0:01 - Introduction to the Movies
7:42 - The Disaster of Megalopolis
11:13 - The Alternative History Explained
11:51 - Surreal Injustice and Symbolism
32:59 - The Incoherence of Characters
34:48 - Coppola's Directing Style Under Scrutiny
35:29 - The Art of Committee Making
38:55 - Philosophy in Film: A Critique
42:13 - The Futility of Moving Sidewalks
56:30 - Transition to Speak No Evil
59:56 - Reflection on Speak No Evil
1:01:18 - Conclusion and Farewell
In this episode, I dive into a critical analysis of two contrasting films: "Megalopolis" and "Speak No Evil." The former, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is described as a sprawling mess, a two-and-a-half-hour stoner fever dream that barely holds any coherent narrative or artistic value. I reflect on my experience watching "Megalopolis," detailing how it was like enduring a long-winded recounting of someone else's convoluted dream without context or meaning.
The film, featuring Adam Driver as the central character Caesar, attempts to craft a grand allegory about America, Rome, and the failures of societal structures. I examine the absurdity of its premise, where Caesar possesses god-like abilities, including stopping time, yet fails to wield these powers in meaningful or sensible ways. The narrative is filled with fantastical elements—mystical substances that can heal all wounds but are used solely for frivolous inventions like moving sidewalks. The film's philosophy feels forced, with characters quoting luminaries in a shallow attempt to add depth that simply doesn't exist.
I share my disdain for the methods used in the film, pointing out its illogical character arcs and nonsensical dialogue. The absurdity escalates to a point where I find myself frustrated with the portrayal of events and the characters’ motivations—or lack thereof. Significantly, the movie's attempts at surrealism feel juvenile rather than thought-provoking, as it struggles with tonal inconsistencies and a lack of a clear message.
In stark contrast, "Speak No Evil" emerges as a refreshingly taut human drama, with a gripping narrative that explores the complexities of human relationships and the consequences of cowardice. I highlight its strong performances, particularly from James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, commending the writing and direction that keep audiences engaged without veering into the realm of absurdity. The film is a stark reminder of how powerful storytelling can impact viewers when crafted with intention.
Ultimately, I advise audiences to skip "Megalopolis," likening it to a cinematic disaster best avoided. Instead, I highly recommend "Speak No Evil," as it offers a powerful emotional experience and a thoughtful examination of human behavior. This episode serves as a reminder of the vast gulf that can exist between artistic ambitions and execution, as demonstrated by Coppola's misguided venture versus the engaging craft found in effective storytelling.
[0:01] Well, good evening everybody. This is going to be a tale of two movies. One is called Megalopolis, and the other is called Speak No Evil. One is basically like a stoner telling you about his Art Deco fever dream, and the other is a pretty taut, intense human drama of the effects of cowardice and a lack of boundaries so now with regards to look i knew going into it that megalopolis was going to be agony it is if you've ever had someone spend two and a half hours telling you about the dream they had backtracking changing not giving you any context not telling you what anything how anything hangs together and then you never get a chance to analyze it because you'd rather chew an electrical cable or pee on the third rail of a subway car rather than listen to any more of it you've had the megalopolis experience and first of all no shade on adam driver although he did start off with the absolute humiliation ritual of playing the masturbating psycho in Lena Dunham's girls series and ever since then he basically growls and snaps his way this sort of combination of leonard nimoy and planet of the apes look that he's got going on with, you know, you're a rich guy, you know, good lord, get a couple of moles dealt with. I don't want to look like an inverse picture of the night sky.
[1:31] So it was just terrible. Oh my god. All right. Now, there's some movies that are so bad, they're good. I offer you Krull the Barbarian or Krull the Conqueror. I offer you up Conan the Second, whatever it was, Conan the Destroyer. Some movies that are so bad that they're good. This one was so bad that I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty, but everyone involved should ideally receive the death penalty. That would be the one exception that I would make, simply because they've robbed so many people of two and a half hours of their life. So...
[2:14] Here's the thing. So it's called a fable, right? So there's spoilers and all of this, so whatever, right? So it's called a fable. So what does that mean? Does that mean it's in a magical land? Well, magic has to have some rules. You can't just make up anything. If you look at Lord of the Rings, there are rules, right? You can't use the eagles to get to Mount Doom because of the Nazgul. If you look at something like Avatar, there are rules, right? Even in the matrix there are rules right so uh in this one what are the rules so you've got a guy, who is a god he's just a guy he's like howard rock crossed with cronus right so you've got this guy played by adam driver his name is caesar and everyone's got those sort of forward bowl cuts with the little fringes because you know it's a big allegory about how rome is like america and America is like Rome, and if Rome had never fallen, what would it be like, and so on. But the whole point is that Rome did fall, which is why you're analogous to America. So you're saying, well, you know, America's going to fall like Rome, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pretend that Rome didn't fall. Well, that makes it completely unlike America.
[3:30] Completely. It's like saying, this guy died like this guy, so I'm going to make this guy immortal. It's like, but then he didn't die!
[3:37] So it's really annoying that well. Well, yeah, Morpheus, Lawrence Fishburne, my God, what a great actor, too. Lawrence Fishburne's a great actor, but he just, because, you know, there are no philosophical geniuses like chauffeurs, am I right? You know, chauffeurs, they're just obviously the absolute genius narrators of the planet. So, you've got this guy named Caesar, who's a god. How do we know that? Because he can stop time. now he can't stop time when he's about to get shot because that would actually be useful he never stops time in any useful way it's just kind of cool man like you know how like if you're a filmmaker you can freeze frame freeze frame so you can just freeze frame it's like that man he can just freeze time man so he's a god because he can freeze time and he has this thing called, megalon or whatever it's called like just it's not even like unobtainium which is like the worst name for a... So, he's got this he can stop time and he's created this magical substance that can do everything and anything. There's no logic to it at all. It can build buildings. It can make moving sidewalks. It can heal your face. It can make dresses that are half invisible. It's just weird, non-bound, ultimate imagination, stoner dude bullshit magic nonsense. Nothing makes any sense at all.
