Say what you will about Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — God knows I certainly did — but his $120 million, critically reviled box office disaster dared to ask some important questions. Questions like, “If you throw $120 million dollars into a hole and set it on fire, will the smoke look like Jon Voight with a boner and a crossbow?”
The answer, for some reason, was “yes.” For all of Coppola’s lofty ambitions, “Megalopolis” didn’t turn out so great. It’s such a strange, embarrassing experiment that the only genuine emotion it evokes is nervous laughter. But there’s dignity in that laughter. You can’t fall on your face if you don’t try to take a stand. Mike Figgis’ behind-the-scenes documentary “Megadoc” catalogues the many missteps of Coppola’s notorious production, but he never loses sight of how ambitious it was. Or how expensive.
“Megadoc” opens with Coppola, just before the start of production. He’s spent 40 years developing the sci-fi drama “Megalopolis” and he’s invested $120 million of his own money into the project, just so he can do it his own way. “Who cares if you die broke if you make something you think is beautiful?” he asks. As if in response, Figgis breaks into his first voice-over, revealing that he mostly agreed to make “Megadoc” because he’s “intrigued to see how anyone can spend $120 million of their own money on a film.”
From an economic perspective, “Megadoc” is an old-fashioned geek show. It might as well have a budget counter in the upper righthand corner, constantly ticking up. When Coppola realizes he needs more rooms for his cast and crew, he decides to buy a whole hotel. At one point, Figgis’ camera lingers on the craft service table and a title card pops up, announcing the catering budget for “Megalopolis” was over $1.6 million. The joke that little indie movies are made for a fraction of one expensive movie’s catering budget was supposed to be hyperbolic, damn it, but here we are.
Figgis realizes he’s looking for red flags, and he openly admits that in his estimation, the best documentaries about filmmaking are about disasters. He never mentions “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” the award-winning doc about the even more disastrous production of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” but it’s the elephant in the room. One suspects Figgis never brings it up because the direct result of what happened in “Hearts of Darkness” was one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, and the direct result of what happened in “Megadoc” was, unfortunately, “Megalopolis.”
Entertainment publications love the smell of blood in the water, so when any major film goes overbudget, they tend to circle and form a tragic narrative. However, when all is said and done, nobody cares how much a movie costs if it makes a lot of money. And even if it doesn’t make a lot of money, if it turns out to be a classic, everyone usually overlooks that, too. The biggest story these days isn’t that James Cameron’s “Titanic” was expensive, it’s that the risk paid off. The biggest story about “It’s a Wonderful Life” isn’t that it was such a huge flop that it more-or-less destroyed a studio, it’s that it’s one of the best films ever made.
Mike Figgis, again, is making a film about “Megalopolis,” and his haunting, depressing, revelatory documentary does a commendable job of following everyone’s best intentions as they skipped gormlessly down an ominous road. Francis Ford Coppola claims that all he wants is to have fun. But by the time Shia LaBeouf reveals Coppola called casting him the only regret he has about the production, and that LaBeouf was “the biggest pain in my f–king ass of any actor I’ve ever worked with,” it seems he didn’t entirely succeed.
That’s not to say Figgis put a hit out on Coppola’s movie. If anything, he’s toning it down. He cuts to headlines in the trades about the day Coppola fired his VFX supervisor, while an entire art department resigned. But he never mentions the accusations of Coppola’s alleged misconduct on set. You know, the ones that led the filmmaker to file a libel suit against Variety. Figgis doesn’t seem to want to touch that with a 10-foot pole, not even to dispute those allegations.
You’d think Figgis, who appeared to have free reign to shoot most of Coppola’s production, would have something to show about that, especially if the truth turned out to be innocuous. Perhaps he was obligated to abstain for legal reasons. Either way, however embarrassing parts of “Megadoc” may appear — and the part where Aubrey Plaza and Dustin Hoffman ad lib an arm wrestling match certainly qualifies — we can’t shake the sense that if this otherwise-excellent documentary was willing to pull one punch, it could very well be pulling others.
There’s a moment at the beginning of “Megadoc,” on the first day of rehearsals, where Coppola points out a sign that reads “Abandon All Worry,” his take on the signpost outside of the gateway to Hell in Dante’s “Inferno.” Hilariously, he then notices that the sign actually wasn’t posted yet. How fitting. “Megadoc,” whether it’s showing all there is to show or not, is a fascinating exposé of a filmmaker who risked everything so nobody could shoot down his ideas, only to shoot himself in the foot in the process.
It calls to mind that old Hollywood expression that says you can make a movie fast and cheap, but not good; or you can make a movie fast and good, but not cheap; or you can make a movie cheap and good, but not fast. The point is, you can never have all three. Francis Ford Coppola, ever the maverick, wound up making a film that was none of those things. “Megadoc” isn’t a cautionary tale, because anyone with $120 million burning a hole in their pocket can take any risk they want. However, it’s an important reminder that while we should celebrate filmmakers for taking big risks, we should also be honest with ourselves and admit that, sometimes, risks don’t pay off.
