Megalopolis Q&A

My first Francis Ford Coppola movie was Megalopolis, which I watched at the Coolidge Center Theatre on April 29, 2025. After this screening, Coppola had a live interactive discussion with Prof. Juliet Schor. This is a transcript of that discussion. The transcription was automated, so there are errors; the audio is here.

00:00
Utopia is just the ability to talk and ask all the questions. And and try to arrive at something that might be not only logical but, but that would be a a world. We want our kids to live in. That’s the thing, of course, that disturbs me the most. I’m an old grandpa 86 years old.

00:20
I have, as you know, some wonderful children and and now even impressive grandchildren. Well, oh, that my young little granddaughter Gia made this film the last show broke, and at the same time, gave me a great grandson. So, so there’s a lot of children here at stake, and I’m sure all of you have your, your children, your grandchildren, and and our children and and, and we don’t want to leave them in the wreck of the world, you know, mainly because it’s not necessary to be a wreckable world business, you know.

00:58
As as I’ve said, and I’ll repeat to the point of of I, I told you that we are one family. We are a human family. There’s no one in this audience who are not cousins. If you go back enough time, we are Homo sapiens. Uh, and if you go back enough time, we have the same grandparents, uh, we look different for reasons we know, but we.

01:24
We’re really not there, but we’re really one family and. More than that, something you never hear, which amazes me, frankly, is that we’re not only one’s a family of one species Homo sapien. We think knowing those for sure, but we think we’ve lived about. Some say 200, 000 years.

01:46
Some say four hundred thousand years. I’m sure bulls of those estimates so wrong, but but we, we haven’t lived that long when you compare it to our planet and and the and the various species here. But, but we are a genius species. I mean, how can? How can you deny that look?

02:05
Think of what our capabilities are, and there are many wonderful creatures our fellow creatures, because some of them are very smart. We know big, so smart, and crows they’re smart. I know, an octopus said, it’s very smart, but but, but not anywhere near what we got capable of doing.

02:25
And we, we are so talented and so extraordinary that the thought of one little kid being killed in Sudan or wherever in the world in the Middle East, one child who could have grown up and been the new Archimedes or the Duke Bank open, and, and they would if if our children are given the chance to be educated and grow up, there is no limit to what they accomplish so and.

02:58
You all know? Well, it’s not a matter of Archer, whole bunch of all. You mean all children are our children and, and ultimately, we are concerned? Concern for their for? You know, I mean, it’s so moving to me as an old grandpa. Anyway, as geniuses, we have the, you know, it’s funny, it’s.

03:21
You don’t always. We all get gifts. Everyone here is has gotten gifts, some of whom you haven’t even realized yet, but you don’t always get the gift you want. You know, when I you, you get the gifts you’re given, and you know, when I was a kid, I was a lonely kid.

03:39
I moved around from school to school, and I I wanted so badly, a way that I could have friends, so I, but if I only had the gift of being the tap dancer because in the lunchroom when they were all being mean to me, I jump on the tables and I’d be like Gene Kelly or somebody and it, but they didn’t give me that give.

04:00
My father was one of the greatest flutists. Or flowers. When you’re getting his league in the world, you know when he always told me the difference between a flutist and a flowers was fifty dollars a week? But he didn’t want to play the food he he wanted to compose, and he wanted to conduct it.

04:21
So he felt the the flute was a was an obstacle almost, but but, you know, we get the gifts we get in the the trick, I think, is to realize. Uh, how wonderful we are, how extraordinary we all of us in this room and, and you wonder why it’s never said.

04:41
I asked the very uh, actually, from Harvard, a very brilliant, well-known author who knows a lot more than I do. And I said, has anyone in history ever said? How great it come right out and said the human being is a genius? And he said, well, you know, it was tricky to say about it.

05:02
In the past, there was a man named what were the people, Nila mandala, who wrote something in 16th century, I think called the origins of man. Someone here probably knows better than I, but in in the origins of man. It was red. It was EX that the human being some of the same things that Caesar said a human being is is something to be admired, but he got put in prison, you know, because to say that a man was a genius was like to apply that?

05:36
That he was greater than God, and that he got in trouble, for he sort of tried to ride his way out of it by saying, well, God needed someone to appreciate how great he was. So, he created man as a genius, and, and then they let him out of prison, but he died when he was like 32 chances.

05:55
Since we’re talking about genius, I just would like to take the moment for us to all appreciate the genus of this man and this bill.

06:15
And when it comes to that topic, I all my life. I wanted to be part of the group. That’s why I went into theater and and I, I don’t want to be the leader of the group, and I don’t want to be left out of the group, and I want to be part of it.

