit when she was younger, through a different crowd. <\/p>\n

Francis and I seemed to hit it off quite well. We stayed in touch over the years. I did some work for the magazine he runs, that is edited by someone else, Zoetrope. I was guest editor on one of those, kept in touch with Michael [Ray] the editor, and then something came up, we were having a conversation, and I said, \u201cGive my regards to Francis.\u201d He said, \u201cHe\u2019s really happy. He\u2019s going ahead with \u2018Megalopolis.\u2019\u201d I had no idea what \u201cMegalopolis\u201d was. I wrote to Francis and said congratulations, and cheekily put at the end, \u201cP.S. If you need a fly on the wall, let me know.\u201d Nothing for a while, then I suddenly got an email from him that said, \u201cDo you have a visa? Could you get on a plane quite soon?\u201d Wow, OK. I didn\u2019t have a feature, so I said OK.<\/p>\n

The film ends at the Cannes premiere. There\u2019s nothing about the aftermath or the reception. Were you by Coppola\u2019s side when the movie kind of went off like a bomb at the festival?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which was on the cards by then, because obviously it had done a preview in Los Angeles, and I\u2019d had feedback from that. I wasn\u2019t there. That was a long way to go, and I felt Cannes would be more filmically exciting, and so I pushed for the Cannes thing and said, \u201cI\u2019d love to come, but can I get on the red carpet?\u201d They said, \u201cNo, that\u2019s never been allowed before.\u201d Francis made a phone call and said, \u201cOK, you\u2019re the exception. The [festival] says you can stick with me on the red carpet.\u201d <\/p>\n

I was very nervous because it was just me, no assistant, and you\u2019ve got to have batteries charged. What if a camera doesn\u2019t work? I stuck a GoPro on top of the camera as a second camera just in case, and I ran that the whole time. I used some of the footage.<\/p>\n

Has he seen the final version of the documentary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. We had a conversation [that was] pretty much [positive]. He let me do what I want. Obviously, the whole thing with the art department and all that, he had very strong views about that from his point of view. I said, it\u2019s a documentary. You\u2019re a grandmaster. You\u2019re above all this. Just let me show my balance and my frame from how I saw it because I got friendly with the art department. I was following them as it unfolded. Everybody was trying to do the best thing they could because they love Francis and respect him so much. Everyone\u2019s just trying to give him what he wants all the time, and that\u2019s tricky with Francis historically. I interviewed his wife at the very beginning, and I said, \u201cAny advice?\u201d And she said, \u201cJust keep your eyes open because he\u2019ll change his mind all the time.\u201d That was really valuable advice.<\/p>\n

Was he concerned about the financial success of the movie? Even though he put $120 million of his own money into this\u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

More!<\/p>\n

Was he expecting it to make that back?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question because, in the past, historically, he\u2019s been proven right obviously with \u201cApocalypse Now,\u201d which is a good parallel. He held out and eventually did get his money back. Primarily, he wants to make a film the way he wants to make it. What historically he\u2019s proved is making money for him was never a huge issue. He lost it, then he got it back, then he diversified into wine and hotels and all that stuff. He has a remarkably healthy attitude towards money. He says, \u201cLook, I\u2019m in my eighties. It\u2019s only money. The kids are OK. It\u2019s fine.\u201d At a certain point, he did get a bit nervous because he took out a loan as well on the wine business. In answer to your question, no, that wasn\u2019t a dominating factor for him.<\/p>\n

\"'Megadoc'\"\u2018Megadoc\u2019Utopia<\/p>\n

Early in the documentary, the art department points out how the film\u2019s look was still being developed during production, so she says it\u2019s \u201cequal parts exciting and distressing.\u201d Could you feel that contradiction on set?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was changing his mind every day, and then he was trying things, so his idea of fun is that if I have an idea on Friday morning, as I\u2019m driving to work, I\u2019m paying for this, I\u2019ll do it. So he might turn up and say, \u201cI\u2019ve changed my mind, I don\u2019t want to do it like that. Let\u2019s try it old school.\u201d He was having so much fun: Look at it this way. That generation of actors, and I would include myself, the fun is in the process of making the film, full stop. I remember years ago working with Albert Finney, who\u2019s a great actor but also had directed and was very much involved in the process of filmmaking. At the end of the film, he said, \u201cI just want to tell you I will never see this film. I had a ball making it, and I hope we do another one together, but that\u2019s all I\u2019m interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fun part is in the process, so let\u2019s try something, as opposed to the contemporary, what has become the lockdown way of making movies: Everything is locked down before you even shoot the first day, and particularly if you go for Marvel universe type stuff, it has to be locked down, hence the panic in the art department because they thought that\u2019s what Francis wanted. And then he changed his mind because it was boring for him. It wasn\u2019t fun. He\u2019s not a green screen, blue screen kind of guy. And he comes from theater, so he\u2019s from that generation. He wants to fuck around with stuff and try props and theatrical reality as opposed to Marvel reality.<\/p>\n

