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.”
First I’m hearing about it but I’ve always hated that smug motherfucker. One time, like 20 years ago, he went on Conan’s show on NBC and came out and like immediately just started trashing Conan’s show for not having nicer chairs. Like, what the fuck. And it wasn’t even done in a way that was funny, just very entitled. Conan played through it so well, though, but I hated him ever since. Glad he’s catching shit for what he did.
I think he’s always had a problem trying to break out of his childhood nerd acting personal and just wildly overdoes it… Kind of like those guys who intentionally deepen their voice and walk with their arms out a little like their biceps are a little too big… He’s even mimiced that in movies before, but then unconsciously goes back to doing effectively the same thing unironically a few seconds later.