06:29
So here I’m with you, I’m part of you, and I’m so happy, just to be one of you, I don’t, you know, but I know, but? I, I, you know, I became I. I’m a theater student and and. Um, you know, one day I was noticing they were going to show a movie called 10 days that shook the World by Sugar.

06:53
Eisenstein and I had no nothing to do, and I had no money, and I had no girlfriend, so I decided, you know, I’d go and see. That was four hours, and I was amazed with what I saw those of you that I would have seen. I’m sure you have a doctor, but I mean, potentien, but this was the second film I made.

07:13
It’s like four hours long, and they played it without any music. So I came out and I said, wow, I said, I’m not gonna go to the video. I’m a school. I’m gonna go be a field director, and that’s when I went to UCLA, all because of seeing this.

07:28
This masterpiece and great survey, Eisenstein theater, but nonetheless, uh, we’re here with my colleague. Judith and we’re going to talk, but I thought it would be good to do is talk about. If we, if we could leap over all this? Period. All this mess and and look at the look at the things that Define our lives and and the rules we have to live by.

07:54
Maybe we could find a way to turn some things that work against us and and have it turn turn to something positive, you know. So right now. Uh, 10 numbers. And and and the first one, be time. Petersheim seems to be such a theme, but my idea that there are?

08:16
Many more than 10, I’m sure, but many Concepts. Which we invented, or rather, we interpret because everything that human beings, uh, have done creatively. We have learned from this wonderful Earth we live on so and then we we take it. What nature suggests to us and we find other ways to connect things.

08:39
And that’s part of how we have invented, what we have, and the first is time. Well, make the second, uh, work, and make the third money. We’ll start with those but time. What I mean by we invented is of course we. We learn that there was something that is.

09:01
Is somewhat like time from nature. Uh, it was Dawn and and there was dust. And there was the solstice in the Equinox. But we went and invented it differently. We turned it into minutes and days and months and hours and years and and those oppress us! Those those we live by them got to work eight hours a day.

09:25
You got to work five days a week. You’ve got so many months. I have five months left to pay a hundred million dollars back that I borrowed. Hi, mine is our dictator. I’m not pleasant and I, and so when I propose to do is reinvent it, say we, we took what nature showed us, and we decided to make clocks and watches and and credit cards that have, uh, term limits and stuff.

09:59
So, instead of that, let’s just make time Dong Dusk and Equinox and the solstice. Those are four, and they’re beautiful, and might as well beautiful been gone except dust, perhaps. And when the seasons change and it’s spring or the even when it becomes fall, how? How beautiful all the leaves change, so nature gave us time, and we turned it into something to beat us with.

10:26
So I propose we change that and, and um. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to make a little red asterisk on the bottom. You could build that. And and and that asterisk is going to mean give us pleasure instead of being something we hate or or we.

10:46
We will be by or will build by, and if we have lawyers, they really know how to build by the hour. So, let’s make it something pleasure. And make not now, since time is going to be gone. Does solstice and equinox? It’s a pleasure. So we’ve got now. One out of ten of the things that we invented that rule our lives that is going to be fun now.

11:08
And just one thing about this that I think’s really important. We’re at a moment when we can transcend industrial time, which is what brought us all those small units that are press us to a post industrial time because of all the technological and other things that are going on.

11:28
I think we can get back to that to a synthesis in which we have that productivity, but we get back to that agrarian, natural time that you’re talking about. Second is work well. I propose, we all know, and I’m sure half of that more of the folks here. But there’s a kind of work you do that you love doing and, and if you didn’t need money, which we need to again time to pay the rent every month and and to pay the electric bill per hour of electricity.

12:02
If we didn’t need the money, we would do that work anyway, and certainly I would I do. And and? Uh, all the Arts. If you do Ceramics, if you paint it, it’s worth, but it’s not the same kind of work. As that work. You hate to do, or you, you beat over the head with which I say, let’s call.

12:24
So, let’s do away with the word work and change it with tile. And and play. And, and play is a wonderful word. And of course, what we do play is that’s why they call it a play because you play, and an interesting little note for you. I, I found a lot about, you know, when are human beings the most full of creativity, and I am sure that it’s when you play with your kids.

12:52
It goes together with all the history over over prehistory, because when you play with your children, the two of you. Uh, find the joy and and inventing things. Like, for example, I think the wheel, no, nobody made a big wheel and say, I made will. So what happened was they used to slap stuff slept as an Italian word?

