The importance of dimes and Megalopolis
Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in ‘Megalopolis’
American Zoetrope/Mihai Malaimare
https://deadline.com/2024/06/megalopolis-lionsgate-francis-ford-coppola-1235975886/
Lionsgate will be releasing Francis Ford Coppola‘s $120M epic production Megalopolis stateside on Sept. 27 following its premiere at Cannes last month. This will be a wide release.
Deadline hears this is a distribution deal for Lionsgate. Coppola will own the movie, which is the case for many of his films under his American Zoetrope banner.
In light of the story in the trades yesterday that Francis Ford Coppola’s new film is going to be distributed by Lionsgate, some industry wag wrote “won’t make a dime.”
Instead of excoriating the offensive wag — (what’s the point, they’ll never be able to see beyond the ledger)-I can’t wait for their lives to be summed up in the same fashion.
“Hmm. Spent 42 thousands dollars on an education that taught them nothing more than how to be callous and vapid. Spent their lives critiquing others work when they could have chosen any occupation. Yet, here we are going over their lifetime to see what if anything was of value.”
If one spent half a minute thinking about it — Francis bought a winery a long long time ago, when people weren’t buying wineries, turned it year by year into a money making enterprise, making great, some consider the greatest Rutherford wines in the world… and when it came time for him to create something from the heart- a story he wanted to tell, every glass of wine drunk, every grape nurtured, every bottle sold — helped him to realize that effort and dream.
A painter shouldn’t have to pick up a paintbrush to pay the rent.
In fact every painter ever has face a blank piece of paper, a blank canvas, has scrounged around to get the paint and paint the portrait. It’s said Picasso’s blue period was because that’s the paint he could afford.
Van Gogh didn’t sell a piece of his artwork in his lifetime — or if he did people aren’t aware of it. Yet his artworks consistently go for the most amount of money paid for any work.
So is there a ledger somewhere where someone jots down the balance sheet when another of his pieces are sold?
Forget that people were wrong, dead wrong, absolutely wrong, stupid and silly and wrong about Apocalypse Now — every time I see it I learn something new. Plus it made a fortune. Ledger closed.
I have no doubt that no matter what nickels this new movie Megalopolis gathers, that it indeed will still be seen 100 years from now, examined, perhaps poked at, derided — but it won’t be because some company cut his feature from 6 hours down to 2 (1900 by Bertolucci) or because the studio said “You gotta make this guy more likeable, we’re going to cut whatever it is that we don’t like so we like it.”
Like Mel Brooks (in the doc about Gene Wilder) talking about the first producer who came to him and said “Fire Gene Wilder. We need someone prettier. I’ll give you ten grand to fire him and hire someone with better looks.”
And instead of fighting, arguing, stealing the negative — Mel said “Okay. Done. He’s fired.” And because Joe Levine didn’t really care about the film or the dailies, never saw them again until it was too late.
The history of film is filled with people threatening to cut off their pinky unless they got the money from the producer (Menachem Golan tells that story), or people stood their ground for reasons of morality, or courage.
Shame on this wag for saying something so vapid, childish and self congratulatory. As if the box office receipts mean anything in terms of quality. It only means something to the zeitgeist.
Top five films? 1 Avatar $2,923,706,026 2009
2 Avengers: Endgame $2,799,439,100 2019
3 Avatar: The Way of Water $2,320,250,281 2022
4 Titanic $2,264,750,694 1997
5 Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens
We wouldn’t have Star Wars without Francis helping George’s career. Jim Cameron’s got 3 of the top 5 spots. Does that make him wiser? Better? Why compare them? It’s onstage thinking — hierarchy that doesn’t exist offstage, yet we insist it does onstage.
I was fortunate enough to meet Francis many years ago, through one of his dearest friends Luana Anders. Forget for a moment that Francis lost two of his closest allies, two of his closest friends and supporters in less than a month — or the person who helped him start his career. Eleanor, Fred and Roger.
All key players. All key associates. All key losses. Yet all this person can think of in this incredible saga of a lifetime is “how much money will it sell after presales, popcorn sales, free tickets to critics?”
When Francis is finally at long last able to announce after all that hard work, toil, effort, angst and agita — he’s able to release his film, has a distributor, through one of his biggest supporters — that he will finally be able to put his canvas on the wall — someone has the idiocy to say:
“Meh. Won’t make a dime.”
Clearly this person should never be allowed near a theater.
And if one believes in the flipside research, data, footage as I do, based on fifteen years of filming the same reports from people offstage -— as one who has repeatedly met with, talked to people offstage who confirm how the process works, including Roger, Fred and Ellie —(recently on our podcast Hacking the Afterlife) as someone who knows how much they love their dear friend, mentor and husband from the flipside, this larger than life fellow who has moved so many people in his lifetime — I hope it makes more money than all the money that was spent that could have given us more bottles of Rubicon.
On behalf of all of those folks on the flipside rooting for their pal, or rooting for him on this side to be proud and happy and realize how many lives he’s changed — how every drop of wine has contributed to the furthering of humanity — to consider all the people who were paid to work on the film, their families, their pensions — how that will carry them for years… how all of them have benefitted from being witness to a living Van Gogh behind the canvas. It’s impossible to get films made and into theaters. But Francis has done it without anyone telling him what to do. Thank God.
I was around when he had an early computer draft of the script — way back in the 80’s when someone broke into his car in San Francisco and took it. Had no idea what they’d taken. But that didn’t stop Francis then, and the brickbats, silly commentary won’t stop him now. At some point in our lives, it’s not about how much the paint costs, but how the painting will be seen by future generations. And he’s insured that will happen.
Applause is in order. For showing how despite people saying no — for every ticket not sold to someone who thinks that “the film won’t make a dime” there will be someone who doesn’t care so much about dimes. I can’t wait to see it.
We are all just walking each other home.
Dimes in our pockets, or without.
My two cents.
