The Flop House: Megalopolis, with Roman Mars
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This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. If you've been listening to our Power Broker Breakdown series, you know my co-host, Elliot Kalin.

Elliot is an unbelievably productive person who juggles way more projects than I could possibly keep track of. But I first got to know Elliot over a decade ago as one of the co-hosts of one of my first favorite podcasts called The Flophouse. It's from our friends at Maximum Fun, and it's all about movies, specifically bad movies, box office bombs, critical duds, and movies that should not have ever been made in the first place.

As fate would have it, there is one movie in 2024 that lands at that exact Venn diagram of the Flophouse and the Power Broker. And that is Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis.

It is a difficult movie to summarize, as you will hear. But essentially, Adam Driver plays a city planner that's very, very, very loosely based on Robert Moses. This time you've gone too far, Catalina. This site is under design authority jurisdiction. And what happens if you've overstepped your mandate? We'll apologize. Apologize? After the building's down? Mayor Cicero will be pissed. And it is.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

A few weeks back, I went on The Flophouse to talk about Megalopolis, not just as a movie, but as a vision of an urban utopia. Is this society, is this way we're living the only one that's available to us? And when we ask these questions, when there's a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia. Not that it's a very clear vision, but, you know, you'll see. Enjoy. Enjoy.

On this episode, we discuss Megalopolis. I got a feeling this is going to be a mega love fest. That's a good one. Yum, yum. Give me that. Delish. ♪♪♪

Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. And I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin. And I'm Roman Mars. Wait, hold on a second. What? How did you get here? How did you get here? Dan, I told you, you got to have your apartment fumigated. You got to get the Roman Mars infestation. Someone much more respectable got in here somehow. I got on my lit up moving sidewalk and I landed right here.

Wow. In the city of the future, AKA the flop ass. Yeah. Well, we, you know, this is a special movie, a very special movie. So we had to have a very special guest. Elliot, why don't you talk a little bit about Roman being on the show? Cause you, you have,

been doing some work with. You've been moonlighting. You've been cheating on us with another podcast. That's right. It's been so exciting to be discovering new things with another host, discovering new things about myself, showing them things about me that you guys have gotten bored with. It's made you a better co-host of The Flophouse, honestly.

In some ways, yeah, because I'm more excited. I come in and I kiss you guys and I give you flowers and you're like, what's this? You haven't done this in years. And I've got a spring in my step and a song in my heart. So Megalopolis is a special movie in that it feels like it is so indebted to the ideas of city building that come from having read The Power Broker and then forgotten most of what was in the book.

And so what better person to have come talk to us than Roman Mars with whom I have been co-hosting the 99% Invisible Breakdown, The Power Broker, all throughout this year. We have been taking on one of the greatest works of nonfiction writing or I would say writing period in American literature, The Power Broker by Robert Caro. Every month we break down 100 pages of it. We just recorded our penultimate summary episode. Oh, wow. We actually made our way through most of the book at this point. Wow.

And so the power broker is always on our minds. And this movie, Megalopolis, there's so much about it that is so clearly indebted to a certain idea of Robert Moses, the subject of the power broker, and indebted in a way that

is totally weird and doesn't really work and is messed up. And so we wanted to bring Roman on to talk about that aspect of it and also have a little bit of synergistic cross-promotion between these two endeavors. I thought because we're talking about a movie that's all about New Rome, we would bring in the best Roman we know. Yeah, it was just a name-based pun scenario. An actual Roman, yeah.

Yeah. That's right. That's right. No, I'm very happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And I don't think if I kind of needed a sort of a work excuse to see this movie because I was it looked a little bit. I don't know.

Like something I wouldn't necessarily see on my own. You mean you wouldn't make this, as I did, the only movie I've seen in the theater for the past couple months? That's amazing. As soon as we decided that I would see it for the show, I was very excited to take it in. But anyway, we'll get to that.

I'm on the show all the time. And I had a similar experience where I'm like, well, I mean, maybe it's partly because I'm like, well, we'll probably have to watch that eventually. So I don't need to run out to the theater to do it. But then when we all decided to do this together, I'm like, oh, great. I can see it on a big screen. I can see all the, the nutty vision of Francis Ford Coppola, all of the ideas that he's been saving up for decades and put them all in one script, whether they all belong in the same script or not. Yeah. At,

What was the last one we did in the last Flophouse in the Isles we did? Last Exorcist, I think. The one with Russell Crowe. Was Madam Web since then? Oh, Madam Web was... No, you know what? I saw it in the theater. Yeah, yeah. That was the theater movie. Guys, can we talk about Madam Web? I mean, another time, maybe. You know, her web connects us all. Kind of like how Megalon connects all these houses. Yeah, yeah, sure. The... So...

The other thing about this movie is that I wanted to see it in the theaters because unlike every other movie we've seen where there's a reasonable expectation it will be available for home viewing and like they're like got to see this new Marvel or Star Wars movie or whatever in the theaters. I'm like, I don't have to because I'll be able to see it on my nicely sized DCV at home. This movie is.

conceivably could disappear. It is a Francis Ford Coppola-owned thing. It's amazing to me that it was a national release movie, and it's very possible that it may disappear after this. I don't think it will. I think it will be home viewing somewhere, but this is such an indie film in so many ways that it's potentially unavailable at a certain point. So we had to see it when we could see it. I guess I see what you're saying in the sense that the response to this was so...

I mean, you know, there are people who are like, wow, big swing. Love you, Francis. But like for the most part, very negative that there could be a part of them that's like, well, I'm taking my ball and going back to my vineyard, you know, but like, he doesn't have a vineyard anymore. Oh, yeah. He only sold part of it. He only sold part of the vineyard. But,

But if he wants to recoup anything, like it has to go to streaming. It has to be available somewhere. So it was distributed theatrically by Lionsgate. But it's more like I can see a world where a large distributor is like, we don't want to handle this. And so he has to scramble to find some way. And maybe it's up on – maybe it's Francis Ford Coppola's YouTube channel that he uploads all of Megalopolis to in 10 chapters or something like that. Yeah, his TikTok channel. He just splits it all up. Wait a minute. Didn't Lionsgate also –

distribute Borderlands this year. Man, they're having a tough one. It's been a great year for Lionsgate. But in a world where even movies that are owned by corporations are not readily available the way that they maybe once were or that we assume they were, to have a movie that is

Literally one guy paid for it himself. It is... Anyway, that's all a long way of saying I had to see it in the theater because it was the first time in years that a movie has come out where I'd be like, this might be my only chance to see this movie. And of course, maybe it'll be on HBO Max next week. I don't know. But I was like, this could be my only shot. Yeah. There was only one theater showing it when I was looking for it. Well, there was maybe a couple, but it was like...

showing at 3 p.m. or something at Emory Bay. Makes sense in the Bay Area. Tech companies hate this guy. That's Copa country. That's the Bay Area. His offices were in San Francisco. He lives up over in the Napa area. And then we ended up seeing it at the Kabuki. My wife and I saw the Kabuki theater in Japantown in San Francisco, which we went to dinner ahead of time. Pretty on the nose name for a theater in Japantown. But it was...

It was a weird experience. That was a weird vibe. I want to ask, how does your wife feel about our podcast now that you host this? There was about midway through the movie where she looked at me and she said...

Why is Francis Ford Coppola doing this to us? But it started from the very beginning. We sat down in an empty theater. It didn't stay empty, but it started empty. We were there early, like just, you know, we just got there after dinner. And the place is completely empty. And then this older white woman comes and sits there.

right next to my wife. Like, the theater's empty. There's two of us. Your wife is a very friendly person. There's something very welcoming about her. So I get it, yeah. I was like, and it already started. I was like, oh, this is, there's a weird vibe here that you would want to sit right next to us in this little pack. And then it just kept on getting weird because more and more people sat, like glommed on right around us. Maybe they just wanted to sort of like sit mostly in the middle because it's a spectacle and whatever. But it started out weird. It just got weirder.