13:15
Is the schlep stuff on a big Sledge. And then there were some trees that either got cut down or fell down. And so, when? Drag the Sledge on the trees. It was easier. But when you made a little miniature Sledge for your kids and some Twigs, the little kids couldn’t get that idea that you should pull it on the little Twigs, so we put wheels on the little cart and the for the kids that they have found toys of horses with with little wheels and and the little kids could pull the little cart, and then someone said, let’s make a big one like that, and that’s where the wheel came from.

13:57
We know that. Gunpowder was really invented as fireworks again, because for everyone to enjoy it, and I said, well, if that’s true if everything got invented, we know the steam engine that the Greeks had a little device that had a good boil the water, and it would have two opposing it would spin around.

14:19
How much did the kids? No one said someday. I will make locomotive, but we invented the idea for children and I, I said, well, if this is true, that the famous, uh, intermovable, what do you call type? Exchangeable. Yeah, movable type the Gutenberg process. I said, I bet you there was the movable type if it’s true and indeed back in those early cake paintings, you see hands of both adults and children where they blew.

14:51
So, even movable type of that. So, play is our most and, and with our children is our most incredibly productive process. So let’s play a lot with the choker, then not do so much, uh in fact, do no toil in the ancient times. Uh, coil May. Unfortunately, that’s what really slavery was invented.

15:14
The do all the stuff that we didn’t want to do, and I know the Spartans had a whole tribe of people who were I always forget their name. I think it was Helix or something someone must know, but they were the slaves of the Spartans. So, what we should do is have robots stool, the child.

15:35
Uh, which we, we should, more than capable of doing. I know I come from California, and there’s some some of them. I have experienced it, but there’s a something called a waymo card. They ain’t driven in a way more part. They’re incredible, they, you know, sometimes, what? I’m in a Tesla, and it’s driving itself.

15:54
I’m scared, Smith. It’s gonna hit someone, but the waymo parts use something called lidar, which is a four-dimensional process that is infallible. These these cars, just even in Chinatown, where the folks tend to cross the street without them being at the corner. Uh, the waymo just knows how? They’re better than any Uber driver you’ve ever seen in life.

16:19
And there are robot basically, and I said, well, when are they coming to here to New York and and Boston, and at least they said, well, not for another three or four years because we have to calculate the snow and the ice, because when a car stops it in here, and, and it’s nice, there’s a skit, but we’re capable of doing it, and we are doing it.

16:40
And so, if we could make? Uh, work just play and and just cross out the toil. We’re not going to toil anymore. We’re going to do. We’re going to do work that we love. Money. Should I get in the money? Yeah, let’s talk about money because it’s so connected to work.

17:00
Okay, so money? Has anyone ever? There’s a wonderful book I read. I, I think his favorite David Graber Raven called that the first five thousand years. So he wrote a bunch of wonderful books, but that five thousands of years is interesting, because if I went there, it went, especially the younger kids here, and I’ll say.

17:23
You know, what’s that? They’ll say my education. I’m still owe it. I owe for it, which is another option. Put education number four. You know? That the first five thousand years that wasn’t money five thousand years ago that we know, I mean, everything when you guessed about even historical time, you know, because historical time, whoever won the war, made the person who lost the war.

17:52
Like, for example, Cleopatra was portrayed after they looked. They lost the war with with Augustus. As you know, just a sexy lady. She was a genius Cleopatra, but the history doesn’t say that so by the same tokens, uh, you know there, there is, um. Uh, or in green history.

18:16
There was there was no money, money. I think first happened when there were armies. Which may have been two thousand years ago and armies on their way to the March to go have a big battle they used to just take the chickens and take the pigs and. Take the young ladies and all the things the water.

18:39
What have you so they were fighting well as they were going to fight? They were fighting their way down, which is a very stupid thing to do so that they said, let’s skip them. Some coinage or something Hopper or some grass or some silver, or maybe even more valuable metals so that the soldiers could pay for the chickens and the pigs and all the things and not be just fighting their way down.

19:04
So that’s what money perhaps worth of first came from everything, and when you talk about previous careers, perhaps you know, it’s all I guess, but that did we know. There was such a thing in that, and it was social that. In other words, that like you, all your parents, your life.

19:23
How do you repay that? How do you repay the fact that your your parents who lessons, anyone know? You give him grandchildren. That’s what they want. That’s what they want. There’s nothing so wonderful as having grandchildren so that that’s your parents. Give you your life and you repay that by giving them grandchildren and so forth and so on.

19:48
But in ancient communities, according to some thinking, there were sort of two families or two boys that existed, and it was considered you didn’t marry your own dead because the dead were sacred, so they married your dad, your family said. And, and then you have the death that that they that they would bury your dad or you would get up with your young men would get a bride from their family, but there was the social debt that that they were entitled to get a bride from your family, and so that was social and and something beautiful about that because there was there was the agreement between people to make each one’s life better by by helping I.

