Francis Ford Coppola’s Endless Pursuit: The Saga of Megalopolis

In the autumn of 1998, Francis Ford Coppola sat in a small restaurant tucked in New York City, not far from the cobbled streets of Little Italy. He was no stranger to gatherings like this, but the reason for this meal was different. Coppola had requested a meeting with the head of Premiere magazine, wanting a sit-down that was less about pleasantries and more about grievances. He was not seeking to charm or pitch a new project to the publication. He was there because he felt wronged, and when Coppola feels wronged, he makes sure people know it.

Over eggs and coffee, the conversation unfolded. Coppola recounted in detail what he believed were years of unfair treatment from the magazine. He referenced individual articles and pointed a sharp finger at inaccuracies that had followed him for years. The thread of his complaints circled back again and again to a familiar name: Peter Biskind. Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Coppola argued, was riddled with errors. One passage in particular drew his ire. “A hot tub? I’ve never even owned a hot tub,” Coppola insisted, dismissing some of the more lurid stories the book suggested about Hollywood life.

But beyond these grievances, Coppola leaned forward with a different kind of intensity. He let it slip that he was quietly working on something, a project that had occupied his dreams for years. It was more than a movie for him. It was a myth, a parable, a vision of what modern civilization might become in the future. He gave it a name that carried both grandeur and weight: Megalopolis.

That conversation happened over a quarter of a century ago.

A Dream That Refused to Die

Coppola eventually brought Megalopolis to the world, but not before emptying a staggering sum of his own fortune into the effort. By most accounts, he spent upward of one hundred and twenty million dollars of personal money, a rare act even in the risky business of filmmaking. When it finally premiered, the response was more confusion than celebration. Critics scratched their heads, audiences were unsure what to make of it, and discussions online swung between admiration and frustration.

The man who once electrified cinema with The Godfather films, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now had returned with a project that seemed as unclassifiable as it was personal. Many wondered what exactly Coppola wanted to achieve with it. The reception did not deter him from sticking by the work’s importance, even if he refused to offer a home release that would give curious viewers a second chance to grapple with it. Part of him seemed to believe the film should be encountered in theaters and lived through as a communal experience. Still, the absence of a digital or physical release left many wanting another look at his sprawling vision.

At the heart of the film stood Adam Driver, tasked with embodying Coppola’s dream of creating poetic cinema about civilization, chaos, and hope. Driver’s dedication to absorbing the eccentric directions of his director became a story of its own. Some joked he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize simply for surviving the process with a sense of calm.

The Making of Megalopolis and the Birth of Megadoc

The behind-the-scenes effort of this massive experiment was chronicled in a documentary titled Megadoc. What Megadoc reveals is less about the film itself and more about the strange alchemy of Coppola’s process. Aubrey Plaza appears with her trademark wit, presence, and self-awareness. Shia LaBeouf, known for his volatility and contradictions, comes across unexpectedly vulnerable. Under the bluster and self-regard, there are moments where he shows genuine reverence for Coppola and a deep desire to serve the cinema. Watching him navigate that relationship is sometimes awkward, sometimes oddly endearing.

The documentary director Mike Figgis ended up in this position almost by chance. Loitering during the early production stages in Atlanta, Figgis asked if he could follow along with a camera. Coppola, always open to treating his films as laboratories, agreed. What unfolds is something intimate and occasionally chaotic. Figgis himself becomes part of the work, appearing in front of the camera as a narrator and occasional participant. Unlike traditional behind the scenes documentaries that try to smooth the rough edges, Megadoc leans into the mess.

Scenes from the set feel more like experiments in theater rehearsals than the shooting of a conventional blockbuster. Coppola gathers his cast in settings that look like community gymnasiums, speaking not in the authoritarian voice associated with Hollywood legends but as a mix of philosopher, teacher, and exasperated elder. He declares again and again that filmmaking is not about toil. For him, struggle brings nothing but frustration, and what he seeks is play. If cinema is going to push forward it must come from joy rather than labor.

Yet joy is hardly effortless. Actors clash with his eccentricity. Scenes break down in confusion. At one point, when Jon Voight questions the logic of his staging, Coppola waves him off with a blunt “whatever.” The room walks a line between reverence for his legacy and exasperation with his unpredictability. The specter of history haunts everyone on set. Decades earlier, Harvey Keitel had been dismissed from Apocalypse Now after shooting for weeks, replaced by Martin Sheen in one of the most famous recastings of modern cinematic history. The awareness that Coppola can and will fire people lingers in the air, creating tension even as he insists playfulness is above all.