Yeah, well, speaking of how weird it gets, Stuart, you took notes. We all saw this, as we said, in the theater, because that's the way we could do it. I respect you for... I took the notes in the dark of the Alamo. Yeah, being able to do that. Well, I mean, we're going to see how good these notes are. Since I transcribed them onto note cards, and I'm like, what the fuck does

fuck does this say? To be fair, surely you couldn't say that about Claudio. This is an intricate puzzle box of a movie. Every link indelibly forged to the next so that it just like, it's airtight. The thing is airtight. So I'm going to need some help here, guys. So Megalopolis, movie opens with what? Like a

But like a title card, right? That was Megalopolis, a fable. Yeah. And it like right off the bat is like, hey,

Modern society is kind of like Rome if you think about it. It's true. I mean, it is a movie that is – it is a movie that one – anytime a filmmaker puts a fable at the end of their title, you go, this movie is not going to make sense. This is – that's calling it a fable really – it's like when we did North a while back.

I was thinking about these interviews I've heard with Alan Zweibel who wrote North and he just kept saying, it's a fable, like it's a fairy tale. Why do people dislike it? It's like you can't just – you can't bandage over a movie that doesn't make sense by calling it a fable. It is the equivalent of being like I washed my hands of this at the beginning of the movie. It's like when a political candidate says something racist and they're like, it was a joke. Come on, everybody. Like, well, people have liked it. You wouldn't say it was a joke. But anyway –

That never happens, so don't worry about it. But you're right, Stuart. At the very beginning, they start with their thesis statement. Hey, America's kind of like Rome. Is America going to fall like Rome does? And we have title cards that look like they're chiseled into marble. So you're like, oh, that's like classic Roman shit. Okay, so...

Let's just talk about some of the characters and then we'll get into the plot. I think that's easy. Easier than trying to walk us through the actual sequence, which is baffling. Our protagonist is Caesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver. It's impossible to say this name and not smile. I mean, come on. Yeah, because you're in a Catalina island. Uh-huh, and it's a Caesar salad. I love it. Yeah.

The ultimate fantasy of eating a Caesar salad on Catalina Island. Or with Catalina dressing on it. Oh, yeah. Stop it. Stop it, guys. Turn the cameras off. It's two types of salads in one. So he is the head... They prophesied a sandwich like this, the ultra salad. He is the genius head...

of the design authority of New Rome, whose task is to design things like buildings and plan out the city, right? City planning type stuff. He is the master builder of New Rome. He is also...

the inventor or discoverer of Megalon, a magic super substance. Yes. And he also, he also has the ability to stop time. Oh yes. And I do not object to this film having a magical realist component. Um,

I don't even particularly object to it not being explained why he can do this, because what explanation would be appropriate? Would be necessary. I mean, it's... But... But this is a very large, bizarre element to be added to the film with no apparent, like...

I mean, I wouldn't say no apparent, but it seems like it should have more thematic heft or something if you're going to put this thing in there. I mean, I might be just too dumb to realize what's going on. You're right that it does not work on a plot level. I mean, I would say that when you say magical realist, the issue is that there is no realist aspect to this. It's just all magic. And Adam Driver's character is so clearly a stand-in for –

and in this case, the filmmaker. And I think his ability to stop time is supposed to be the artist's ability to reshape the world around them even more explicitly than him just building buildings and stuff like that. But you're right, he doesn't do anything with it. Like, he never uses it for anything. As a plot device, it is like an anti-Chekhov's gun. Like, it never pays off in any meaningful way of how the story goes. Especially when you're talking about someone who is struggling with...

in a power play, you would, you think, why don't you use some of your time stopping powers to achieve your ends or something? Stop timing and pull the mayor's pants down so he looks ridiculous when you start timing him. If Megalopolis was released as a series of episodes, the nerds in the Megalopolis subreddit would be like, why isn't Caesar using his powers?

They'd be like, I know, in the last episode, he's going to use his powers to do X, X, and Y. And then when the show doesn't do what they thought it was going to do, they'll be like, this show sucks. This show sucks. I think also, to me, an element of this time stop power is like it plays into the fantasy of a guy who is trying to achieve something amazing –

but he is beset by all this other stuff, all this background noise, so many things like distracting him from what he's trying to do and the fantasy of being able to just stop everything and focus on the one thing he wants to work on. Is that like, especially for like a filmmaker like Coppola, I'm sure that that's part of it for him.

Well, it reminds me of the story I've heard about Stanley Kubrick and Jerry Lewis talking, that they were both editing movies at the same facility and both took a break at the same time. And Jerry Lewis was like, well, you can't polish a turd. And Kubrick says, you can if you freeze it. And this idea that if you can just stop time, then you can do the work that otherwise would be impossible. You know, if you could just freeze something in place, you know. Sorry, I got a leg cramp. So I'm dancing around my chair.

Okay, so that's Caesar Catalina. We know who he is. He's super cool. Now, the mayor of New Rome is in a bit of a pickle. That's Mayor Frank Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who plays a little hammy. I feel like Adam Driver is pretty straight in this one. I mean... I don't know about that. I was saying he's straight. I mean, he's like... Driver is...

Like you can't not be in this movie. I mean like the one – I mean there are some performances that aren't big and they suffer for it. I think that I admire – And the best performances in the movie are the biggest performances I feel like. Well, I – here's what I'd say. There are very hammy performances in this movie that are fun to watch because what else are you going to do in a movie called Megalopolis with all this stuff in it than chew the scenery?

And then there's Adam Driver who magically seems to create a grounded and consistent character despite the movie around him being gibberish. Like, he's amazing. And then there's – we'll get to her. But, like, the female lead is sort of lost in this movie because she is giving a small performance and the movie is not helping her out. Is that Natalie Emanuel? Yeah. Who plays the daughter? Who I think is good in other things but is sort of not served by this film at all. Yeah, did you see her in that John Woo killer remake where she does the very realistic –

jump and then latch your legs around a guy's neck and spin around shooting every other dude in the room. It's amazing. It's a solid move. It's cool. That's why people do it all the time. That's why it's such a common move. It's a great move, but you can only do it once. Now, Battle Driver is set up, it feels like it's set up at first. This is the movie I was expecting at least, was it is a battle between two

the mayor and the designer over the future of this portion of the city. And they each have competing goals and we're going to see the pros and cons of each. And it quickly becomes, even though Adam Driver is kind of a Robert Mosley character, it quickly becomes, no, he's a genius. And everyone needs to just like SDFU and let him do whatever he wants to do, you know?

Yeah, and this kind of comes to a head in the first scene where we're also introduced to the mayor's daughter, Julia Cicero, who seems to be a vapid club girl, but it turns out that she's much more than that. If anything, because she is able to witness Caesar when he stops time, it stops for her as well, and she can see what's going on. She can...

witnessed the stopping of time and it doesn't affect her, which seems to be an indicator, yeah, that she has a hidden, she has the hidden artistic, you know, ability or at least intellectual skill that Caesar has. And then the last like big faction, I guess, in this is Crassus, who is the owner of the largest bank. He's a very rich old man played by John Voight, who, guys, I think he knew, I think he knew what he was doing here. He brings a lot of juice. Yeah.

As we'll see, he does deliver the best line in the entire movie later towards the end of the film. Yeah, I mean, he's had a lot of practice both playing and being ritualed asshole. And doddering. Yeah, it's his thing. Now, we should mention also, there's a lot of little side minor characters that pop up around here. They're all played by, for the most part, but like Dustin Hoffman shows up, James Remar shows up, like D.B. Sweeney shows up. It's all these well-known faces. D.B. Sweeney? Yeah.

From the cut again? I know. And like Jason Schwartzman has a very good scene later on where he plays drums. Yes. Yeah. Like Talia Shire, family member of Francis Ford Coppola shows up. Like there's a, but it's a, it's one of these where it feels like one of these movies that is overstuffed with people. And you have to imagine there is hours and hours of footage. We didn't even talk about Lawrence Fishburne who, uh,

Yeah, Lawrence Fishburne, who's the narrator slash chauffeur. Yeah. Yeah. And we also haven't even touched on the other two important characters. We have the son of Crassus, Claudio, played by Shia LaBeouf. Mm-hmm. And, uh...