[5:05] Nothing makes any sense at all. and the quotes, oh, God, I'm going to make a deal with all the filmmakers out there.
[5:15] I'm actually, I'm literally going to make, okay, I won't make any fucking movies. Y'all don't do philosophy. Please, God, don't do philosophy. It's embarrassing. So the only, the only real depth comes in is when the characters are quoting other people like Adam Driver comes in and just the whole Shakespeare monologue, you know, like you do when you're going to go and give a public speech about something really important. You just do to be or not to be the whole fucking speech for no reason whatsoever. And then you kick a cat. So or you you quote marcus aurelius or cicero and you think you're being deep because you're quoting other people in the past because the stuff you come up with seriously i don't know how these how do these act i guess that's why you get paid so much as you can spew this trashy.
[6:02] Fucking fortune cookie word vomit like you're serious adam driver oh so caesar opens the movie with a Hamlet soliloquy, and what was the point of it? Okay, so just so you know, right, there's the stories that I've read about the backdrop of the movie. So the reason that he opens the movie with a Hamlet soliloquy is because that was a warm-up exercise for the actor that the director just decided to keep in the movie. Like, there's this whole scene where the main guy and the main girl are pretending to have an invisible rope-pulling contest. You know, like you do. An invisible rope-pulling contest. That was a theater exercise they did to get used to the absurdity of the script, and then the director just kept it in because it was cool, man! It was cool! It's like, bro, you're not working with Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen in his deranged prime, so you don't have the actors to pull this stuff off.
[6:56] So yeah, that's why that was in there. It was a warm-up exercise. It was a theater exercise. It was just to get used to the set and what? So, oh my God, it was just horrendous. So here's a couple of quotes, one is and I didn't get the whole quote but it was something like only the most mad don't like sunbeams in their nightmares it's like yeah okay that's really really deep man that's really deep man stoner deep man maybe it makes sense if you're stoned, and the other one this one I do remember is that Adam Driver looks at a corrupt politicians and says Because there are only two things that a man cannot look at for long.
[7:43] The son and his own soul.
[7:51] Or when a woman, there's a woman whose love interest, she gets pregnant, right? Her father is holding the baby. Father, you are holding the future. I mean is Francis Ford Coppola ever actually talked to a human being has he ever actually talked to a human being or could they listen to it all how human beings talk oh my god, okay so Megafilopolis sorry Megalopolis it is an absolute complete disaster it is the second worst reviewed film by audiences in Adam Driver's career just 1% greater than White Noise I never saw that, Oh, one of the big box office bombs in the history of cinema. Now, bombs is the wrong word, because a bomb will wipe you out right away, but this one will steal your soul, not just for the two and a half hours, but for the two and a half hours it takes to get your soul back afterwards.
[8:47] $120 million budgeted film, $4 million from almost 2,000 theaters in its opening weekend, I think it's a couple hundred thou, $4 million. The international... Now, look, I understand. I'm not going to do... It's not argument ad populum. It's not like, well, it's not that popular, therefore it's bad. You know, when you're 84 or you're 83 when he made the movies, 85 now, whatever. Like, when you're that age, you should know what the hell you're doing, right? You should know what you're doing. So, Megalopolis, this is a quote, is an explosion of ideas about societal structures and how they often fail humanity due to their lack of vision. Now that's some actionable philosophy you know do you ever notice that societal structures often fail humanity due due to their lack of vision stop trying to do philosophy my god.
[9:45] I also love how it's an alternate universe where rome never fell yet still there's emerson there's chevrolet there's samsung there's product placement all over the place so it couldn't be more different than the current world because Rome never fell 2,000 or 1,500 years after but all of the same brands and writers and everyone still exists.
[10:09] Oh yeah it's such a wildly different history that Rome never fell, but Samsung and Chevrolet still exist oh my god life is It's like an Oreo cookie at time. It's an illusion. Yeah, oh, it's just absolutely, yeah. We'll get into all of the backdrop here for the movie, but so what have we got here? Yeah, so there's a satellite. The Russian satellite is going to crash to Earth. So, you see, it's such an alternative history, but Rome still exists, which is an entire rewrite of the history of literally half the fucking planet. Rome still exists, but the Russians still have four stars or five stars on their spaceships. So half the planet, all of European history is absolutely completely and totally different. There's no Dark Ages, no Middle Ages, no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no First World War.
[11:13] Everything's completely different, but the Soviet Union is still there.
[11:23] It's just incredible oh my gosh okay so the satellite crashes to earth and then really nothing happens other than you get some weird magic uh city there is supposed to be this big riot because this guy wants to build this new futuristic city but he's going to destroy a bunch of people's homes you know should you preserve the past or should you be daring about the future who cares it's not philosophy it's just a bunch of nonsense and um.
[11:52] It's so surreal that, and this is how subtle, you know, you know how you want to portray injustice in a movie. So it's two things. I was always told, show it, don't say it, right? If you've got something, don't have exposition, like actually, don't have people say, oh, this guy's totally selfish. Just show the guy being selfish, and then the audience can come to their own conclusions right that's that's sort of important right anyway so so when the filmmaker wants to show that an injustice is occurring he has the statue of justice fall over like literally lean up against like it comes to life it animates why no reason are we real are we not real no idea so an injustice is occurring and the way that you know that because it's kind of mostly occurring The way you know that an injustice is occurring is the statue of justice leans up against a building and falls apart. Ah, you see, very, very subtle. Very subtle, indeed. The scales of justice just slump over from exhaustion.