That was unfortunate for the art department because they were definitely not prepared for that. Had they known he wanted to do it that way, they would have pre-planned differently. He wanted some of that stuff, but the balance was off for them, and they were ducking and diving trying to catch up.<\/p>\n

\"Megadoc\"\u2018Megadoc\u2019Utopia<\/p>\n

This Hollywood Reporter<\/a> story broke during production detailing crew exits and creative differences. Then you had Adam Driver<\/a> rushing to the movie\u2019s defense, and in \u201cMegadoc\u201d you see Coppola reacting to that news break. Was that exciting to you, as a filmmaker who is trained to chase drama?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Hollywood Reporter thing was a story, and for a story to be a story, it has to be dramatic. There wasn\u2019t, as they say, this kind of total group feeling of \u201cit\u2019s a disaster.\u201d It was basically a clash between him and the art department, which he then solved by getting rid of them. As I say in the documentary, his mood immediately elevated. He was so cheerful because, in a way, he was back in control of what he understands as the filmmaking process, and the contrast was he was incredibly happy. The art department was kind of really sad because they felt they hadn\u2019t been able to give him what he wanted. There are no villains in this piece. It\u2019s just creative tensions which will always emerge when you work with someone like Francis. Historically, it\u2019s been the same with Kubrick and all kinds of people. Different forms of that, but that kind of filmmaking on that kind of scale inevitably will throw up something.<\/p>\n

There are candid moments with Shia LaBeouf, who talks about his persona non grata status, but also he had a prior, bruised relationship with Jon Voight that the movie helped him repair. Shia is volatile in person, and this movie doesn\u2019t shy away from that. Were you prepared for that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was all new to me. I didn\u2019t know much about him but, in the first days of turning up in the rehearsal, he was one of the first people I started talking to who was very open. People were cautious of me when I turned up, which I understand. They\u2019re in a nervy situation where they\u2019ve read the script, they don\u2019t quite understand it. They aren\u2019t quite sure what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n

He had no idea who I was, and he said, \u201cWho are you? What are you doing here? How do you know Francis?\u201d It was a very funny conversation. I said, \u201cI know him through Nic.\u201d \u201cNic who?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, Coppola.\u201d \u201cHow do you know Nic?\u201d I said through the movie. \u201cWhat movie?\u201d I said, \u201cLeaving Las Vegas.\u201d \u201cWhat was your connection with that?\u201d I said, \u201cOh, I directed it, wrote it, did the score, and produced it,\u201d and he went, \u201cHoly fuck, well then what are you doing here with your little video camera?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

From then on, we had a really good relationship. He was very open talking about the process, his process, and how that can work and as you observed yourself, his volatility within this framework, obviously, he was polite and nervous whether he was going to get fired, but quite ballsy when it came to politely questioning, \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d There\u2019s that lovely moment in the thing where Francis loses it completely and says, \u201cJust give me what I want,\u201d and he goes, \u201cI don\u2019t know what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MEGALOPOLIS,\u2018Megalopolis\u2019 \u00a9Lions Gate\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Nathalie Emmanuel didn\u2019t want to be filmed eating, and Adam Driver is known for being camera-shy and prickly toward press, but it seemed like you were able to work around these celebrity behaviors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had to keep reminding myself, \u201cIt\u2019s not my movie.\u201d It\u2019s very easy when you\u2019re on a set like that, you have freedom to go anywhere you want, you\u2019ve got your camera to fall into the trap of thinking somehow this is your film. At a certain point, you are cautioned by Adam or Nathalie or whoever, the people who want to be left a little bit alone, or in Adam\u2019s case completely alone, so I thought, OK that\u2019s an interesting problem to work around. As I say at the beginning of the film, I\u2019ve never watched another filmmaker at work before, so that was a revelation. After years of making a film myself, you fall into the trap of going, \u201cOh, that\u2019s how we make films.\u201d That\u2019s bullshit. How I make films has got nothing to do with how anybody else makes a film. Quentin Tarantino makes a film or Scorsese makes a film, they\u2019ve all got their own style.<\/p>\n