Wow, platinum. Journalist extraordinaire played by... She's very clearly a take on Maria Bartiromo. Maria Bartiromo, the money bunny, because she calls herself the money honey in this, right? Or is it the other way around? Maria Bartiromo, now she's just a straightforward...

Trump, Trump all the time. Her whole thing was she was the CNBC kind of like lady reporter and they used to call her whatever one Wow Platinum is in this, she's the other one of either the money bunny or the money honey. And I don't remember which one is which. Listeners write in. Okay. Or don't. But these are, I mean, we'll get like much as, is it Jared Leto and Haseguchi? Right? Much as his performance is at the level the movie wants to be at, I feel like these two are at the level the movie wants to be at, which is...

cartoonish, you know. Yeah, I mean, it feels very much like Aubrey Plaza's doing a performance of her character, April Ludgate, doing a performance of this character almost. Yeah.

So we're kind of introduced to this drama and these different personalities at a press conference that is held over a scale model of what the city is supposed to look like, I guess, where they're like walking around on like what, gantries and like. Now, Roman, you know, you know, urban studies stuff. Is this usually how like a new city development is unveiled by everyone walking on a catwalk over it? And it's very dimly lit and people are arguing with each other in the catwalk.

Yeah, it's similar to all the ones I've been to for sure. But the dramatic lighting, all this sort of thing, it just...

This is where the beginning of the nonsense, especially the big talk with nothing inside of the big talk. Yeah. Well, apparently Adam driver had a speech that he was supposed to deliver in this scene and Coppola to loosen him up said, why don't you just go out there and do the, to be or not to be soliloquy from Hamlet. And he did it. And Coppola was like, I like that more. I'll put that in the movie. So that's why Adam driver goes out and does to be or not to be. And it's a, it's not a bad performance of that soliloquy, but it, it's,

The whole time I was reaching to be like, why is he doing this in this moment? Because I wasn't yet far enough into the movie to realize there's not really a logical reason for a lot of the things to happen in the movie. Right. So we get a little bit of further backstory. It turns out that Caesar Catalina has a tragic backstory. His wife was potentially, what, like killed by him? That's the belief? Is that he may or may not have been involved in her death or a car accident? She was found injured.

She was found drowned in a car at the bottom of the lake or bottom of the river in a shot that is an explicit call to the Night of the Hunter, to Shelley Winters in the drowned car in Night of the Hunter. And so we already know that before he was mayor, Giancarlo Esposito was the DA, and he brought Adam Driver up on charges and took him to court accusing him of that murder, and he was acquitted of that murder. And so, yeah, there's bad blood, and he's a bad boy. It's bad blood over a bad boy. Yeah.

Now, speaking of bad boys. Adam Driver, ironically, they said that he drove her to death. That is ironic. That's ironic. Thanks for explaining irony to me. So he's a bad boy because he's also kind of secretly dating Wow Platinum.

And they have this scene where they are kind of hooking up in a very messy hotel room or apartment. He kind of spurs her, spurns her affections. There is the lovely line where she is down on her knees and says, Caesar, your anal is hell. Luckily, I'm oral as hell. And I was like hooting and hollering in the theater. That's the Academy Award winner for the screenplay for Patton who wrote that line. You shot off your pistols into the air. Yeah.

Should we set up here one thing when they are in this press conference talking about the different visions for the city? I think the mayor wants to do this sort of garish, you know, Biff-style casino in this space. And then Adam Driver's like talking and he quotes Hamlet and stuff. But there's no presentation of what happens.

his ideas are really or did I just miss them? No, I think it's kind of taken for granted on his part and the movie's part that everyone already kind of has a sense of Megalopolis, his dream city that he wants to build. But he does not present... I think that was probably the speech he was going to give in the original screenplay. That's the thing. Also, you know, look, casinos are basically never the answer, but the way it's at least presented... They're the answer to where can I get a cheap steak at three in the morning? Yeah.

The way it is at least presented here is the mayor is like, hey, you've got all these pie-in-the-sky ideas, but there are people who need things right now, and I'm going to give them to them. And in the absence of Adam Driver's character having any argument, I'm like, I don't know. It sounds like he's making some sense. Why am I supposed to sympathize?

immediately with Adam Driver because he can stop time. Great. But he says something to the effect of like, let's just give the people what they want. We need to serve the people and this is the way we serve the people at this casino. And then Adam Driver offers, right, no counter argument whatsoever. So I was trying to get like, this is my...

This is the beginning of my frustration with this movie. Up till now, you were totally on board. You were like, I love it. I love it. You showed up wearing a Caesar Catalina t-shirt. Foam finger and everything. But if you're going to be broad stroke fables...

then you have to present ideas. You know what I mean? Like if the characters are not going to make sense and they're going to be completely arched and not have natural dialogue, if the sets are all fantastical and stuff, that usually means that you're clearing the way of all this nuance so you can tell...

you know, count, you know, like a war of ideas of good and evil or whatever. And this is where I begin to like, what is the premise of Megalopolis? You know, like, what is he trying? What is this utopia mean other than the word utopia? What is the casino? Like, is it really about serving the people? Is it about corruption? Is it about both? None of these things are clear here. And I'm just like, I'm just at sea with this idea of like, and so much of it is like,

Is that the deflation of this moment of like, oh, it isn't that Caesar is a Moses-like figure. It's, oh, he is just a genius. Like, he's just great. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing kind of Elliot pointed out. Like, it'd be one thing if the idea was that Caesar is this guy who he believes that people don't understand what they actually want or need. Right. And that he's at odds with the mayor. And there's an actual question as to which one, who's right.

But the movie is like, nope, Caesar's right. You gotta listen to the smart guy. I'm interested in that. I really think one of the, the way that it makes sense to me is just if I look at it as a metaphor for Francis Ford Coppola, the genius. And the mayor is a studio executive and he's saying, make me a superhero movie. We gotta serve the people and that's what they want. They want a flashy casino. And,

And Francis Ford Coppola is like, no, I want to build them the movies of the future that will create new ways to think and feel. And I have this new element, Coppola, I mean Megalod. Like that's the only way – and I don't know if it was that – It would have been funnier if they called it Coppola. That's true. And I don't know if it's that explicit in his head or if that was in statue, but that's the way I can read it as a metaphor where it starts to make sense. But that's the only thing that makes –

That's the only way it makes sense. But he also seems to think that it makes sense on a political level of like this is a story about politics and populism versus – it's one of those things where it's like obviously populism is bad. We need a genius who can cut through things. And it's like, well, that's fascism. Like the thing you present is like the mob gone unruly. Your only solution is that we all just trust Adam Driver's magic metal, you know.

But that's the thing, as you're doing the synopsis, the main thing that is to be conveyed about this moment is that

The ideas are almost there as if there's some kind of thing to be said or some point, but they don't connect. And instead, it just moves on. You know, like, and it's very, very weird. That's what I was like. I was like, what is it? What does it mean to serve the people with a casino? Who? I just like these ideas, like none of them stick. None of them are consistent. And it just keeps rolling on. I think Giancarlo is...

I think Giancarlo Esposito or Mayor Cicero, my mistake, his plan, actually, there is something he's saying. We need to build a casino because it'll like the people want it. At least that's a concrete thing. Explanation.

Like, I can at least understand that. I mean, we learn more about what Megalopolis will be like later. You'll get to it, Stuart. The plant buildings and the glowing moving sidewalks. The plant buildings, a home for everyone with apparently tons of space now. I don't know. I'm like, did half the population die? Did everybody get

I mean, you'll see there's a disaster that opens up quite a bit of extra space for building. We're like 15 minutes into this two and a half hour. I'm sorry for moving us backward when we should be moving forward. So this scene happens, you realize it has a relationship with Wow Platinum. With Wow Platinum, exactly. I kind of enjoy that name. That was one where I was like, I'm into that.