20:35
I heard that there. I’m going to say one sentence. If you’ve got somebody saying, I heard there was a tradition in Scotland, folks, Thousand years. That if someone was wandering around, they had the right to go to your house to use the bathroom and, and it was just a it was just a tradition, but now it’s the law.

20:53
Excuse me, so Francis, you’re mentioning, needing that money to pay back the bank, and it reminded me of the way in which debt has. Also, I mean, once it developed, has changed because? In some places historically. If I lent you money and you didn’t have the wherewithal to pay it back, that was my problem, not yours.

21:22
And what’s happened over time is that the power of the loner has grown so much so that they can squeeze the, you know, the person who took out the loan in ways that historically in in various societies were completely. Um, impossible, and you know, I risked my money, and it’s too bad for me and it.

21:47
It just shows how the sort of the the social and political conditions of something like that have changed over time to turn it into something so onerous when in the past, it it was, you know, a much more positive thing for the person getting the money? And one thing that’s very lucky in a way for history.

22:07
Is that a lot of those rules were written in England were written as the poor laws and the poor laws on paper tells what happens to orphans, for example, and what happens to people who didn’t pay. But then it outlines what, what penalties they have this summer. So we know what, what it was as it got tougher.

22:28
Interesting. So yes, uh. I do all the money for this movie, and I have five months to pay it back. And that’s time, and next time, and playing and money all in one one little situation. But I’m. Comfort. I’m going to be able to to figure it out, so I don’t want to work any rate.

22:52
So that gets us to money. And money. I’ll be, I know, this shy of time, so I’m I’ll go fast and. Let’s remember that first, the first two principles.com were stopping time with them were playing. Okay, we’re we’re playing. Well, I know, and money we have. We measure everything in this country by GMP, which is always amazing to me, because that’s a the idea.

23:23
That is, if you’re making something, just make as much of it as you can without limit. And of course, you make too much because you’re making much more than people really want. But you’re measured in how much you make, so you keep going. And then you have the marketing department, which whose job is to sell the extra ones that those wanted to tell people why they should want it.

23:49
In other words, you so a G is a is a crazy overproduction, and then, and don’t forget, any production is also using the atmosphere and the Earth and using. More resources than just the guy’s money is soothing. All of our resources, and it’s without limit, and then they use marketing to sell the extra to people who didn’t really want it.

24:12
So, my feeling is, I’m more interested in basically, um. Synergy, and P, I’m interested in h. Hdi, which human development development index which was in developed by an economist named Amarcus sen, who is Indian and I actually spoke to him. Oh, actually, he’s my former colleague. Oh, really. Yeah, well, he was very nice and human index.

24:41
Is that is so, they say it’s the happiness indicator, but it’s not really. It’s a more of a fulfillment. Uh well, and sort of Education, but you know, there’s a little funny Twist of it. You mentioned gross national happiness in Bhutan. In addition to the fact that Ken Galbraith is the one who gave the bhutanese the idea for that, which is sort of interesting, everyone wondered why Trump put such a huge, huge tariff on the little Kingdom of Bhutan.

25:12
It’s because of gross national happiness because they took a dislike to that the administration. The Little Kingdom of Bhutan is now world famous for its export of the concept of gross national happiness, because that’s their National indicator. And it’s, you know, spreading around the world, and more and more people are talking about it.

25:35
And when they announce the tariffs two weeks, they put a massive tariff on. It’s the only thing that futon exports. Well, you know my feelings about money. I once told my kids. In one of the periods when I was, you know, doing very well. I say, I want to give all of you a credit card and the credit card, and he’s oh great, we want a credit card, I said.

25:59
But there’s some rules to it, and if I were in charge of anything, which I’m not, I would make all your social security numbers a credit card, except there would be the same rules. I would give my kids one is, you can’t make money with it. Those, you can’t go by 400 cases of beer and then take them over to some place where there’s no beer and make a profit.

26:21
So this, this credit card? Uh, you’re, I don’t think you’re a social security number, so you will be able to build to it. You wouldn’t be able to make money, you can’t buy stocks or buy real estate and sell it. Cover that you couldn’t use it for to buy sex or love, of course.

26:42
You couldn’t use it to to to inflict harm in anyone to hire someone to be someone else for him directly to do that. And he couldn’t use it for gifts. So, my daughter said to me, oh Daddy, that’s great. I’m just gonna buy caviar and eat caviar all the time.