[12:55] Oh, my gosh. And, oh, my God, can we, first of all, the fucking flashbulbs. Oh, there's someone famous. Let's throw six million flashbulbs in because Lord knows that's how cameras work these days. So, yeah, famous people, flashbulbs, flashbulbs, oh my gosh, look at that, you can make flashes on the screen, that's so dramatic, I remember that being old when Goodfellas was coming out, so that's just horrendous. Oh, here's another thing too, there's a party where there seems to be some degeneracy.
[13:29] Now, if you want to establish degeneracy, you can do it fairly quickly and fairly easily. Or, or alternatively, you can take 20 fucking minutes of spinning camera and Adam Driver having five hands for no particular Hindu blue guard reason, and that's your decadence. Right? So, the woman, I can't even remember her name. The woman, I mean, the girl, whatever the woman. and so she's i don't know this semi-lesbian looking coke off other women's tits and doing being a party girl right and then she wants to go and talk to the adam driver the caesar guy who's like this intense magical warlock wizard of unreality and he's like you gotta go back to the club you're back to the club so he's he doesn't take her seriously why because she's a complete coke-tit-licking club rat who doesn't read anything, doesn't know anything, and cashes in on her looks and all of that. And so she wants to go and talk to him, and he's like, well, why would I talk to you? I mean, oh no, what's the line? Oh my God. Why would you think that one year of medical school would give you access to my Emersonian brain?
[14:40] I mean, holy word salad, Batman. man i'm gonna throw a bunch of scrabble letters into an accordion uh blow it up and see what sticks to the fridge and then that's gonna be my dialogue so she's like you won't take me how dare you not take me seriously i don't how dare you i don't how dare you i don't it's a fine dialogue look and just just so you know so this movie this movie has been in development for so long that one of the original tape reads was done by paul newman who had to play a young man uh let's see coppola reportedly shot 30 hours of second unit footage nearly 25 years ago and uh so 40 years of tinkering and he spent he sold one of his wineries in order to fund 120 million dollar budget it was actually heading to 140 million which would he says would have bankrupted him and his family but he ended up just saying fuck the special effects i'll just make everything look like shit i'll just you know instead of a giant city in the backdrop that's supposed to be the entire point of the movie since it is named after the giant city i'll just basically have a bunch of tubes that look like they're a velveta roll-up cheese and shoot it through some cheese He's cloth. That's it.
[16:03] So that's how long this thing has been on the works. So Caesar, the guy, he's supposed to be, I don't know, some brilliant genius scientist, architect, man-god. Like, it doesn't make any sense at all. So at one point, he's stacking his workers in these weird human pyramids. Why? Again, I can only assume that it was some theater exercise that the director, in his post-drug-addled state, decided to keep in the movie for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. At all. At all. Megalopolis did so badly this last weekend, although not badly enough because of the aforementioned need for the death penalty. There were really a number of artists who should have been put to death before their prime. Everyone involved in this and Hitler and that's all I got so Megalopolis ranked six behind Divara part one a three-hour Telugu language action epic playing at about half as many screens.
[17:09] Uh so okay so some alleg I don't like to usually do allegations but I thought that the extended semi-nude topless hot girl party scenes were just so weird and creepy like for an as an old man you should be dealing with some deeper themes than tits and coke you know like just kind of gross right so there were allegations that coppola would sexually harass female crew members uh burn hours of shooting time just hanging out in his trailer and smoking weed instead of working and he's denied these allegations he sued variety for its own investigation into his reported wrongdoing and so on so you know true or not i don't know now francis ford coppola i think does have a cannabis company so i assume that he's into cannabis he says he quit after 2017 when he lost a bunch of weight but oh my god so at one point.
[18:07] The man boobed john voight you know he's old who cares right but uh he said a, he's in a robin hood costume another time there's an elvis impersonator singing the national anthem really badly why why none of it makes any sense at all and really i got pissed off at one point like in all seriousness i got pissed off at one point where there's a sweet scene between, caesar the adam driving adam driver character and a 10 to 12 year old boy a 12 year old boy sort of sweet scene about this that and the other right and then the 12 year old boy, pulls out a gun and shoots Adam Driver in the face, fuck you Francis Ford Coppola for making me see a child murder someone like fuck you.
[18:56] With a sequoia. Like, do not pull that shit on me. Do not have a sweet scene between a man and a child, and then have a child be the hitman who murders him. Fuck you. That is really shitty to do as an artist.
[19:12] And then, so you think, oh my god, he's got shot. What are they going to do now? I mean, the movie's only, it's only 14 days and it's still half over. What are they going to do now? are we going to have like weird makeup? Nope. No, it turns Adam Driver's face into a galaxy of stars and then his magic stuff which makes moving sidewalks and invisible dresses magically heals his face. Why? Why? Like, what kind of asshole has this magical stuff that completely cures people of the most horrendous injuries known to man? Let's just follow the logic of the movie. You've invented this goopy, weird.
[19:52] Psychopaste that completely heals everyone of massive catastrophic injuries it regrows eyes cheekbones face brains hair you name it it literally somebody could have their arm cut off it would regrow it somebody with a spinal injury it would regrow it somebody who lost an eye regrow it lost your hearing regrow it it literally regrow regrows half of his head and he's like you know what's really important is this thing be used for moving sidewalks yes that's That's right. Because if there's one thing that Americans desperately need, it's less walking. Absolutely. Because, you know, they're all so lean and quite enabled. So none of this makes any sense. You have this magical goop that heals every human ailment known to man, and instead of using it to, I don't know, heal every medical problem known to man, he's like, what we need is moving sidewalks and invisible dresses. It's like, that's fucked. It's so insane. Beyond words.