I mean, everything about Aubrey Plaza's performance and character is on the level of a political editorial cartoon, which is kind of where this movie wants to exist, you know? And she knows how to play these characters, you know? Meanwhile, Julia Cicero bluffs her way into the office of Cesar Catalina, and we have a little bit of a verbal sparring between the two of them. She wants to get in on this Cesar Catalina department of this design authority stuff. Mm-hmm.

And he is initially – go on. Well, she like sent him like a letter to insult him, right? Yeah. And she wants it back because she doesn't want to embarrass her dad. And she also like – but she's also like – I think she's interested in him. She saw him stop time for God's sakes. And he looks like Adam Driver. And he looks like Adam Driver, which is not to everyone's taste, but you know, most people. This is where he tells her to go back to the club, which is a moment that in context, it does not seem as bonkers as it does when it's clicked out. It's a fun reading.

is what it is. It's a fun line reading. And he's trying to make fun of, he's trying to make fun of the idea of the cool club. He also, this is also where he says like, like what, why do you deserve to be exposed to the riches of my Emersonian mind or whatever, which is also a very funny line. Yeah. Uh, it's great. Um, and then he like, It's everyone on Twitter. Yeah, it's great. He then takes her, he then takes her to, uh,

a, a scale, a not, probably not perfectly to scale cardboard model of the city and has her walk through it with her eyes closed. And she pictures the megalopolis that could be, uh,

you know, with, again, like floating walkways and streets and everything's glowing and it looks like it's made out of plants. It's super bio-organic. It looks like every CGI rendering proposal of a skyscraper in New York when they're like, here's what we're going to do with this space that opened up. And it's always a CGI rendering where everything's super glossy and there's trees all over. Yeah, it looks like the cover of a super melodic Tech Death album cover, you know? Yes, exactly. Exactly.

I also hate to slow us down, but in terms of like the look of this film... I hate to slow us down, but... In terms of... I'd like to do the Bob and Ray Slow Talkers of America sketch. Um...

Great sketch. The look of this movie is all over the place, partly, I assume, because, you know, some of it was filmed years ago and then some of it was filmed more recently and it was all sort of jammed together. And, you know, it's what affects...

I mean, even though this is $120 million of his own money, it wasn't enough. And like, it's what he could afford in certain scenes. Like, but I think that there's some scenes that are genuinely like beautiful and visually striking. And some of them look like, you know, maybe a C tier CGI effects companies real. And some of it looks like,

They got it off of Storyblocks or something, you know, which is, you know, there's some beautiful stuff on there. A former, a former sponsor of ours. Storyblocks has a lot of great footage, but it's not what you would expect from a major motion picture. Yeah, it's odd to see what seems to be stock footage just sort of interspersed in this thing.

This is definitely – there's a – so they were making a documentary about them making this movie at the same time that they were making the movie, and it hasn't come out yet. And I'm so curious to watch it because I have to imagine there were huge swaths of the film that were changed at the last minute because of budget reasons and things like that. Yeah.

So the mayor finds out that his daughter's been spending some time with Caesar and he's not a big fan of this. Right around now, he has a parade and everybody's like mean to him and don't like him. They're all booing him, yeah. I think also this is where a random guy gets recruited off the street to be one of Claudio's henchmen. I think that's the same guy. The tuba player in the marching band.

He gets recruited to go off with Claudio. And I'm like, I guess this is going to be an important character, but it's not really. Like they spend a surprising amount of time with the marching band wondering where this guy went to considering we barely ever see any of them ever again. Okay, fast forward a little bit. It is nighttime. Caesar jumps in his car and goes driving through the rainy streets of New Rome. He is pursued by Claudio and Julia in separate cars. We have like a little rainy street show

chase, I guess. And this is where we have one of the, there are a couple moments in this movie that I do think are brilliant and beautiful. And this is where he's going, driving to the city and he's seeing the statues of the city, these huge kind of Greco-Roman type statues are literally sagging out of fatigue and dropping the things they're holding and leaning against buildings. And it's like, I think it's such a, it's a beautiful way of getting across the idea of a society that has exhausted itself, that is losing the energy that

that made it great once. And I'm like, oh, this is the kind of beautiful, straightforward metaphor that he's not achieving through most of the movie. Right. Well, it's a sort of directly expressionist look that I think part of the problem is it doesn't settle on –

one thing. If it was all sort of poetic in the same way, it would feel better. But there's a lot of disjointed different ways of doing it. Yeah. I had the same feeling when I saw this. This scene was the most where I was like, oh, this is what this kind of...

Fantastical imagery. This is where it's achieving what I think it's supposed to be achieving the whole time. This is where it hit me and I was like, I can deal with this artifice. I can deal with the fact that this all feels like green screen, but not

you know, like purposeful, you know, kind of green screen. And it just felt that, that was my favorite visual moment in the whole movie was, was, was the statues and the, and the sort of dilapidated parts of, of new Rome. That worked on me totally. And it's, it's a bit of a sledgehammer, but I feel like it is very clear what it's trying to say. It's not as messy as some of the other stuff. That's where it delivers being a fable is the thing. That's like, I want it to, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you saw those statues, you're like, we have title finally. Robin, I have a movie for you called The Fablemans that you might enjoy more. Yeah, it's a real fable, yeah. Fable-oriented. It's about a little mouse.

Sorry, that's Fable Goes West. I apologize. That's an American tale. Fable Goes West. Caesar's car stops in front of a mysterious glowing flower stall that appears in the middle of the street. Julia sees this and says, that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, it doesn't make sense. You're right. And then he takes the flowers he buys and goes up into a dilapidated apartment building. She pursues him.

In his mind, he sees that he's walking into a well-appointed room with attendants and his wife is in the bed. But in reality, he's just like sitting on a bed, right? Like there's no wife there at all. He's hallucinating that his wife is still alive and is being cared for and he's visiting her. And Julia seems to see both reality and the hallucination. She both sees reality but seems to understand, oh, he thinks his wife is there.

And Claudio is also spying on this as well, but he doesn't see the hallucination, I don't believe. It's also, I never could quite figure out why, I know why Claudio gets mad later. I could never quite figure out why Claudio cares about Caesar right now. He has like a burn book of all the people he doesn't like and Caesar Catalina is written down on that. Yeah, maybe that's it. This character doesn't need a motivation. I mean, and Shia LaBeouf, I think he's harnessing his natural unlikeability for this character in a really strong way.

No, that's true. You don't need a backstory. You're like, oh, this guy's just, you know, he's just a jerk who doesn't like this guy. Yeah. I just assumed that Caesar Catalina, like, I don't know, accidentally threw some logs in the fire when they were sitting around the fire and it burned off Shia LaBeouf's eyebrows. So that's why he hates him. Because he has, he has like painted on eyebrows or something, right? Yeah, just like Superman and Lex Luthor, yeah. Okay. So, uh,

shortly after this, I guess it's like the next day or something, Caesar takes Julia up in his private elevator to the top of the design authority where he has his like

I don't know, like thinking area, which is like a clock on its side and a bunch of ledges and girders. It looks kind of like the – to me it looked like a set for like a play, right? And where they can like gaze down upon all of New Rome and kind of see as everything moves. It's sort of like they're hanging out on top of like a mobile. Yeah.

You'd put over either a baby or you'd have an art gallery on either side of the sort of spectrum of mobiles. Yeah.

I think it's, I think around now he kind of explains what he's doing or what he's thinking, but I don't really remember this scene outside of them just hanging out on clocks. Yeah. Meanwhile. I think there's a, there's, yeah, there's nothing, in my notes, there's nothing particular. It just says clocks. Yeah. Meanwhile, we get a wedding between Wow Platinum and Crassus, the banker guy. Is that, I don't remember his last name. Is it, is

Is that his last name? I think Crassus is his last name. John Voight. Yeah, John Voight. Okay. So this is clearly, Wild Platinum took, this is a power play for her. She wants access to his money. He's Hamilton Crassus III. Thank you. Hamilton Crassus III. Thank you. And so we have a big fancy wedding. It,

It has... It's a wedding that has everything. It has gladiators. It has guys riding chariots around on the inside of a coliseum. Caesar shows up, and a pop star shows up wearing a dress made out of... That was his wedding. Yeah. Yeah, this is his...

