The Mind Behind Megalopolis

I’ll cop to it—I liked Megalopolis. I’m not sure it was exactly a good movie, but it was unlike anything I had seen before, and you don’t get to say that often. Its ambitions were gigantic, if also somewhat vague; its effects were spectacular, if also strange and confusing; the acting was deliberate and passionate, if also kind of weird. Francis Ford Coppola, who did at least four of the best American movies ever (the first two Godfathers, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now), blew the doors out, setting the gossip press aflame with rumors of on-set madness and immolating a vast pile of his own hard-earned dosh on this rare spectacle, a complicated pastiche of science fiction and late Roman republican history. Watching it was one of the most satisfying ways to spend twelve American dollars I have ever experienced.