Contra what feels like all known odds, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis––40 years after he completed an initial draft––opens in one month and one day. Thus a promotional roll-out has begun: first with a trailer that (hilariously) positioned itself against critical establishment while (just-as-hilariously) using fake quotes to make its point; now, more substantially, in a must-read interview from Rolling Stone‘s David Fear that covers much lay of the land––the film’s long gestation, its production (chaotic or otherwise), its controversies (kissed extras among them), how James Gandolfini helped shape it 20-plus years ago, etc. and so on.
Towards interview’s end, Fear asks Coppola about his next stages. While a big question for anybody of such advanced age, Coppola says there are at least two more films he hopes to make:
I’m working on two potential projects right now. One is a regular sort of movie that I’d like someone to finance and make in England, because I don’t have a big history with my wife in England. Everywhere else I go, I’m reminded of her all the time. The other is called Distant Vision, which is the story of three generations of an Italian American family like mine, but fictionalized, during which the phenomenon of television was invented. I would finance it with whatever Megalopolis does. I’ll want to do another roll of the dice with that one.
The first project refers, partly, to his wife Eleanor’s passing this last April, about which the piece offers some devastating insight, but doesn’t per se suggest it’s a film about mourning––at least not in the literal sense. Distant Vision, you may recall, is the project Coppola workshopped at UCLA and the Oklahoma City Community College about a decade ago, the subject of his fascinating journal / cine-history / memoir Live Cinema and Its Techniques, and which (per that title) he had staged an iteration of as a live production beamed by satellite to various theaters. This involved a rather complicated system of cameras, lighting, costuming––let’s just say the entire cinema apparatus––that would allow a truly proper feature to be made under such high-wire conditions. Given some of Megalopolis‘ known experiments with the film-audience barrier, one might anticipate him again staging it under these conditions.
This is the most verdant time to be a Coppola fan in at least 15 years––however he stages either, it’s fortune enough that we might see them.
Watch a couple behind-the-scenes looks at earlier versions of Distant Vision below:
The post Francis Ford Coppola Plans Two New Films, Including Long-Gestating Distant Vision first appeared on The Film Stage.