Honestly, guys, I was just like, oh, they all went to the circus. And I was like, fine with that as an explanation. I'm just like, they're at the circus now. I don't know if it's necessarily the wedding, but it's a celebration of their betrothal.

though, right? Maybe it's the reception. Who knows? Yeah, but that's why they're doing it. Yeah. And there's a pop star wearing, I can't remember if this is the same pop star from later, Vesta Sweetwater, who shows up wearing a dress made out of Megalon, which is... Yes, this is Vesta Sweetwater. This Megalon dress is...

perfect camouflage. Does not matter for later. There's no moment where you're like, oh, you can use Megalon if you cover yourself like the Predator can't see you or something. That doesn't matter. Nope. It's just a one-off idea that it's a dress made out of Megalon where there's cameras in the back that project what's behind you on the front so you turn invisible. And that's it. Just an idea. Just an effect. There's a ton of Roman stuff. We haven't really even talked about the outfits and stuff. Like, everybody has, like,

vaguely futuristic Roman outfits. You know it's futuristic because like...

Men's suits have slightly different collar cuts. Yeah. That's right. Sometimes they don't have... It's like a severe suit cut, but they also have little... They have like little laurel wreaths behind their ears, you know, leaves behind their ears. So it's like... Kind of epaulets to make them like their shoulders very broad, lots of capes and stuff like that. It's the kind of stuff that has been done on stage in productions of Julius Caesar since at least the 1930s. Yes. Where it's like, we'll pull out how it's like modern political times by having everyone wear suits, but they still have like...

Roman haircuts, you know, that kind of thing. You know, Roman talked earlier about when the movie started to sort of lose him. And I want to present... I think he meant when he lost himself in the film, right, Roman? He lost himself in the moment. No, I want to talk about the inverse where the movie, which up until this point...

had only baffled and dismayed me started to get me a little bit. And during this whole circus sequence, I'm like, oh. It started to engage me in spite of myself, partly because I was like, oh, I don't need to care what any of it means. At least the movie at this point was throwing a bunch of stuff at me. And I appreciated that. This is one of the sequences maybe...

you know, before they started running out of money, it felt very like full of splendor and ideas and none of it

necessarily hung together in any thematic way that made any sense to me but I'm like oh okay movie it's kind of delivering the bread and circuses that yeah to placate you know people in the audience you know this yeah I'm one of the idiot rabble you're like finally I can relate to someone in the movie the people screaming for blood in the stands

It is throwing a lot. But it's like, I think the point, which is easy to get into, is the sneering at the wealthy and, you know, sneering at their excess and stuff like that. And it just, it's totally, I mean, it works. That works. And Caesar seems to be doing his best to play along, but he is clearly kind of disgusted by this whole...

He ends up getting very drunk and getting himself into trouble. Meanwhile, scheming little Claudio, who is... I think he's in drag at this point. He sneaks into the control booth and he frames Caesar and Vesta Sweetwater, who is a Taylor Swift-style pop star. And the idea is that she is supposed to be a...

like a young virgin, right? Yes. She's both made a big deal out of like, I'm going to keep myself a virgin and she's presenting herself as being younger than she is. Which we learn later. Yeah. This is like statutory rape, it seems, but it's not actually. Yeah. But isn't the premise of all this like that these old men, the old rich oligarchy is bidding on her virginity, like bidding, is that,

Is that happening? I believe that's true. Yes. They're like betting that she's going to keep her promise, right? Like they're not auctioning off her virginity, right? I thought that's what that was happening there. Like that. But you guys took notes. I didn't. Somehow the economy of the city is balanced on her promise of staying a virgin until marriage. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought they were sort of like bidding to keep her a virgin somehow, but I don't know what the mechanics of that would be necessarily. I mean, it's ancient Rome stuff though because it's like – Yeah. Right? Like the Vestal Virgins. Right. Their virginity was one of the things underpinning the safety of – the spiritual safety of Rome and like –

Like that's part of the issue with trying to compare – do a metaphor where you're like ancient Rome is like nowadays is that the basic foundational underpinnings of society are so different compared to ancient Rome. Like Rome, yeah, they had a senate. Yeah, that's true. But also like religion and politics were the same thing and like it was just taken for granted that if the city was having trouble, you'd make some sacrifices to the gods and hopefully that will keep things right the way you – In a way, don't we do that –

these days. You're right, Stu. I'm the one who's being naive. But I did interpret this as way more sinister than maybe it was. Yeah, my notes say fundraiser, question mark, pledging for purity, question mark. Yeah, I think they are... I think it's like a marathon fundraiser where you're pledging someone to run a marathon. I think they're pledging for her to just stay a virgin. And so when they see her on tape, supposedly in bed with

uh, with Caesar, uh, Catalina. Yeah. They're like, I wasted all that money. Yeah. And everybody, they're like, oh, the underpinning of our city is all wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone is incensed by this. Like the crowd is, is paying for blood. This is after her big musical number though, right? Yeah. After her big musical number. I didn't talk about it, but you,

Do you want to talk about it? She does this big musical number where there's suddenly like six of her singing all at the same time. And again, doesn't make sense. Doesn't really work thematically. Never explained, but it's a cool thing. Not bad. A cool looking scene. And I have to say, actually, the Vesta stuff is...

The last we see of her character is one of my favorite moments in the movie also, but we'll get to that. Please get to it because I don't have it written down in my notes. I don't remember what happens here, but the scandal comes out that this video has been shown to...

Shia LaBeouf arranged for this video to be shown on the Jumbotron of her in bed with Adam Driver. And then suddenly, like, the screen fills with fire. And there are headlines that are like, Vesta reimagines herself. And suddenly she is singing, like, a bad girl song. Now she's reimagining herself as, like, a sinful bad girl. And she's a superstar again. And it's so... It feels so much like Francis Ford Coppola's like, who are the scenes into? Taylor Swift? What does she do? Okay, I'll do something. This is my understanding of what that is. And it happens...

So it's like the movie suddenly turns into an advertisement for something else, for some other movie. Yeah. I think that that's a little sequence that happens a little bit later and it's done like totally like classic MTV news style, like explosion bit. And then like scenes of societal collapse. Um, okay. Uh, Adam driver, Caesar Catalina gets too drunk, gets beaten up by some guys. Uh,

He gets whisked away. The cops arrest him for statutory rape because of the video. But then Julia goes into the archives and finds out, actually, Vessa Sweetwater is older than she's been telling everybody. So she exonerates him. Problem almost immediately solved. And don't we find out that the video is fake later on? And the video is fake too. They like double up the explanations of like why this is fine.

It feels like the movie is fainting towards, fainting F-E-I-N-T-A, not fainting like, oh, stars and garters. The vapors, yeah. It's taking a faint towards this guy might be a genius, but he's not a good guy. But instead, the movie is very quickly be like, no, no, no. He's a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. And he tells Julia, you got to pretend to be bad or people lose interest in you or something like that. And they're like, not only was she fainting,

not a minor. He also didn't have sex with her anyway. So it's fine. He's double good. He's nothing to it. He's just, he's a sterling saint, you know? So around now we have Caesar and Julia meeting on top of his girder, uh, watch, uh, ledge, and they have a conversation and with her help, he's able to stop time again. He had kind of lost his powers for a little bit. Um,

Like Spider-Man, sometimes he loses his powers when he's in a bad mood or depressed. And then they have a kind of sloppy makeout session. I thought that was pretty great. And then we get – and they like decide to work together. And we get a montage of them like kind of falling in love and doing some work at the design authority. Yeah.