[20:48] And then John Voight. Oh, gosh. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mind a decent boner joke from time to time. And Lord knows somebody's put together all my boner jokes in some video. There's been quite a few, which I'm relatively proud of. So there's this, oh, this, a completely shallow underwritten. I mean, everybody's underwritten, but Francis Ford Coppola underwrites women to the point where they are two-dimensional inhabitants of flatland with big busts. And this woman her name is she's a social climber and she's kind of shallow, and her name is Wow Platinum, so all the men get these classical names like Caesar and she gets Wow Platinum, oh no oh and she's got she's got jokes like she kneels in front of Adam Driver and she says you're very anal but I'm very oral and it's like Like, oh, you're 85. Please stop it. Please do something on life and death. Don't do something on oral sex and anal sex. You're so gross. Anyway, so John Foy plays this, I don't know, elderly banker. I could barely keep track of it and barely cared. I was just struggling to stay awake and not... Well, let's not go there. So...
[22:08] So he gets angry, wants to kill the people because they've taken over his bank. Because you know how you take over a bank is you just get someone to sign something in a sauna, and next thing you know, you've just taken over a multi-hundred billion, like the biggest bank on the planet has taken over. Just because, scroll, oh, it's all done. So John Voight is in bed, and he's saying, look at this giant boner I have. And he's got this big boner, right? And I'm like, why, why, why, why? I mean, this is the fantasy of the fat, wheezy guy in his 80s to have the diamond-hard boners of his youth.
[22:43] And anyway, he pulls this... Sorry, he pulls this so bad. He pulls the covers back, and it's a little crossbow. And he points the crossbow at Wow Platinum. He points the crossbow, and he says, I'm going to finish you off, honey. And she just stands there. Oh, yeah, right here. Shoot right here. Right here right between the chest you know right in my cleavage so then he shoots her and then he shoots is it sheila buff twice in the butt and so on so you know you've got a guy pointing a crossbow at you he's in bed he's 3 000 years old methuselah would be his grandson and you just stand there, like nobody i mean somebody points a weapon at you you jump you dodge like none of it makes any sense none of it makes any sense at all oh my gosh let's see here so caesar uses this megalon to defy the laws of physics pause and manipulate time and see through dresses and it's it's like even the force you have to learn to train and it's got limitations and so on here's another one the trailer for megalopolis was recalled because the critic quotes used in it were fabricated They lied about it. Lionsgate, the studio handling the American distribution for the dystopian epic, told NBC News it pulled the trailer saying, We screwed up.
[24:09] So, because the advance reviews for Megalopolis, which he spent, I think, eight months editing, apparently drunk and blindfolded in a combination of a washing machine and a blender, because the advances were so bad, everybody was just like, this is the worst trash on the planet. Sorry, that's an insult to trash, which at least at some point was actually useful. But they made up all these quotes saying, you know, well, but they didn't like his earlier movies either, but they turned out to be brilliant and so on. And it's like, well, that wasn't the case with the really good stuff. So the trailer had including quotes from prominent film critics that sought to spotlight the divisiveness of the past Coppola classics. And the critics' lines were either misquoted or untrue.
[24:54] Now, Coppola has only directed two films in the last 15 years. So I guess this was some anticipation. He has a usual backstory of an artist. He had polio as a boy, so he was bedridden for long periods of his childhood. He did homemade puppet theater productions, which I guess gave him some sense of entrances and exits. He actually met Jim Morrison when he was in his UCLA film school. So he met Jim Morrison before he was the front man for the Doors, and then Coppola used Morrison's song, The End and Apocalypse Now. He did softcore porn movies early in his career, I guess, like the Italian, Stallion, Rocky Balboa. So, yeah, in 2018, Coppola launched Santa Company LLC and released a cannabis brand known as the Grower's Series. Excellent. Yeah. So he pushes addictive substances. He's a pusher, right? He pushes drugs.
[26:03] Cannabis and alcohol. So a fine, fine fellow. A quick question. Do you think he's on the left or on the right? Do you think that, is it worse than Napoleon? Yes, it is absolutely worse than Napoleon. It is absolutely worse than Napoleon. So he is, let's see here, during the 1980 80 U.S. presidential election.
[26:35] Coppola filmed a mass televised rally for California governor and Democratic presidential candidate, Jerry Brown. The rally failed in its goal to draw attention away from the other Democratic primary candidates, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, forcing Brown to drop out of the race. Over the years, Coppola has worked with several Democratic political candidates, including Mike Thompson and Nancy Pelosi for the U.S. House of Representatives and Barbara Boxer and Alan Cranston for the U.S. Senate.
[27:00] So, excellent. Well, that's just the price you have to pay. To be big in Hollywood, you have to kneel before the leftist power gods of infinite corruption. So here's something else. So Coppola adopted an experimental style that permitted improvisation during the shoot by letting actors write scenes and himself make spontaneous changes to the script. These methods proved divisive, leading to the resignation of the art department and visual effects team, among others, and raising comparisons to Coppola's history of challenging productions, Filming allegedly wrapped ahead of schedule. So, he's had 50 fucking years to work on this story, and he lets the actors improv it. What conceivable sense could that possibly make? I don't understand how this makes any sense, even in the drug addict, drug adult world of Francis Ford Coppola. How could it conceivably possibly make any sense? I've had this vision for nigh on 50 years. now you're a 20 year old actor make shit up just make shit up where's your vision where's your vision.
[28:10] Incomprehensible absolutely incomprehensible, so let's see here so before filming began they did a week of rehearsals with theater style exercises, Coppola said he could only rehearse with around a third of the cast including Plaza and Emanuel but notably not Adam Driver, and thus cast understudies in place of absent members. So Plasser described the workshop-style approach as allowing actors to improvise and provide feedback to the script. Man, that's me putting the man in. Quote, We wrote scenes and we conducted ourselves like a theater troupe, me and John Voigt and Shia LaBeouf. We were writing scenes and giving them to the script supervisor, and then she would give them to Francis, and sometimes he would like it and put it in, but every day he wanted to play. He ran it like it was a theater camp. There were games all day and we were in character the whole time.