27:00
I said, well, if you want to, you’re happy. You’re going to be sick of the caviaries, you know so, and so, why can’t I give gifts, I said, because gifts should be something you make for people that that you love, you know, if you write them and make them some painting or something, Ceramics or palm, or whatever you know how to do, but you shouldn’t.

27:21
So this is a a limited credit card and and therefore it’s not like wouldn’t break the bank and and it’s sort of like a universal basic. And how do you say Ubi? Basically, it’s a a UBI after one, yes? No one is going to be cold and have that and have kids.

27:45
Not nothing to eat in his system and and we can afford to do that. Believe me, we can, so do you bi, and, and uh, and and and, and, and, and personally, you know, I think that when did we have a time in the future when some person is going to say I am the first trillionaire?

28:06
They’re, they’re gonna find out that they have a trillion nothings because I don’t think there’s going to be money and there wasn’t always money. And there’s no, we assume that we’re born into it, that there’s always going to be money. But I don’t think there is always going to be like something more about here.

28:22
If you were in Germany after World War Two, and you had a million dollars in Deutsche Park. You couldn’t buy a loaf of bread with it, but if you had a if you had a friend that you had once helped. You would be able to get bread so. To me if I have the choice now, getting a million dollars or a million friends.

28:43
I’d rather have a million friends. Because that’s more valuable and more durable. So money, we’re going to have Ubi and, and uh, many other ways of of expressing support to one another. I I once with the little astrous. Now, next to money, can we put the the red Aster?

29:03
The yeah, make. I cross out money and, and uh. Yeah, but friends, friends and friends put friends on your friendship. Yeah, yeah. You do something nice in San Francisco. I was what’s going on the Bay Bridge and? Seven dollars, and I went with my ten dollar bill, and the guy said, no, no, the car.

29:30
I had to be paid for you, I said. Why? He said, well, they people starting to do that. So, I said, I took out fifty dollars, which I had in those days, and I said pay for the next five cards and, and hey, I felt better about doing that.

29:45
And then, when the guy did it for me, it’s something I’m giving is more satisfying, and there’s lots and lots of research showing that now, I told you about the German restaurant I went to. No, I went through a German restaurant once, and they said all. You could pay a dollar for a glass, so I made a dollar and and, and, and it was all this nice, wide, and beer and food, and I had it all.

30:13
And there were a lot of students there and stuff, and when I left to pay the bill. They told me, well, what do you want to pay? I said, well, what’s the bill? There is no bill. You pay whatever you want. Lot of these kids can’t afford to pay anything, and some people can afford to pay more than.

30:30
But I say you mean, it’s okay, I said, great. You know, pay for, I’ll give you what, what I have, and I said, but how, how do you do. Do you do you break anything? Oh yeah, we do fine. And I said. Of, I said, well, how long have you existed?

30:48
Things are 38 years. So, imagine a restaurant, and I wonder what that name was, but I, I wonder if it’s still there, but it, it was interesting to see, cuz then I’m almost so nice and and there were a lot of young people there who was great that they they could have, you know, without having to have money.

31:06
They could have food and stuff, so there are those examples, and uh moving on to the next thing, we’ll education. Well, this is the easy one for me. The idea of our education system, as you may know, comes from the pressures that that’s why it’s called kindergarten, German word, and then one through eight.

31:29
Those are grades, and then four years of high school and then. Save Warriors of college and then work. So, it really was a a ramp to get into work. The American system was really more. The one room Schoolhouse, where you had 12 year olds and eight-year-olds and six-year-olds in there together.

31:53
Uh, in fact, some of you who are older may remember years ago. There was something called these schooling. Does anyone remember that they said it was the 70s? Was called the schooling. Can you remember that? The schooling was actually, uh, a a Catholic priest that his name was Ivan Illish, and he was a Catholic priest, but he was a revolutionary thinker in education, and the schooling was a big, big deal in those days.

32:22
And the idea was that our school system was not effective. Didn’t really get the results given the amount of money that was spent on it and and that the the, the schooling, the gist of the idea was that you go to a person who’s sort of like a hotel concierge instead of your your your your college adviser, Miss mean that the the concierge in a hotel.

32:49
It’s not me, and, and you’re going, and say to the concierge and I want a little Japanese restaurant, he gives you and helps you get it well in these bullying thing. This concierge this education concierge. There were four times four networks. This is before. The internet. When that work was was basically the skills Network, and if you wanted to learn how to play the guitar or fix?

33:15
Uh, forcing it in a sink or. To any skill you, you went to a a system where you could learn any still skill. Uh, the second was a peers Network. In other words, if if you were? 17 years old, and you wanted to learn a lot about. Tennessee Williams playwright.

33:42
You want to know? Are there any people roughly my age who are very interested peers who want cosidians in in playwriting and specifically these playwrights. So, the second second network was of people like you interested in what you’re like, and that’s a great way to learn things because you have these colleagues sharing interests.

34:04
The third was the knowledge that work, which is basically the library. Uh, type of knowledge. That enough, last was a pedagogue. In other words, where you have a are able to meet the real? Uh, big thinkers in that field, so it was skills peers. Knowledge and pentagons, and interestingly, when we had the world’s greatest phone company a t years ago that I don’t know if you remembered before it got broken up into six of the world’s worst toy companies, uh, they sponsored Bell labs, and they hired Nobel Prize winners whose only FL Labs they hired all these Nobel Prize winners and physics and Science, and their only job was to leave their doors open so the engineers could go and consult with them.

34:54
Yes, okay, sorry for the bad news, but like, drive from the film, we’ve lost our ability to stop time just for a little bit. And if we have a limited amount left, and I’m wondering if we want to take some questions from the audience, so I wanted this. I wanted to change the entire worldwide.

35:12
You know what folks you’re going to have to change here? Again. Uh, yeah, the young lady at first, and then the fell the next one. Uh, so I’m kind of interested in terms of how a lot of the resistances or conflicts that happened even before, you know, getting a camera out sort of affected the actual filmic experience.

35:36
So, the question is, so all of the challenges that you face before filming, like, reminds you are before the challenges before filming. Yeah, sort of impact. The actual filmic experience, like being behind the camera, thinking, oh my God, I’ve got 100 million dollars. I have to pay back somehow.

35:58
How does that affect? Well, I, I had, I wonder. I like what I make of film being a theater guy. I like to have a few days of rehearsal renew all sorts of. Theater themes and stuff? Um, but I didn’t have all the cast at once, so I did something very nutty, which I’ve never which sort of worked, which is, you know, in movies, they have something people to stand it.

36:21
This is the person who stands there, so they cannot you. I usually get actors who are like understudies, so they just don’t not only stand there polite, but they know the lines and they. Conceivably could play the part, like in theater, and in fact, when I did one from the heart.

36:39
One of the stand-ins was the boat. She became a movie star. Now, I’ve forgot my name, but if they remember it, I’ll tell you. But so what I since I didn’t have all the casters I used the stand-in? Under studies to rehearse with them, and we rehearsed for about four days, and did theater games and experiments so you sort of work.

37:01
You get familiar with the actor and you’re working with the actor, and you’re you’re getting the actor. Ready, so the actor doesn’t turn into the character, but the character inhabits. And how it inhabits the actor. It’s a subtle distinction, but a very important. So I was, I was a little prepared in that way, so that when I, when I did the film, there was already a relationship with the Olympic cast, and, and they had a sense of who they were.

37:33
They say this idea about a director gets a great performance out of an actor’s. Not true. The actor does it all, what the director is, is he is, or she is like a coach a little bit. For example, in the French Connection, Gene Hackman told me that when he started, that movie had no idea how to play the part at all.

37:56
He had a funny voice. He had a funny hat, but in the morning, he went, and he took a donut and dipped it in the coffee, took a bite, and threw his daughter on the ground. And a voice said, that’s him. And it was Billy Friedrich, the director and Hackman said, well, he told me that I knew who I was.

38:12
So, what else an actor might be just, uh, one word, I don’t know if I’d answered your question, but it’s. Yeah. Yeah, young man. So, a lot of your contemporaries lately have been making films that are period pieces that go back, you know, Spielberg with the fableman’s Scorsese with the Irishman.

38:38
What inspired you to do something where you move forward into the future and do something less familiar? Well, you know, I I always, as a kid, I always love. Okay, love movies, but I, I love Spartacus, and I loved. You know, Roman epics, and then, and don’t forget. From the birth of Cinema at day one, they were always making Roman efforts because they didn’t cost money.

39:06
They didn’t have to pay rights. Everyone knew about, you know? Uh, wrong. Because of the religious aspect of it, so, and it had it had fights. It had Gladiators and had sexy slave girls and had manipulative. Okay, so it was perfect for a movie. So, right from the beginning of Cinema every 10 years, that or every year practically and also whatever the politics of the time or when the politics all became more Marxist and left-wing.

39:36
You could make Spartacus, which was about slaves rebelling, so I wanted to make a Roman epic like, well, it’d be fun to make the room an epic, good, and but then, the more I’ve heard about it, I said, yeah, but I want to make a Roman Epic set in modern America because modern American was founded on the idea of Rome.