Which, by the way, has really boring design. Like, I really wanted those jackets to pop a little bit more. I was really bummed about that because I was like, design authority. All right, let's spend some time with the design authority. Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Mugler would be upset. Robert Moses would be upset. He was all about, say what you will about him. In his early work, at least, he's got a real design eye, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Claudio, meanwhile, one scheme foiled. He's got more schemes to be had. He starts trumping it up. He sees what's going on and he's like starts getting the masses all angry. They start backing him. Later on, there's a scene where he's giving a stump speech and the stump is literally carved into the shape of a swastika. Is that right? It's pretty messed up. Okay. I think the movie's pretty subtle. I don't know if something like that would happen in this movie.

Uh, we find out that Julia is pregnant. Oh, uh, there's a baby on the way. Master builder is build a baby. Um, mayor Cicero doesn't like this idea. He doesn't like the idea that they're going to have a kid. So he tries to basically tries to buy off, uh, Caesar. Uh, he's like, Hey, you can do whatever you want. Just don't like leave my daughter out of this. Get out of this. That,

Stuart, you're doing a great job of condensing this movie. Did you skip over the part where the mayor has a dream where a cloud with a hand grabs the moon and his wife accurately says that that's an omen? Yeah, okay. Probably. I just want to make sure that we're getting something full. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't want people to listen to this and be like, this movie doesn't sound that crazy. And it's like, oh yeah, what about the scene where the mayor has his dream about a cloud grabbing the moon? Yeah, it doesn't.

It doesn't really figure it into much, but it looks cool. I don't know when it happens in the movie, so I just want to say the visual that has stuck with me, there's like they're under the water and there's some like people who are rocks. They're like painted as rocks and then they sort of move and you see that they're people and it is like just like half a second. But I was like, that's a really gorgeous image right in the middle of this thing that I'm not sure what it's saying. Yeah.

Yeah, and there's like tons of stuff in here. Like there's moments where Caesar is like – has like a floating mirror that shows his memories made out of Megalon. Yes. And then – Megalon mostly – Megalon is like Herbie the robot from the Fantastic Four cartoon or like – who's the little alien that hung out with the Flintstones? What was that guy's name? The Great Gazoo? The Great Gazoo. The Megalon is just kind of a lump that kind of floats in the air around –

uh, Caesar's apartment and does stuff sometimes, but he'll just be working in the megalominal kind of float too close to him and have to push it out of the way. Cause it's getting too close to his face. And it's like, it's such a, it's such a strange, like goofy thing to have. It's like, Oh yeah, it's, this is the miracle metal of the future. Anyway, I got a lump of it and it just floats around my apartment. It's kind of, kind of irritating. And they have like a family dinner at one point where they invite the mayor and his wife, uh,

And they're like playing cards in this like weird magical Megalon house, right? Yeah. And they're discussing string theory and shit. It's like a Megalov-less exhibit. It's like an exhibit of what Megalovs would be like or something like that. Yeah. Does that come after the –

The destruction of the city? That's before the destruction of the city, but after we learn that a Soviet satellite is falling to Earth and will crash into the city. Why? I forgot about that satellite. There's a Soviet satellite that, yeah, they're like, anyway, its orbit has decayed. It's going to hit the city. And they're like, uh-oh. And then they don't do anything about it for a while.

I'm starting to realize that taking these notes in the dark, it was a lot easier to take notes on Madam Web. A more straightforward film that follows a screenplay formula that has been entrenched in Hollywood. So yeah. By this point, I think Adam Driver has also kind of shown us his vision

some of the visual visions of what Megalops look like. And the buildings all look like plants. And the idea is like the buildings grow as people need them. Like there's homes for everybody because the buildings can grow and change with the needs of the people, which is a beautiful idea. Roman, how close are we to that? Yeah, I mean... Has anyone tried that yet? Growing buildings? I mean, in a way, like Hunter Vosser was like really into...

like mold and letting things grow because it was like true organic space and that the straight line is the godless line and you're going to want like... Oh, Jeff Vandermeer. You're going to want... Of course, he died from the mold in his lungs, I assume. Yeah. Totally. So there's a lot of... There have been big lofty ideals about a kind of like organic architecture and...

Like in a literal way, like to make it. And then there's the term organic architecture, like Frank Lloyd Wright style. That just means it's reactive and changes to people's needs. So that's all kind of – those ideas are out there. That is the closest thing this sort of dunderheaded movie gets to an idea. And it's the first time you sort of get to this –

Yeah, like what does this utopia mean? That it's like organic and reactive and serves people is actually – that's an actual idea. Everything else has just been like glowing –

walkways and nonsense. Like, where I'm like, what is this for? Like, what do you... You have to have, like... Utopias, like, have to have a concept or something. And this one truly doesn't. Like, what is the U part of the topia? Like, what does it do? Yeah. It really is... It's really weird. But that's one idea. Like, that'd be great. Like, having...

a magical substance that requires like no thought or care or design or whatever, like politics. It creates no waste, requires no energy to, and it just does it all. And this is like,

like a huge problem like that you're going to use some technology is going to save us rather than people like coming together and actually coming with solutions and working stuff out is like it's just it's just a nonsense idea that you're exploring for a couple of hours. You say that until Megalon works its magic. Speaking of Megalon working its magic, at this point

At this point, Caesar Catalina, probably right on the verge of explaining everything about his utopia, meets with a young 12-year-old fan who actually turns out to be a hired assassin and shoots Caesar in the face. Yeah. Okay, so this is after...

This is then after the city is destroyed by a satellite falling to Earth, right? Yeah, maybe. Like, this is an amazingly large thing to happen and then not really be addressed that much. Like, we get some, like, scenes of catastrophe, like shadows being cast on the wall. The reason I bring it up is just because that card game, I was wondering about, one of the things that strikes me about this movie is, as we said, this is a movie that

Coppola has been writing for decades and decades. I can only assume that the screenplay grew and grew and grew. And at certain points, it feels like they just shot every other 20 pages of it. Because people's relationships to each other will change wildly between scenes without explanation. Like Juan Carlos Esposito was like just saying like,

you know, trying to pay off Adam Driver to get away from his daughter. And then, like, in the next scene, they're all sort of, like...

You know, they don't love each other, but they're having a genial card game together. And I'm like, okay, well, what happened here? And the only thing I can think of is like, oh, the city was destroyed, so they all came together. But it's not said or anything. I'm looking at my – because I wasn't sure if I was going to have to do the summary today or not. So I took some notes also. Please, please, yeah. But you're right, Dan, because like Dustin Hoffman's character, who's an assistant to the mayor, he dies off camera.

We hear about, oh yeah, he's dead now. We get one scene of like a thing toppling and falling on him. And I'm like, that had to have been a whole sequence. And Shia LaBeouf runs for his position of alderman. And his guy, and then it's after that that the mayor goes to Caesar and says, if you leave my daughter, I'll give you the evidence necessary

that I lied when I was prosecuting you and you'll be able to destroy me and I'll put my support behind your projects. And at the same time, wow, platinum approaches Catalina. It's like, hey, look, why don't you come back, be with me again and you can have all of Crassus' money. Everyone wants to be in the Caesar Catalina business. And he's like, no, no, no. And that's when- Real Catalina caper. And she seems to hypnotize Crassus into giving her control over the bank. And then Caesar is shot in the head

by this child who, he should have been suspicious when a kid asked him to sign his book for him. Like there's no way this kid is reading Cesar Catalina's book.

I don't know, man. Everybody loves Caesar Catalina. I think that's pretty clear. Okay. But then, but Stuart, how do they heal him? How do they heal him, Trevor? So he has this moment, at this point, I don't know about you guys, I'm like, wow, they killed him. That's crazy. And he has this weird death dream, but then they end up healing him by fusing his head with some Megalon. They just stick Megalon on his head, on the open skull that's there, and this truly is an amazing building material. So we, at this point, Caesar then goes- Oh, but then having them-

Megalon in his face gives him lots of like new powers and things like that. Like a multiple man. Yeah. He shows up at Crassus, Hamilton Crassus's apartment, uh,

Claudio tries to harass him. Wow Platinum tries to make a move on him. But he reveals his Megalon, half-human, half-Megalon face, and it causes multiple images, and everybody is wowed by the majesty of his face. Especially Wow herself. Exactly. So he's going there because she's frozen all of his bank accounts using her power at the bank in order to force him to –

Force's hand, yeah. And then, yeah, she offs herself again. And Crassus kind of interrupts it, but now who does WoW set her sights on if she can't control Caesar Catalina? Of course, she's gonna pick, I guess, the next best thing, and that's Claudio Crassus. That's right. Uh,

And so she, we have a little sex scene. You were probably into this, right, Dan? It was like a Game of Thrones-style sex position scene. It was kind of like a Game of Thrones-style sex scene where it's all about power and you're like, is this what they think sex is like? Or she's like, stick your face in my butt. Okay, now go over there. Lie down there. I mean, it can be like that. Yeah, yeah, you're doing it right. That's true, yeah.

