Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather of American tyranny

Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:

The Godfather goes for broke, Amazon MGM's 5 cents, Vivien Leigh bio-pic, Tilda Swinton is not a small player and a fire poker.

Let’s go!

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THE GODFATHER GOES FOR BROKE

Things to Come. United Artists.

Francis Ford Coppola has dumped his life’s learnings into Megalopolis.

His new film, premiering as an official selection at Cannes, is an amalgamation of ideas Coppola has been working on for more than four decades.

His inspirations include:

• ​Things to Come​ (1936)

  • Film based on the novel by H. G. Wells

Coppola stated:

“This 1930s Korda (prod: The Third Man) classic is about building the world of tomorrow, and has always been with me, first as the ‘boy scientist’ I was and later as a filmmaker.”

• ​The Catiline Conspiracy​

  • A 63BC conspiracy to overthrow a struggling Rome

Coppola discussed the historical event:

“Modern America was the historical counterpart of ancient Rome and that the Catiline Conspiracy, as told by historian Sallust, could be set in modern America.”

• 9/11

Coppola explained:

“The script always had an element of an aging Soviet satellite falling out of orbit and falling to Earth, so we needed some shots of destruction and cleared areas, but of course no one could have anticipated the events of September 11, 2001, and the tragedy of the World Trade Center… As we were shooting our second unit at the time, we covered some of those heartbreaking images.”

This can all be boiled down into the official synopsis:

An idealistic architect and artist (Adam Driver) planning to rebuild a city that has fallen to ruins, and Nathalie Emmanuel as the socialite daughter of his nemesis, a corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito), who likes his municipal kingdom the way it is.

Coppola, who re-wrote the film over 300 times, explained: