
Cards on the table: Iām incredibly excited for Francis Ford Coppolaās Megalopolis. Yes, the film looks like a work of mad folly, of someone who has more ideas than common sense, who is finally free to work without the chafing restraint of a moneyman breathing down his neck because he is the moneyman. But mad follies are the best kind, and Iām always in favor of filmmakers going a little bit nuts. I mean, just watch this trailer:
Once you get past the quotes, the images here are both striking and portentous, the whole thing a giddy swirl of excess and pomposity and digital trickery and high-caliber acting talent. Iāve described this movie as āFrancis Ford Coppolaās Sucker Punchāāa reference to a much-maligned film by Zack Snyder that I happen to think is both an interesting failure and a work of mad genius composed by a visionary whose reach exceeded his graspāand I meant it as a compliment.
The quotes are why weāre here, though. In part because I actually kind of admire a filmmaker striking back at critics. Iāve long thought filmmakers and critics have gotten a little too chummy thanks to social media and the endless junket cycle combined with the fact that filmmakers donāt want to alienate the people who create the Tomatometer score. Critics should be able to write without fear of alienating sources while filmmakers should be able to point to the scoreboard when a critic gets it wrong. Itās all fair play.
Whatās not fair is inventing quotes and attributing them to critics to dunk on them. And that seems to be precisely what happened here. Watching the trailer I was ⦠well, surprised to see the Pauline Kael quote, since she famously raved about The Godfather. And I was a little surprised to see John Simonās quote about Apocalypse Now attributed to National Review, which he would become a critic for but not until a few years later; a text from a friend who would know confirmed the timeline there was off. But I didnāt think much of it; certainly, the folks at Lionsgate wouldnāt just, like, make up some quotes?
Except, uh, oops. Turns out they did. Bilge Ebiri was the first to do the legwork and actually try to track down the quotes; he couldnāt do it. Shortly after that, Variety had an apology from the studio:
āLionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for āMegalopolis,'ā a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety. āWe offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.ā
I am extremely curious to find out what really happened here. The guess on social media is that some intern, having coasted through school by getting ChatGPT to write all of his essays for him, probably plugged ānegative quotes from famous critics for The Godfather [et al]ā into some AI program and just copied down the phantom nonsense it spit out. This conforms to both my generational and technological prejudices, so Iāll allow it is, at the very least, entirely plausible. Indeed, I have trouble imagining another alternative. A funnier, though less likely, option is that they did literally just make up the quotes knowing someone would track down their provenance and turn it into a scandal. But I rarely choose to believe the nefarious explanation when simple incompetence is possible.
Either way, the campaign was a big success since it got lots of people talking about Megalopolis! I have no idea if the film is any good or not, but it looks like a wondrous mess of a movie, and thatās, generally, my favorite kind.
Before we get to the links, I just want to give a special heads up for folks in the Dallas area: on tomorrowās episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Iām interviewing a young filmmaker named Valentina El Harizi about her short, āBehind the Scenes,ā which is playing at the DIFF Shorts Film Festival on Saturday, August 24, at 3PM at the Angelika Film Center Dallas. It was an interesting chat about her filmāa fiction short about the difficulties of balancing online and real lifeāand what inspired her to make it; I hope you give it a listen. If youāre in town and want to see some young filmmakers demonstrating their talents, I highly recommend checking it out. Tickets appear to be free! Canāt beat that price!
Links!
This week, I reviewed Blink Twice, which feels very much like a movie conceived in 2017.
Speaking of Blink Twice and awkward marketing, the Amazon/MGM team tweeted a trigger warning for the film yesterday, warning of the themes of sexual assault within it. There are three semi-distinct (and escalatingly cynical) reasons to tweet something like this.
The least cynical reason is that you are genuinely concerned about the mental health of the people seeing the movie rated R for āstrong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual referencesā and want to dissuade them from seeing the film. The moderately cynical answer is that this is just another piece of marketing, hence the inclusion of the release date on the image with the trigger warning. And the most cynicalāand I think, most likelyāreason to tweet this out is the hope of sparking a culture-war argument about the foolishness of such trigger warnings in general, one in which someone rightly points out that you donāt need to slap trigger warnings on R-rated movies while someone else rightly points out that this hurts no one, and everyone feels smugly righteous about their stance while screaming at everyone else.
Make sure to listen to this Fridayās bonus episode of Across the Movie Aisle about the Alien franchise. Iām fascinated by the seriesās shift from one about Ellen Ripley to one that almost explicitly makes the Weyland-Yutani corporation the focus of the series.
Assigned Viewing: āThe Crowā (Prime Video and Paramount Plus)
Thereās a new version of The Crow hitting theaters; I havenāt seen it, but it looks terrible. The original remains a touchstone of goth filmmaking and you have to admire Alex Proyasās weird vision for the movie. You should probably just stay home and watch the original if youāre thinking about seeing the remake.
I'm afraid to watch The Crow(s), both this version and/or the original. Now that I've confessed to being afraid to watch some movies, I also want to comment on one of the framed posters in Sonny Bunch's YouTube studio background. When Ulzana's Raid was released my mom didn't want to go see it with my dad (he loved shoot-em up westerns) so she suggested he take me, his only son. I was 10 or 11 years old and it was my first R-rated film. The father-son experience was worth a few nights' nightmares and, yes, of course, today it's one of my all time favorites. Sonny must have a story too. Let's hear it.
Y'all's discussoin about the Alien franchise was really good stuff. You get me thinking about movies in a deeper way, which is really fun.