By the way, I just really love being on the Zoom call and watching Roman's face as he relives the plot. Like he's like, oh yeah, that did. That is a thing. Like what? I have been going through that where I was just like, the satellite. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, I'd forgotten about the satellite. That really is, oh my God, this is a bunch of nonsense.

Like I had streamlined it into like a much tighter movie in my memory than all this. You missed all the good parts. You forgot all the good parts. Long winding road. Here's my note for that. I wrote, the mayor learns the Soviet satellite may crash into the city, dash, and then it does, question mark. So it did happen. And I think the upshot of that is the idea that it now has opened up even more land.

for building on. In real life, the real Robert Moses had to evict people. He didn't have Soviet satellites doing the job for him. This is just a stew of really, truly problematic and nasty great man, like, tropes that, like, he's canceled for, like, 20 seconds, but he's such a genius. Like, obviously, all that stuff that they say about him is fake, you know, and...

should be forgiven in the first place because he's so great or is all made up and a bunch of these me too made up nonsense is coming after him and trying to take him down. All the people are conspiring in these like horrible ways and there's no notion that Adam Driver is just...

You know what I mean? And also the idea of like of what comes like how necessary destruction is to build something. And then there's this God particle that fixes everything so that no one has to have like actually hard thought and compromise. It's just it's just

It's just bad stuff. I mean, this is real, like, 13, 14-year-old. Like, I can't believe an old man wrote this. You know what I mean? Like, this is what... Yeah, it feels like something made by somebody very young or very old. I feel like I believe in either a very young man or a very old man. Yeah, I guess that's right. Or a very stoned man, which apparently he was. Or a Gary old man. A Gary old man? Yeah.

It feels a lot like somebody like... Gary Old Banana, Gary Old Banana, Gary Old Banana. Gary Old Bananas? It feels like somebody was like... I know what you're singing. Somebody was like, I want to, like, Coppola's like, I want to make a movie about city planning. And then he got high and read, like, one Jodorowsky Meta Baron's book. And he's like, I'm going to do it like this.

Yeah, it kind of feels, yeah, he's like, should I read the Power Broker or the Incal? I'll read them both. I'll just alternate pages. Exactly. Okay. So wait, I wanted to ask you guys, so this next part, I want to, so Stuart, summarize it and then I've got a question for everybody. Okay. Because I just want to let you know I have a question about. Well, I was just talking about Wild Platinum and Claudio scheming to take over the bank.

They do it over sex. And then Crassus collapses. I'd like two eggs over sex, please. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My Google calendar says sex meeting at 10 o'clock. Okay. So, yeah. So then Crassus collapses. He seems to have, what, like a stroke? He has a heart attack or a stroke. Yeah. He collapses, leaving Wow and Claudio in charge.

Now, then it seems like spring comes. You see flowers blooming, and Catalina and Julia get married in their car. Lawrence Fishburne sits in the driver's seat, and they sit in the back. Not Adam Driver's seat, but the driver's seat of the car. Thank you, yeah. And marries them. And then there is a montage of December holidays in this kind of Abel Gantz's Napoleon triple screen thing where...

And suddenly it's winter again. And I was like, did I hallucinate that it was spring and now it's winter again? I don't know what – and it can't be the next year because the baby is just – is the same age as when they got married. But this – let's explain. Did you guys have any sense of why there's suddenly a montage of winter holidays? Yeah.

Well, I would have to remember. I also have to ask, Elliot, my notes, I just wrote down Elvis. What does that mean? Yes. So an Elvis impersonator is out on the street singing America the Beautiful. Oh, okay. Thank you. I think it's part of Claudio's like, Claudio's like, like, um,

like pandering to the masses. I'm not sure. Or maybe it's a busker and it's, and it's a statement about the, the plastic artificiality of American value. Yeah, that happens. I don't, I'm not quite sure. I love this new bit. Stuart deciphered his notes, by the way. Jesus Christ. What did I write? Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know what's going on with that. Uh,

I mean, I did write winter holiday montage in my notes. Yeah, that happens. So around now- And it goes on for a while. It goes on for a while that we're watching people opening presents, people spinning dreidels, people celebrating Ramadan. You know, it's like- Yeah, everybody's representing. I love it.

Well, everybody, I mean, three religions. Now the city is inflamed with riots. The masses are rioting against the mayor, inflamed by Claudio, of course. The mayor's family has to escape through a secret train car tunnel.

Yep. They go through the antique subway car tunnels that have been closed off for years in the city. There's that – it looked like – I think it was the subway station that is beneath City Hall that has been closed ever since September 11th. I mean it's not been in use for a long time, but it was closed to tours and things after September 11th. I think that – it looked like that place. I wonder if they shot it there. It's possible. Yeah.

This is around when Wow Platinum and Claudio are celebrating their good fortune. They have successfully taken out their rivals. Nothing bad could ever happen to them. And they wander into the bedroom of Hamilton Crassus III. You know the old saying, pride goeth before more success. The old aphorism, yeah. So they go into Hamilton Crassus' bedroom and something, it seems like he's pitching a little tent. Yeah.

This is, so this is, so I want to get Roman's take on this. By far the best, I saw this movie in a theater. It was just me and four other people, not strangers, not people I know. They were watching the movie stone-faced, very serious. And when this line came out, I laughed so loud and nobody else in the audience reacted and I did not regret it at all. And so does anyone want to say what? Well, Elliot had been like,

John Voight has the best line of the movie. And the whole time, I'm like, did I miss it? Was it one of those? Like, was it just a line that is silly because Elliot's smarter than me? Well, I have a tale to tell about that, but let's get Roman's... Well, I don't... I have to be refreshed to the exact line. I remember the moment. It's roughly... I'm not quoting a direct... I mean, I'm trying to quote... I can quote a direct. Oh, yeah. So this you wrote down in your notes. So turning to his son and wife, he says, what do you think of this boner I got? LAUGHTER

But then he reveals what the boner is. It's a crossbow. It's so funny. He whips the blanket over and he's got a crossbow. And it's like, it's so, this is, if the whole movie had been at this level, I would have been like, yes, a thousand percent. But the last thing I expected was him to say, hey, what do you think of this boner I got? Seemingly, totally sincere. You don't know it's a trap at that moment. And I was like, this movie, I can't.

And they're so shocked, he shoots Wow and kills her. And then he shoots Claudio and hits him in the ass. And Claudio manages to escape, only to eventually be beaten up by his own mob. Well, we'll get back to, of course, the most important thing, Roman's reaction again in a moment. To John Boyd's boner, yeah. Or alleged boner. He...

The interesting thing to me is, like, this is a world where guns exist because we saw Adam Driver get shot in the head. So he made a real choice. I'm going to kill these people with a crossbow so I can do this boner bit.

You know, like... You think a gun wouldn't have been able to make enough of a tent in the seats? I mean, he's a prideful man. No, that's true. So... I think there is a... The theatricality of it, though, is... I think it's the theatricality. I think my guess is he needed a way for Claudio to survive and escape. And an arrow to the butt is a classic...