[29:02] But if you really want to know the quality, in-depth, deep, social narrative. So I think it's the Shia LaBeouf character, his wow platinum comes in and she wants him to take over the bank or something and she needs him to do something. So she grabs his hair and jams it in her pubic region while making her call him Auntie Wow. And apparently this was one such scene was that the actors composed was the part where Wow Platinum orders LaBeouf's character to orally pleasure her as he calls her Auntie Wow.
[29:43] So incest. Yeah. That's rough, man. And of course, but it's played as comedy. Now, incest played as comedy is about as evil an artistic choice as you could possibly make. Incest played as comedy is fucking vomit-inducing. I'm not overly-centered this way, but I was like, my jaw dropped, I could feel the bile rising. Feel the bile rising from your empty heart. All right. So that's... Anyway, so she's got his face jammed in her genitals, and there's sirens. And she says, what's that? Referring to the sirens. And he's like, you're a vagina. And it's like, oh, my God. I can't even. I can't even.
[30:46] So, let's see here. They ran out of money. Due to budget constraints, the production pivoted to a less costly, more traditional green screen approach. So, I don't know how you blow $120 million and don't have any money, well, for advertising, marketing, really, or for actual decent special effects. I mean, it literally is a sci-fi movie uh or sci-fantasy or drug addled fever dream but you gotta have a look.
[31:16] So you know there's a scene and no nobody makes any sense not even a tiny bit so uh adam driver is standing on these beams like he's just standing there and they're not blowing not swaying he's just standing on these beams like six thousand feet above the ground or something like that top of a building is standing on these beams and this girl comes to talk to him and she just takes off her shoes saunters along the beams and kisses him hanging off a beam and it's like why who who would ever do that what conceivable human being would ever do that right and don't give me the shit called no it's stylized no bullshit doesn't get reframed as stylized and rescued that way, Well, it's an allegory. No, it's shit. It's embarrassing, celluloid, freeze-frame, narcissistic, megalomaniacal shit is what it is. Why would a human being who wants to talk to another human being walk out on a beam with no safety, like a swinging, hanging beam, thousands of feet above the ground, risking absolute death, show no fear whatsoever, and have no motive for doing so. Why?
[32:31] Why? Would anybody do that who wasn't suicidal? No. No, no, but it's stylized. No, it's not stylized. It's bullshit, is what it is. And you can say, okay, well, there's no reality, there's no physics, there's no logic, there's no human motivations. It's like, okay, so why the fuck would I care about any of this. The people don't make any sense. The situation doesn't make any sense. There's no logic to the film whatsoever.
[33:00] There's no good guys, no bad guys, no morals, no character arc, nothing. Everyone at the end of the movie is pretty much the same as they were at the beginning.
[33:14] So plaza spoke positively about coppola's willingness to experiment and how sometimes all of a sudden he would have another idea and then all of a sudden we're shooting in a different location we didn't even plan to shoot and then the whole day goes by and you're like i had no idea that any of that was going to happen others described that approach as exasperating and old school as coppola was hesitant to decide how the film would look and would spend days completing shots practically instead of relying on digital techniques one crew member recalled and i quote quote. And that's all hearsay, right? But it's interesting. One crew member recalled, quote, he would often show up in the mornings before these big sequences. And because no plan had been put in place, and because he wouldn't allow his collaborators to put a plan in place, he would often just sit in his trailer for hours. And then he wouldn't talk to anybody, was often smoking marijuana. And then he'd come out and whip up something that didn't make any sense. And they didn't follow anything anybody had spoken about or anything that was on the page. And we'd all just go along with it, trying to make the best out of it. On driver's first day on set, Coppola allegedly took six hours to achieve an effect by projecting an image on the side of Driver's head. Coppola denied smoking marijuana on set, adding he'd been avoiding the substance ever since his weight loss in 2017. He laid off one of five art directors, leading the entire team to resign.
[34:27] Oh, my gosh. All right, so I already talked about this. All right, I already talked about this. I already talked about this. And negative reviews, the blurbs are fabricated, talked about that.
[34:48] Yeah, I think the audience has given it a D plus on an A plus to F scale. Filmmaking for Coppola is an extension of his family. His sister Talia Shire, his nephew Jason Schwartzman, and his granddaughter Romy Morris have supporting roles in his new film. And I don't know, I think, I don't know if the mayor, the father of the love interest, I don't know if the mayor was black and his wife was Indian, in which case there's sort of a Kamala vibe to it, or whatever it is, right? It's absolutely, completely and totally appalling.
[35:29] Absolutely, completely, and totally appalling. This is art by committee. The actors have got their input. It's changing day by day. How the fuck do you plan something for almost half a century and then make it up on the spot and let the actors just do their thing? DeMeyer is the same actor who played the big bad in Breaking Bad. I've never seen. I watched, I think, one Breaking Bad, and I was like, well, this just makes me want to throw up.
[36:02] Yeah how do you how do you do any of this how do you plan for something for 50 years and then make it up on the spot well how could you expect me to know i only had 50 years to plan for it, i just it's wild to me i know here's the other thing too right here's the other thing too now, when you hear when you hear the tips of course are very much welcome if you find this engaging to get entertaining and enjoyable and it's the best i could get out of uh this brutal brutal movie i i felt violated at the end of it like don't fucking waste my time and it just had amateur hour written all over it overindulged don't ever get so big that you can't take feedback or criticism don't ever get so big that everything you think you touch turns to gold because this is francis ford coppola unconstrained by maria puso's great story and script from the godfather and of course Apocalypse Now was a retelling of Joseph Conrad the Joseph Conrad story and he had Brando although Brando showed up horribly fat and hadn't even read the script but wanted a three and a half million dollar payout, but it is.