39:57
We didn’t want the English king. Rome didn’t want a king there. Rome invented. The Republic with two houses. There were the plebs, and you know, there was, we have the House of Representatives and Congress. They had two Congress. They had, you know, just a console or two councils, so we and even America took role in law.

40:20
Everyone here knows what habeas corpuses and pro bono those are all Roman legal terms, which we then combined with American common law. So I just thought, gee, I’d love to make a whenever it was after a worst idea. I am, uh.

40:48
Thank you so much! This is such a treat. So? Wikipedia Wikipedia says that this has been an idea since 1983, and you went through a kind of hell with the idea. Can you? Can you speak a little bit to how the timing of? This film coming to fruition and?

41:11
It sort of baked. That’s been baking for decades, and now I’m losing my hearing. I am told that you had the idea in 83 and. Over the time, yeah, processes I. I work on something. And I work on it, and I don’t. I wasn’t given, as I said, you got the gift you got.

41:34
I never, never given that gift that some filters have when they like, see the movie, and I appreciate it. But I was given the energy and ability to just rewrite it a million times and make it like one percent better every time. Uh, and. I, I work on it so hard that I get sick of it, and I hate it, and I abandon it.

41:57
And then I start to work on something else, and I work on and work on it work until I get sick of it, and I abandon it. And then I look at the one I abandoned before and say, well, that maybe that’s not so bad I’ll do that much.

42:11
I’m always doing the. In fact, I was working on. Ambitions project called Distant Vision that I wanted to do, and I worked on. It worked out and worked on. It was, I got so hard, and so I abandoned it, and I looked at the megalopolis script. I said, oh, my God, can do that.

42:33
You know that at first, I didn’t think it was possible because I wanted Milopolis to be really. Positive for the future. You know, we have a joyous future. Then there was 9, 11, which was the first real. Horror, Islamic terrorism, and I didn’t know how to reconcile Islamic terrorism in in the script.

42:55
Later years later, I I? I, it was not so current on the line to say, yeah, sure. The world is wonderful. People are wonderful, but they just blew up and killed all these people. We know who I, I, I had ways of of dealing with understanding that? But, but, but it wasn’t easy, and and I, just when I made it, it wasn’t so much of a current issue.

43:24
So, I said I was okay. I could go ahead and make make a lot, but I always make the film. Um, that I had abandoned first. And then there’s the other one. Uh, less to do next if I, if I live long enough to do it. We’re gonna take one right over here.

43:42
Hello, Mr. Caldwell, how are you? I was just wondering, what do you hope? Um, the legacy of this film will be in 50 years. A legacy of the film in 50 years. Well, what I feel is that, like, that’s what the filmmakers in in the group, especially the young filmmakers, though when you make films, make them as personal as you can because?

44:08
Uh, that means they’ll be you’re a one and everyone. Here is a one in a million as far as I’m not concerned. The fact that your own mother and your father got together and made you makes you really something important. So if you’re gonna do art make personal art because there’ll be nothing else like it.

44:24
So, my hope is what I’ve learned is that if I would make a film. Spend a lot of money to make a film that I was hoping was going to make a lot of money that was sort of, I did. Once I made a film that I hope would make money, which was John Bishops The Rainmaker, because you know, everyone thought John Bishop books, which were very popular, and I like the rape maker, but was successful.

44:49
But if you try to make a film that is going to make a lot of money, that type of, you know, formula picture. Um, and it makes what it makes it doesn’t have a big afterlife. But if you make a film that has nothing to do with making money whatsoever, it just totally personal.

45:12
Then in. In the future, you’ll be looked at, over, and over and over again. I, I mentioned Jacques. He took all his money that he had the only filmmaker, I know, who did what I just did, but everything he had into a film that no one wanted to make it.

45:33
It was a huge flop, and he lost it all, but it was played on the most wonderful film and certainly a masterpiece, but more than a mess, and people like Joy. And so his, he died, broke, and depressed. That Noah thought anything of it, but we have play time.

45:52
And I mean, if you haven’t seen playtime, or you just want to have a wonderful time see play time, so the films that are made, not with a commercial and pet, even like apocalypse. Now was a big flop, I mean, reviews said. It was the worst, though Hollywood, ever made and opened to nothing, and it got, oh, it got a a dessert of pork Victoria Serrero for photographing it, but people never stopped going back to see it again, and they still still sing apocalypse now.

46:31
My answer to you and I think people will go and look at it again and look at it again and the picture. I’m sure some of you had seen it before. It changes when you see it more than once. It starts. You start understanding what it was, you know it, it because when you see these films more than once they start to unravel, which is what it should be.