Coppola’s Restless Spirit

Coppola himself claims his quest is neither about money nor awards. He has already held the golden statues, already shaped cinema with a handful of towering works that remain unparalleled. What he seeks is something much simpler, though attaining it proves difficult. What he wants is fun.

But fun in Coppola’s world is not the light and easy kind. It involves risk, disorientation, and the courage to walk through uncertainty. He tells Figgis repeatedly that he may be too old and too grumpy for this line of work now, but that confession feels more like self-awareness than resignation. The truth of Coppola’s career has always been his attraction to peril. If there is a brick wall in front of him, he runs toward it, even if it means colliding face first. That refusal to accept safer paths defines both the triumphs and disasters of his filmography.

The people closest to him see this clearly. Eleanor Coppola, his wife, a filmmaker in her own right, weighs in during the film with quiet wisdom. She had documented her husband’s earlier struggles in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which captured the nightmare and eventual triumph of finishing Apocalypse Now. Her death, which occurred only days before Megalopolis premiered at Cannes, casts a mournful shadow across this chapter of his life. George Lucas, a lifelong friend and ally, shares his perspective with typical understatement. Asked whether Coppola has a habit of liking brick walls even while knowing he will crash, Lucas responds simply, “Yes.”

The Long Road From Vision to Reality

When Coppola first announced he wanted to make Megalopolis, the project seemed like a mirage. For decades it floated around Hollywood without a green light. Scripts were drafted, abandoned, and reworked, and casts were tentatively assembled, only to dissolve before filming began. The scope of it frightened potential studios. It was dystopian yet utopian, grand yet bizarre, mixing Roman grandeur with twenty first century ambition. Few knew how to market it, let alone how to finance it.

But Coppola refused to surrender it. Too much of his identity and imagination was wrapped into it. He believed it mattered, that it was a story the modern world needed even if industry logic suggested otherwise. With none willing to invest at a level this enormous, he chose to stake his own wealth, drawing upon years of success not to buy comfort but to chase one final creative gamble.

The finished film is difficult to describe in conventional terms. It stretches for meanings and metaphors, attempting to depict the fall and rebirth of a city as a metaphor for humanity’s destiny. The extravagance, from production design to narrative risks, places it far from mainstream expectations. Some walked away from early screenings baffled. Others saw moments of brilliance. Many landed in the middle, unsure, recognizing the ambition but unable to fully embrace it.

Coppola as a Figure of Inspiration

Regardless of the reception, what the saga of Megalopolis underscores is Coppola’s relentless refusal to rest on former glories. A man who could have spent his final decades basking in his reputation instead chose to risk his financial stability, his sanity, and his health in order to chase a vision no one else could even articulate.

That stubborn refusal to stop leaping into the abyss may be his greatest legacy beyond the canonical works that already sit immortal in film history. For every person who sat in confusion watching Megalopolis, there was also another struck by the sheer audacity of it. To watch Coppola, now in his eighties, still willing to burn personal fortune on an uncompromised dream, is to witness a rare kind of devotion to art.

In the end, the documentary Megadoc captures more than the making of a challenging film. It portrays a man who continues to wrestle with what it means to be a creator in a world where commerce so often suffocates vision. It portrays the tension between joy and exhaustion, between play and collapse, between grandeur and vulnerability.

The Final Word

Francis Ford Coppola has nothing left to prove. He changed cinema in the seventies, took audiences into nightmares and operas of violence, and reshaped the very idea of auteur filmmaking in America. Yet what makes him fascinating is not just those earlier masterpieces. It is his willingness to still be misunderstood, still be mocked, still crash into walls, and still keep climbing back onto his feet.

What comes after Megalopolis is uncertain. The film may go down as his white elephant, his grand folly, or perhaps in time it will be reassessed and honored. But even now, in its polarizing reception, it has already cemented itself as proof of who Coppola is. He is not a director content with repeating what worked. He is not a man interested in nostalgia. He is a restless builder of impossible dreams. He is someone who, standing before a brick wall, smiles and steps forward.

And that, in its strange, untidy brilliance, is what makes Francis Ford Coppola eternally inspiring.