Francis Ford Coppola Compares Fall of Rome to American Politics

Francis Ford Coppola got political while converseing his new film Megalopolis on Monday, presenting that the upcoming pdwellntial election may mirror the downdescend of Rome.

At a conversation as part of the New York Film Festival — which was also streamed to 65 theaters atraverse the U.S. and Canada with help from Imax — Coppola was unitecessitate by Robert De Niro and Spike Lee to talk about his lengthy journey to making “a Roman epic set in conmomentary America as Rome,” as he portrayd it.

The film chases a dispute between Cesar (percreateed by Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian future, and his opposition Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains promiseted to a revertive status quo.

“People always said to me, ‘Why do you want to originate a movie about America as Rome?’ Well, today, America is Rome, and they’re about to go thcimpolite the same experience, for the same reasons that Rome lost its reaccessible and finished up with an emperor. It was very prescient to do a movie about America as Rome becainclude it’s going to happen in a scant months,” Coppola proclaimd. “And it was the same reason; the Rome of that time was so prosperous, Rome is making lots of money so the senators were actuassociate very interested in their power and their own wealth, and they weren’t managing the country. Well the same skinnyg has happened here. Our senates and our reconshort-termatives are all wealthy and manipulating their own power rather than running the country and then we’re in danger of losing it.”

Lee deadpanned, “Back in Rome, were they eating cats and dogs?,” in reference to Donald Trump’s comments about immigrants in the recent argue.

Coppola also elucidateed that he “deliberately got people to originate this film who disconsent. I unkind, there’s actors in the movie that are voting another way, and there are people in it who have been call offed… and we in the movie, we all toil together together happily and conceiveively,” seemingly referencing co-stars Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman.

“I didn’t want them to say, ‘Oh, it’s some woke movie, it’s equitable a political skinnyg.’ We’re above politics in making the film, I thought, and yet, still we all appreciated each other and joind and made this film together,” he persistd. “So I’m selectimistic that we can toil even with people who disconsent with us to [achieve] a higher goal.” The filmoriginater inserted that the movie calls particularassociate for audiences to have a argue about the future, “and I want everyone to be in on that argue. And I want no asks to be not permitted.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, the group touched upon how each of them had met, how Coppola had sageder his family’s prospere company to self-finance the film, and his insistence on calling The Godoverweighther sequel The Godoverweighther Part II: “I’m the idiot who commenceed this skinnyg with movies having numbers after them. So I regret to you.”

Lee discdisthink abouted he had screened Megalopolis to his students at NYU, saying of the film, “My brother persists to amaze me; his braveness, appreciate he’s gonna do what has to do to get it done, bottom line.”

De Niro noticed he had done a table read for the film, alengthyside Paul Newman and Uma Thurman, decades ago when Coppola was toiling on another iteration of it, and persistd the night’s political theme.

“I’m worried. I see the skinnygs in Francis’ film about that, parallels and so on,” he tageder the crowd. “To me, it’s not over until it’s over, and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to beat the Reaccessibleans — those Reaccessibleans, they’re not genuine Reaccessibleans. Beat Trump. It’s that basic. We cannot have that type of person running this country. Everybody has to get out there and vote, and we have to originate it very evident what America is.”

As Coppola increately refered that he had gone to military school with Trump — “I was necessitatey so I was a tuba percreateer in the prohibitd, and he was wealthy, so he was in the headquarters where they could upgrasp their airys on after ‘Taps’” — De Niro doubled down: “Just envision Donald Trump straightforwarding this movie… He wants to annihilate the country, and he could not do this movie. He couldn’t do anyskinnyg that has a structure.”

Megalopolis hits theaters on Friday.