[37:14] Absolutely brutal and what's really sad to me is seeing the number of people bending over backwards trying to justify the master it's his magnum opus it's the master and it's the kind of thing where it's like there's got to be something redeeming in it like i remember the last ray bradbury book that i read i liked a lot of ray bradbury except for his constant race baiting but i liked ray bradbury as a whole good writer cinnamon winds of mars and all of that it's very cute but his last book i'm like oh great new book and i was reading through it and i'm like please god let me find something of redeeming value but it's like watching brando in the island of dr moreau it's like nope, nope how do you call that a plan isn't that a contradiction i have a plan which is no plan yeah and he doesn't know you know it's just like yeah man here's my totally original idea, america's decadent like rome was because you know and nobody could get like i'll tell you this for a fact, man. Nobody can get a fucking film made that has anything to do with comparing America to Rome because you can't talk about the demographics, the invasion. You can't talk about any of that stuff, right? You can't. You can't. So you can't make a film comparing America to Rome without talking about the real issues, which would cause you to get assassinated or something. I don't know.
[38:32] So I knew it was going to be bullshit, deepity stuff, right? Well, you know, this is just so deep, man. I'm going to quote some Cicero and then talk about a man cannot stare at the sun or into his own soul. Oh, shut up. You overdramatic Italian hand-waving nonsense guy. What are you, getting the Oculus going with Italian hands?
[38:56] As a philosopher, it is cringeworthy beyond belief when filmmakers try to do philosophy. Philosophy philosophy isn't something you just dip into man it'd be like me saying well i'm gonna be a a an auteur genius filmmaker and win an oscar my first time out it's like no you're not, takes a lot of skill like have some fucking respect for the skill it takes to actually do philosophy.
[39:23] You know, you don't just say, you know, time is a paradox. We move into the future, but we think about the past. Oh, man, so deep.
[39:36] It's like three things a man can't stare at, the sun, cleavage, and his own soul. Whoa, so deep. You know, it's kind of ironic when you think about it that people get old and then there are babies. Oh, no. I can't. I can't. It's so deep. You know, some people get really old, and then there are babies, and babies represent the future. Whoa. Really? Wow. You mean we're mortal, and we evolved because we get replaced by those who come after us? Whoa, man. That's so deep. oh shut up you're a fucking fortune cookie masquerading as an old creep who wants to see a lot of topless girls in a pointless scene of debauchery the debauchery is the movie it's not rome it's not america it's the movie old people yeah like they represent the past you know like there are people who don't really want things to change and then there are some people who do want things to change and there's like this tension between them man and that's what the film's really the tension between things staying the same and things changing whoa man that's so deep.
[41:00] You know sometimes people who achieve a lot can be a little single-minded and selfish you know like charlie chaplin and tucker the guy who made all the cars played by jeff bridges is who basically just threw shit around the set, because he's, you know, sometimes people who make a lot of progress in life can be kind of a little selfish and don't really take other people's feelings into, oh, so deep, man. Even the fortune cookies are embarrassed by this. Yeah, the fortune cookies, at least they taste semi-sweet and they give you that weird crunch that sticks to your tongue and embeds your... And maybe Coppola is Italian for Copperfield. Oh, it's so embarrassing. I think he shows up sometimes in the set in the back. Yeah, you know, it's wild, man. You know, decadence can be negative. You know, drugs can be negative. But drugs can also, like, help you be creative, man. I'm so fucking deep, I'm like the Mariana Trench.
[42:14] What can I tell you, man?
[42:21] Oh, my God. Oh, and that's the first time a moving sidewalk has attempted to be a moving emotional piece. So he's got these glowing sidewalks with this magical bullshit made up material. He's got these moving sidewalks, man. This is the big city. The big city is moving sidewalks. That's it. You know, when you're in this city, you'll never be more than five minutes with a park that you don't have to walk to to get because you can stand on a moving sidewalk. What are you? Are you trying to? Turn everyone into the humanoids at the end of WALL-E, you'll just be able to, okay, I get it, I get it, you're 85, you'd like a moving sidewalk, okay, fine. But the mayor, who won't reconcile himself to the fact that his daughter likes Caesar, he won't get on the moving sidewalk, man. He's like, no. His wife steps on the moving sidewalk and she's carried along by swirly shit, man. and swirly shit is so cool.
[43:23] Slidewalks. Yeah, so she's just moving along, and he won't get on the moving sidewalk. But then later, when he begins to actually accept, after his daughter has a kid with Adam Driver, which I assume is 80% nose and mole, when his daughter has a kid with Adam Driver, he then finally gets on the moving sidewalk. Oh, it's so moving. He went from not liking the moving sidewalk to liking the moving sidewalk. Now, that's what I call a character arc.
[43:58] You know, it would be like me saying as a movie maker, you know, this guy's kind of ambivalent about the relationship. When he gets, you know, home from a flight, he lands, and he's kind of ambivalent about the relationship. So he walks, walks through the terminal. It takes a little longer because he's kind of ambivalent about the relationship. But you know, at the end, at the end, he's so much in love with the woman that he stands on the moving sidewalk and gets to her slightly faster. It's Romeo and Juliet, man. It's poetic. It's beautiful. It's self-sacrificial. It's beyond beautiful.
[44:45] Oh, the moving sidewalk thing. I'm dying inside. I'm dying inside because you could make my entire novel the future. Sorry. Well, you could make the future. You could make the present. You could make the future and the present for the price of this. Or you could, because my novel Almost, which is a fantastic novel, but would be very expensive to make. Like, um, you could make it all for this absolute pile of neon art deco brain vomit. Yeah, it's like, it's deep, man. What's the message of the movie? You know, sometimes, uh, change is resisted by, by people with a vested interest in the status quo. Whoa. Wow, man, you've raged 85 and you're like, there's a tension between progress and the way things are, man. Wow, that's so deep.
[45:48] Oh, my. Why don't you just make a movie about dinosaurs and mammals? Almost. So almost will eventually get made, but only when AI is so good that it'll bring the novel to life without any particular additional cost. But yeah, it would be a fantastic miniseries on TV, but the budget would probably be between 150 and 200 mil. So.
[46:11] It is absolutely tragic. Thou shouldst not have been old before thou wert wise. And also, also, can I just tell you? This is so common. It's just pathetic. It's so common. You ever notice how the stand-in for the writer-slash-director always has all the hot girls swooning over him? You ever see that? He looks like Adam Driver. He's got Adam Driver's charisma and scorn and haughtiness. He's an unpleasant, drug-addict, possibly-murdered-his-ex-wife kind of guy. But because he's the stand-in for the director and he's the character that the director most identifies with all the hot chicks love him man all the hot chicks love him and it's like okay i know you're italian but oh my god you've got to be fucking kidding me about this isn't amazing, the same guy the same guy that the the director identifies with is the guy is the guy Bye.
[47:24] Who all the hot girls really like, man. I feel like me writing, maybe I'm, it's like me writing a movie about a controversial philosophical podcaster. And all the women just throw themselves at him because he's so cool, man. He's magic. He's sexy. All of the hot girls. It's like, oh, that's, bleh. What are you, casting yourself in a porn movie and calling it a documentary? It's like, oh my God. It's so sad. I mean, just laugh, especially if you're 85 years old. The only people who'd be swooning over you are people you can leave money to. I gotta imagine that his kids are also looking at like, well, that could have been my inheritance. Instead, it's watching celluloid commit seppuku on a neon floor.
[48:17] Instead of me getting $120 million, you paid Adam Driver to whisper scream. Dream and have five arms oh no oh it's so awful it's so absolutely completely and totally appalling and here's the other thing too like you know it's a good movie and i remember this from, um i remember this well two i mean there's the beverly hills cop with bronson pincho playing playing that very funny, oddly-accented art dealer. No, he's scratchy, scratchy. So you know he's got something going on before the movie scene, something going after it, right? So a documentary is interesting because you see people come in, they're coming from somewhere, and I was always taught this as an actor, be coming from somewhere, be going to somewhere, right? Like if you're coming into a scene, was it just raining? Are you shaking off your jacket? Were you frustrated? Did it take you too long to get? Like have something going on before so you don't just walk in neutral, right?
[49:18] Um, myself, I call it the staring in the dark phenomenon. Like you want to go and talk to a character and he's just sitting there staring in the dark, doing nothing. Well, how many times do you come home normally and people are just doing nothing? Staring in the dark. It's like, no, you, you come home and you know, my wife is cooking something or, uh, my daughter's chatting with friends or like they're doing something. People are doing stuff. And you come in and you say, oh, you know, they're doing stuff. No. No, he is just sitting in the corner, staring in the dark, waiting for the scene. That's shitty filmmaking, man. That's shitty writing, shitty acting, shitty all around. People are coming from somewhere and they're going somewhere. So one of the exercises I do for myself when I'm writing fiction is say, okay, where are they coming from? Where are they going to? What happened before? What's happening after? Oh, Stef to star in a biopic of Fabio. That's right, Fabio. Might need to get some CGI man boobs. But yeah, so the mayor comes over to talk to, I don't know, something about, like, did he steal the body of the, oh, and there's another thing too, there's a scene where he goes to, Caesar goes to, he is kissing the body of his dead wife, and then the girl is looking at him, and he is, it's an empty room, and he's just kissing a pillow.
[50:45] It's so bad. It's so bad. So, you know, I mean, so there's a father with a daughter, right? Obviously, this daughter is older than my daughter. But I can imagine if my daughter in some years comes home and she says, Dad, you know, I really like this guy. I really like this guy. But I found him in an empty room kissing a pillow, murmuring his wife's name. There was nobody else around. And he was just kissing a pillow and murmuring his wife's name and crying.
[51:16] The guy's psychotic he's insane he thinks he's kissing his dead wife a weird to begin with because she's been dead quite a while so you got google enabled uh ex-wife so, so he thinks he's kissing his ex-wife funny story it turns out he's not he's he's he's having a psychotic vision of kissing his dead wife which is halfway to necrophilia although still ahead of, auntie wow vagina plunge so i'd be like no this guy's like he's he's insane like he's mentally he's mentally disturbed like he's psychotic he's having visions of kissing his ex-wife weird enough and b that's not even real so he's half necrophiliac and psychotic get the fuck away from him and you know lose his number bad pillow talk yeah yeah the stranger uh he fabricated to tamper the evidence against caesar and had the proof of it right so so okay james why why, was it like if you stop seeing my daughter i'll destroy my own career and resign as mayor is that right is that the idea because here's the thing too so his daughter starts off the movie bitcoin stop being bitey so he he starts off the movie his daughter is this like turbo cokehead slut right.
[52:35] Making out with girls because you know nothing spells uh classy movie making like an 85 year old guy leering over hot girls making out with each other while he films them excellent you've come such a long way from the soft core pornography of your early days so he's clearly the the mayor is a terrible father and his daughter is a lost soul who's a drug addict you know kissing girls old coke head and suddenly though and it's just the incomprehensible like nothing makes any sense but suddenly he is so devoted to his daughter's well-being that he wants to keep her from the man he loves and he will destroy his own career by showing how he fabricated it's like oh my god it just none of it makes any sense none of it makes any sense no it's stylized no stylized again it's not this giant mop that cleans up all the blood of a mass art murder, James says it was something like I will support you privately and publicly if you leave my daughter and this evidence is your insurance policy to blackmail me right so the mayor has to completely reverse his behavior, and so the mayor has to give his sworn enemy blackmail material against him if he'll leave his daughter like this just makes no sense at all why would the mayor do that, why would the mayor do that.
[54:02] And how are you supposed to, like, maybe you could like him for his, like, Howard Rourke-style arrogance and all of that, but how are you supposed to sympathize with a guy who could stop time and never uses it for any productive purpose whatsoever? What was the point of the stop time thing? Why? Why?
[54:20] And, of course, the other thing, too, it's supposed to be realistic because it's supposed to be about the world that is, right? It's not a fable like it's set in Narnia. And so you know if your daughter comes to you and says you know i saw this really cute guy well no sorry it's adam driver i saw this semi-ape like guy and you know he stopped time and i'm somehow immune to him stopping time right so what would you do you'd say oh yeah this guy stopped time, and if a drug addict came to you and said hey man i saw you stop time you defied physics and then there's this completely incomprehensible thing about string theory that's like You know how mothers-in-law will just sit there and talk to you about string theory in completely bizarre ways? You know, there's seven different dimensions. You know, it's just something I read. What the fuck are we talking about string theory? What the fuck? I mean, I tell you, if you want, we want string theory, take some pieces of string and tie this shit together. Tie any of this shit together. New string theory. Oh, God. It's so bad. I've never ever talked to a woman who talked about string theory. Oh my god even a strangely deep-voiced indian woman so yeah i mean can you imagine some drug addict comes up to you and says hey man i saw that you stopped time i'm find you interesting.
[55:43] I you know i of course because it is um francis ford coppola string theory is just a stand-in for g-string theory which apparently is wow platinum's entire narrative arc wow platinum is embarrassing for a porn name can you imagine proposing to the actress okay you're this turbo slut who shows up in ridiculously bad clothing and you get your nephew to jam his face into your vagina because you want to take over a bank like what are you are you getting high on your own supply there bro the movie has a few loose threads yes it does have a few loose threads That's not as bad as Interstellar, but a few loose threads. No question. I just, I don't know. What can I tell you? So on the other hand, I did go and see a movie.
[56:31] I was originally going to go and see Megalopolis, I think on Sunday, but I went to the wrong theater. I, anyway, but on the wrong theater was playing a movie I hadn't heard about called Speak No Evil, which is a remake, I think, of a Dutch film with a different ending and all of that. And that movie was really good.
[56:49] That movie was really good, and I won't give you any spoilers for that one, because I think you should see that one. That's the kind of movie that I think should be seen, and I don't want to give you any spoilers for it, but go and see or rent or whatever. See it, because it's better in a big movie theater environment, but speak no evil. The acting is fantastic. The writing is taut and exciting. The message is good, and it's just really well done all around. So i won't give you any spoilers because i would do actually want you to go and see that one but i just wanted to uh to mention that, all right.
[57:34] Hey you guys don't talk about string theory during dinner no my string theory during dinner is i like chewing the stuff that the roast beef gets tied in, um maybe this movie is a metaphor for how democrat voters come to conclusions without reference to reality uh here no evil i think it's called here did i say see no evil let me go sorry maybe it's here no evil i want to make sure sorry it's i think it's here no evil my My apologies.
[58:07] Oh God, what have I got here? Speak no evil. Sorry, sorry, not see nor hear. The movie is called Speak No Evil with James McAvoy. Ah, such good acting, man. Such good acting. Sorry. The movie is called Speak No Evil and with James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, who was great, Scoot McNary who was okay but yeah and both well the little boy is fantastic fantastic, speak no evil my apologies no no I I'm sure I got it wrong so there's the, uh Beetlejuice is a worthy sequel yeah didn't they make Joker 2 a musical I don't know if I can do that one oh I'm always happy to not have to sit through the previews the previews make me lose my will to live there's not much that can bring me down these days but seeing previews for movies everything's a horror movie yeah everything is makes you anxious it's like oh my god they're just programming you to be terrified so they can start their wars.
[59:11] But yeah, speak no evil, real people in very intense circumstances, and a fantastic build-up. Really, really skilled writing, directing, and the acting is beyond fantastic. And especially if you don't know the actress. I always like seeing movies where I don't know the actress. One of the reasons I like foreign films. So I don't say, oh, this is Dustin Hoffman, or whatever, right? Did his nose get even bigger? Something like that. It's bizarre. All right. Any other last questions? We can talk about anything that you want. Tips, of course, welcome. I wasn't expecting this to be a big tip night, but I did want to talk about this absolutely. Don't even hate watch it. It's like rings of power. Like, don't even hate watch it. Don't give it any time of day and absolutely, yeah.
[59:57] Speak No Evil is a great palate cleanse after the rat turd on the tongue known as Megaflopolis. So it is a good reset for your artistic juices.
[1:00:09] But yeah that one's worth seeing in the theater as a whole and I definitely I mean the movie Speak No Evil cost like 15 mil right so what is it 12% of the, absolute uku kuki known as Megalopolis so yeah I finished that part of the thing if there's anything else anybody wants to talk about let me go and check comments here and there and everywhere thank you for the wee little tip Tep! How about we a little tep?
[1:00:42] What did the leper say to the prostitute? I left a tip. All right. That's a better comedy than anything in the movie. You don't have any questions? All right, all right. Well, listen, I'll stop here so that we can keep this nicely encapsulated. I will see you guys tomorrow night. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support of the show. Please don't forget FDRURL.com slash TikTok. TikTok, F-D-R-U-R-L dot com slash TikTok. I would really, really appreciate it if you would subscribe to the TikTok channel. You get a lot of great shorts there. A lot of great shorts there. So, all right. Lots of love, everyone.
[1:01:18] I will see you tomorrow night. Peace out. Stay away from the movie. Bye.
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