This March 28 in the morning, an unusual ballet of black sedans unfolds in front of the Universal City amusement park, in Los Angeles. Guests head to the IMAX theater at the AMC multiplex (the best in town). At the entrance, phones are confiscated. Hollywood’s elite sit down and wait patiently for the screening of Megalopolisthe new film by Francis Ford Coppola, starts.
Part of the filmmaker’s clan is present: his son Roman, his nephew Nicolas Cage, his sister Talia Shire, his ex-son-in-law Spike Jonze, but also the actors and/or directors Al Pacino, Anjelica Huston, Andy Garcia, Jon Favreau, Darren Aronofsky, and even filmmaker and producer Roger Corman who helped Coppola put together Dementia 13, his first feature film, in 1963. The latter has just passed away at the age of 98.
“It was amazing to see all these VIPs at 10 a.m. in a multiplex, without cell phones, so having nothing else to do but talk to each other, says one of the rare journalists invited to the screening and who prefers to remain anonymous. Not many people have the power to take away Ted Sarandos’ phone [le patron de Netflix]. »
But the objective of the screening was not only friendly. “Coppola spent a lot of his own money on this film, adds the journalist. Now he needs a partner to distribute it widely, in hopes of repaying himself. So he invited everyone at once. » The stakes are all the more important because Francis Ford Coppola has been mulling over this project for forty years. So much so that, for movie buffs, it is shrouded in mystery. And many of them couldn’t believe it when its selection in competition at Cannes was announced.
References to ancient Rome
The American director, in the running for a third Palme d’Or, forty-five years later Apocalypse Now and fifty after Secret conversation, distributes a document at the entrance to the room: “As you have already heard from me: “I believe in America” he writes. Then he takes a cryptic detour through history: “Our founders borrowed a Constitution, Roman law, and a Senate to establish their revolutionary government without a king, so that American history could neither unfold nor succeed as it did without classical learning for guide her. » It’s difficult to be sure of understanding what the filmmaker meant without having seen his film, but a few elements that have filtered through allow us to develop hypotheses.
You have 66.13% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.