Aubrey Plaza seemed very open with you and also someone who is turned on by the camera, even as it\u2019s meant to be on-the-fly and nonfiction. It seemed like you developed a good relationship<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We were in rehearsal, and I was filming it. It was a couple days in, and they got used to me being there. I also am polite initially. I try and find who\u2019s going to respond and who\u2019s not going to respond, and Aubrey clearly as a personality has got that kind of interactive potential. What happened was, when they were rehearsing, she plays a TV reporter, and they were doing a scene, and she went, \u201cYou\u2019re my camera man,\u201d and she grabbed me and took me into the rehearsal as her cameraperson and started bossing me around, and said, \u201cHere, come here, film this,\u201d and it was Shia doing all his push-ups. At that point, Francis goes, \u201cMike, there\u2019s a better angle over there.\u201d I said, I\u2019m on a wide lens, and he went, oh, and I suddenly thought, I\u2019ve been commandeered into the process now, which was funny but really useful in the sense that it established this kind of thing \u2014 your question before, are they performing? Yes. of course they\u2019re performing. I had a deal with the actors and said to all of them, once we start shooting, I will be everywhere. If I\u2019m in your face, do this [makes throat-cutting gesture], and I\u2019ll go away. If you want to play that I\u2019m in your face, do this [holds palm out]. Aubrey was very good at playing the part of \u201cyou\u2019re in my face, go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were reports about and a video<\/a> showing Coppola exhibiting what people ascribed to old-school directorial behavior. Did you observe any of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. Put it this way: I was there and my job was literally just to watch everything like a hawk, so that\u2019s my job. I\u2019m looking for, not bad things, but things that would work well in the documentary. So I\u2019m watching and I\u2019m trying to find stuff, and I didn\u2019t see any of that. Either I\u2019m not a very good filmmaker or I\u2019m quite good. I was watching everything. I used to wake up in the morning and go, \u201cWhy am I so cheerful?\u201d It was like, \u201cIt\u2019s not my film. It\u2019s not my problem. I don\u2019t have to fix anything. All I have to do is be awake, alert, and have enough batteries so that if something happens, I get it.\u201d There was so much interesting stuff happening that was for me really interesting.<\/p>\n

\"'Megalopolis,'\u2018Megalopolis\u2019Courtesy of Lionsgate<\/p>\n

Lastly, what do you think about \u201cMegalopolis\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d seen all the scenes being shot, so as they were shooting, I was thinking, that\u2019s interesting, how are they going to cut that? How\u2019s that going to fit into the sequence? The first time I saw it was in Cannes, it was the only time I\u2019ve seen it. A couple of factors I have to add: I was very nervous because I was shooting, and I was just thinking of my batteries. Do I have enough light to shoot?<\/p>\n

There are some scenes where I thought, that\u2019s interesting what he\u2019s done with that. I was still a little bit confused about the sequential, the timeline of it, and one of my feelings was there\u2019s so much material, he\u2019s shot so much stuff, and the story is so complicated that to get it into feature length, whatever it was at Cannes, underlines for me one of the problems that we have with film right now, since serial became such a big deal as a respected way of telling stories over five hours, six hours, that maybe this would work better in more of a serial kind of context. <\/p>\n

I really liked when they did that with \u201cThe Godfather,\u201d where there\u2019s much more time with character. I felt that just getting the story into that box was slightly at the disservice of the characters. I wanted to know more about the characters, actually, personally, and about the love story and so on.<\/p>\n

We talk about how serialized TV is impacting filmmakers and their theatrical projects, where the impulse to stuff in more material is heightened. Most movies at the Venice Film Festival this year are 150 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since \u201cSopranos,\u201d \u201cThe Wire,\u201d etc. etc., that was such a gamechanger, and the attempt now by filmmakers to make the films longer and longer, I think there was kind of a rule about feature films, which is to do with your bum and the point when you start wriggling in your chair, it\u2019s just too long. One of my favorite films is \u201cNotorious,\u201d and it\u2019s something like 93 minutes, and it\u2019s a perfect film, but it\u2019s been written for that format. We\u2019re still trying to write feature films because we love the idea of the cinema, and the feature, and sometimes there\u2019s just too much stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cMegadoc\u201d opens in theaters on Friday, September 19 from Utopia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Ford Coppola\u2018s 2024 \u201cMegalopolis\u201d went off like a bomb \u2014 a succ\u00e8s d\u2019estime, film maudit, or total…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,597,8159,19,2810,17,48538,48539,48540,327],"class_list":{"0":"post-70176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-francis-ford-coppola","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-interviews","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-megadoc","16":"tag-megalopolis","17":"tag-mike-figgis","18":"tag-movies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}