Is Shia LaBeouf a better director than Francis Ford Coppola? It’s a question perhaps only considered in the mind of the former, at least evidenced in an exclusive new clip from behind-the-scenes of Megalopolis. As captured by Mike Figgis––who was invited to the set of the legendary director’s gargantuan production and had intimate access to every facet of the production––the documentary on its making is now arriving with MEGADOC. Ahead of Friday’s theatrical release from Utopia, we’re pleased to exclusively debut a new clip, featuring LaBeouf attempting to block a scene with Jon Voight, and clearly getting on Coppola’s nerves.
David Katz said in his review, “With greater parallels to Apocalypse Now in its self-funded genesis than in his studio-backed career highlights (extending up to Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the early ‘90s), clearly a documentary enshrining the events on the ground had to be made. Up steps Mike Figgis, no stranger to iconoclastic, independent-working, and Hollywood-revenge narratives. Watching MEGADOC, the 107-minute result premiering this week at the Venice Film Festival, we wonder what Figgis wasn’t legally permitted to show, yet his project is key to understanding what Megalopolis is and what hamstrung it, and maybe, also, that greatness wasn’t its destiny.”
“I related to it in the sense of being very sympathetic to the frustration he was experiencing,” Figgis told Ethan Vestby in our recent interview. “And I, in a way, frustrated because I thought to myself, ‘There’s an easier way of doing this, Francis, but in my opinion, you’ve become the prisoner of your own budget.’ The more money you spend, the slower it’s going to get. And the more money you spend, the actor’s attitude is going to be in line with that Hollywood philosophy of, ‘You’re paying a lot of money, therefore I belong in this status group of: I get special treatment, I want a trailer, and so on.’ So on Timecode, the deal was: everybody got the same money and there were no trailers.”
See the exclusive clip below.
The post Watch Francis Ford Coppola and Shia LaBeouf Quarrel on the Set of Megalopolis first appeared on The Film Stage.