46:56
I mean, you read a book I. I’ve read books that I said. I got to read this book again, you know, because I, I one book. I would love to read again, which I love, but I’m sure I only got 40 percent of was sent to mental education by phlebera, which is.

47:12
Which are beautiful, but I want to read it again because I know I’m going to get more out of it. That’s what happens to these kind of projects, I think.

47:26
Sir. I hear you, so you know better than anybody else that once you release a picture a piece of art, it’s up to the audience how they interpret it. Besides, besides my Galapolis, is there any film you’ve made in your career that you’re, like, oh, I wish people got this theme, or I wish people talked about this more?

47:47
Well, one film that was like that for me. Although it started to re-emerge I, I made, I always want. I love, I love children and I. As you can see, I have my when I, the reason my kids are all? As they are, is because I hadn’t rule that if ever I had to go away for work more than 10 days, I took them all out of school and took them with me.

48:09
So I was, they were all in the Philippines during the pop-up style. Jio Sofia was in a Chinese speak Chinese. So, that’s why, you know, I like to be a around, because in what film I made, which I made for young people? Uh, was a rumplefish. My deal always was that if the picture, it wasn’t very expensive, but if the picture didn’t earn what it cost, I lost.

48:41
I lost it and I was ludorous and it and and and my recollection is that ropel fish was a big Financial flaw and and I lost it. I don’t own it. But I kept maybe meeting young people filmmakers who said I made I’m making movies because I saw Rumble fish, especially for Latin America because it was the big, for some reason, Russell fish was in one theater in Chile for a year, and everyone were going to see this weird movie rum.

49:11
I didn’t even know this. But but, but yes. Rumblefish is a film that that did what I I did. I thought I had failed, but it did a lot of young people saw it and and realized what it was it was for you to love movies that want to make movies.

49:31
Of all. I’ve gotten every minute award I’m I’m so awarded out. I can’t tell you, but the greatest award, believe it or not, is that a big check? It’s not a statuette of any type. It’s when a filmmakers, you see, a film that you think is beautiful, and the person says, you know, I became a filmmaker because I saw one of your films that is the thrill.

49:56
Of my life that I’ve heard that a few times. And I think, gee, imagine I’m part of the group, you know, that Geniuses, who could handed the movie business over to me and us, our generation. We handed it to a new generation that new generation is so talented, and so right, the only sad thing is that the companies don’t fund them.

50:19
Don’t let them make them. So, so that’s, uh, yes. The Rumble fish was one of the films that that I was proud of. For that reason, so sadly, we have to wrap up. I want to thank you for fast. Yeah, okay, by me. Shout out the question. Right now, um, question.

50:50
A good shout out the question, I’ll repeat it. What would you do in today’s changing film, um industry, to kind of break it? Don’t make, are you making short films or what kind of short films? Well, I aspire to make future life. But right now, okay, here’s what I would do.

51:10
I would get together with some friends and do three one-eyed players. And the reason you should do it when I clay is because immediately, you’ll get the reaction of the audience, and you don’t have to write it. There’s plenty of what it plays by, check off, or Gordon Wilde, or in Tennessee with you had three people together.

51:28
Do one act plays if you do shorts. It’ll be a year before you get the reaction you. You want to get the the reaction of what your work, how your work hits, audiences. That’s what you want to learn. Ask question, uh, back there, very fast. Yeah, oh well, thank you.

51:47
I’m a huge fan. I adore you what I wanted to do when I went to college. When I was in high school, my dad sat me down. You showed me The Godfather films, and now I’m Mr, a film student at massar, so thank you for that. Oh, what’s the question?

52:01
Um, he’s just telling you. I asked the question we’ve been I’m about to get to it, so it’s just a silly question to wrap up with, but I saw online. I don’t know if it’s true, but I want to ask you that you spoke quite a bit of weed on set.

52:16
I just wanted to know that was true. He wants to know if you were smoking pot on the set. No? Omegle Atlas. I stopped. I stopped smoking pot. I, I only learned how to smoke pot around apocalypse now, and I stopped a couple of years ago, because I’m very I have one health thing that I have to worry about, and I get fat easily.

52:58
One, one last question. Oh yeah, our audience, but shout out a question. Say that again. Use AI to make film and using AI for films. How do you use AI for films? Well, the only way we use it is that when we were experimenting with the with the narration of Harry Fishburne, uh, rather than making him record everyone, the AI gave, we could rewrite it, and the AI would sound like, Larry, he’s not, not in the movie, but just for the cutting.

53:32
We used it that way. Sorry, I wouldn’t say.