Slapstick way to get somebody to leave a room. But also, as we're recording this before our Caddyshack 2 Flop TV episode, a movie which also includes somebody getting hit in the butt with an arrow. Somebody find out on Saturday. I mean, find out on Saturday before this episode comes out. But there's also a – I assume – I wonder if there's something he's playing off of, some either ancient thing or some story he knows that involves an –

an arrow that he's referencing, since there's so many references in this movie to other things that are floating around in Francis Ford Coppola's head. Yeah, that's the problem with this movie for me. Well, one of the many problems, but I'm apparently an atypical man in that I think of the Roman Empire almost never, so I don't have the background information

in history that I would need to understand all of the... What about their, like, turtle formation where they lock all their shields together? You don't ever think about that? Um, I'm thinking about it now. It's pretty cool. They look like a turtle, but with spears. Dan, how often do you think about the Civil War? Because that's the other thing I feel like American men think about a lot. Uh, rarely. I think about, um... Do you think about ghouls? Is that a thing you think about? Oh, ghouls go to college. Okay, so that's your Roman Empire. Yeah.

movies about small monsters, ghoulies and gremlins and...

Yeah, Frankie Frico. Available on VOD right now. Some stealth marketing for Frankie Frico right there. Featuring the voices of the floppy. It was pretty open. To answer your question, Elliot, when this happened in the movie theater, it was when Audrey Plaza got shot, actually, where I was like, oh! I was like, all right! You know, like something's happening. Like I was kind of delighted, but it was like, it was the real classic scene

This was so different and shocking. I mean, when Caesar got shot in the face, that was a little shocking because it had a real pop sound like a Godfather movie pop. You know, like a real... I was like, oh, I remember that guy. I like that guy's movies, you know? Yeah, I mean, the guy who directed maybe the greatest person being shot in the head scene in any movie ever made, you know, that whole sequence. Totally. And then the second greatest guy being shot in the head moment when Mo Green gets killed. Right.

the best. At the end of the same movie. He's really good at shooting people in faces. And he was. It's kind of wasted in this movie to tell you the truth. But that was a move. That was a moment of delight just because of it was the shocking violence. Like I had no idea that that was what was about to happen. So it was kind of like, all right, this thing's a lie. But his, but him talking about his boner just left you cold. Well,

No, I mean, I think the Bonaparte was like, it really happens kind of all at once. There's not a lot of time in between, so I didn't have processing time. Yeah, I was taking a big slurp of my soda and just spit it all over everyone. Speaking of fearing missing this, I knew that there was this line, you know, all I'd heard about was this line about how John Foy had this great line. And the movie is very long. Yeah. Well, it's not that long, but it feels long.

It's like about two hours, a little less than 220, you know. Yeah, okay. It's longer than...

To my mind, the ideal length of a movie which is less than two hours. It's longer than the first movies. It's longer. The important thing is it's longer than my bladder can stand. So all through this movie, I was like, I got to wait out for this John Voight line. And then I finally, like, I'm in physical pain. Like, I have to leave the theater. Were you pinching it with your... No. No.

You were literally pinching your urethra shut with your fingers? Yeah, I was pinching my urethra shut. Like you're trying to control a fire hose? I had to pee so badly. I was hurting. Roman is really rethinking dropping this into the 99 CFE. I thought to myself, surely, surely,

It will not happen at this exact moment. If I run to the restroom, I will not miss this iconic line. And of course, it is exactly when this happens. Oh, no. And then you came back and the audience was rolling on the floor laughing. Well, I mean, fortunately... They were cheering, firing guns into the air, singing All That Sign. Yeah, all that stuff. So I looked up the line. Unfortunately, you know, someone had put most of the scene on TikTok, not the boner line. Like, I saw the rest of the scene that I missed. Leaving a lot of gold on the table.

Well, then in the description, it was like, dude, right before this, the guy said this line about his boner. Yeah.

Because apparently they whipped out their phone. They're like, oh man, I missed the key point, but something else crazy has got to happen with this setup. Because the other thing is it's not a funny line in and of itself. What is funny is that it is appearing in this otherwise serious-minded allegorical movie said by Jon Voight in a scene near what you have to assume is the climax of the film. It is such a – there's something about how it is the least –

eloquent thing I think a character has said in any movie I've seen in years. Yeah. Yeah. What a performance. Okay. So, so as we said, Crassus gets his revenge. The riots are running wild around New Rome, New

appears as like a hologram or something and he gives a speech talking about like time and things like that and calms everybody down and like shows visions of his utopia. Is that correct? Is that what happened? Yes, this scene, so this is the classic, the man of genius comes out and he gives a speech that enthralls the crowd and calms their passions and wins them to side. And the speech he gives is so normative

It's just such vaporware. It's such empty conceptual nonsense, and it does not speak to any of the actual needs that these people have shown up to this point and why they're reacting. It's like, say what you will about Donald Trump, the terrible, terrible person, just an evil, bad man. But when he speaks, he is directly reacting to the needs he feels in the audience members that he is talking to, the ones he wants to appeal to. Whereas Adam Driver, when he's giving the speech, I'm like –

I don't even know. I don't know who you're... I don't know who you're winning over with what with this. And so to see the audience kind of... The crowd be like, you're right. You're right. What a true leader. Yay, platitudes. Yeah. As an audience member in the theater, I was like, I don't understand what he's saying. Like, I don't... This doesn't mean anything to me. And this is another part where I'm just like so... I'm so out with this movie where it's like... Where it's like... It really tries to have it both ways. Like it...

It has great contempt for almost all the rich people, which is fine. Like you can hate all the rich people all you want. The job creators from it? Crassus totally sucks and all the Crassus family sucks. Obviously, it has this exception for Caesar because it was sort of genius. And what it rests on is this idea that you have to serve the people, give the people what they need. But it has contempt.

It's complete contempt for the people. They're just this dumb mass of people that follow Claudio or they're this dumb mass of people that are just like wooed by nonsense language. I mean, there's no actual common people represented at all in the movie. There's no – the only characters we see who come close to being actual on-the-ground people are that one guy who plays the tuba in the marching band in that one scene and the kid who shoots –

Caesar in the face, I guess. But you're right. There's no like – there's no ordinary citizen point of view ever presented in this. A movie where you have to assume hundreds if not thousands of people are killed by a falling satellite that devastates the city. And that is – and that's – like I just watched Life Force recently. And that's a movie that – about a space vampire, about a nude space vampire that sucks the life out of people. And that showed more feeling for the ordinary everyday English person than –

then this movie shows for the people of New Rome, you know? Well, it's ostensible ideas are about like serving people in the public and how to make a society. And society is completely unrepresented in any realistic or meaningful way. They're all just, they're all really just pawns who are like dumbasses who follow Claudio or sort of dumbasses that are wooed by nonsense language. It's just like, it's weird. Like, I totally get that. You can have Shakespeare plays that are all about

Kings and shit. You know, that's fine. Like, you don't, the commoner has to be represented in every media. The tragedies and there was kings and shit. I'm so desperately trying to think of what Shakespeare title I can turn into a pun about another word for shit. But it's just, it's King Smear. No, that doesn't work. What? I said King Smear. King Smear works pretty well. Yeah, yeah. Toilets and Cressida? Does that work? Yeah.

Why did we go down this road of all the roads? Okay, speaking of roads, so Caesar promises these magical floating glowing robes that are all like the Rainbow Road in Super Mario. Claudio's mob turns on him. Crassus is overcome by the glory of Caesar's vision, so he leaves all of his riches to Caesar Catalina.

So that's going to allow him to build this utopia. Mayor Cicero and his family join Caesar on this voyage. They stand upon this glowing bridge. People are all very excited. They're celebrating Caesar.

And he manages to stop time for everyone except for little baby Caesar, Julian Caesar's baby. And let's say that this is a very strange looking shot too. This is a shot from below. They're all like standing on glass or something. They're shooting through it and-

And there's like green screen behind them. This is also, this is such an upsetting moment. I think it's supposed to be a moment of like hope for the future. Like this ability to exist outside of time and be a creative genius is now in their child as well. But it's like time has stopped except for this baby. Who's going to feed this baby? Like who's going to unstop time? Not since Under the Skin have I been more worried about an on-screen child who's being abandoned in front of me.

But the baby is the one stopping time, right? Maybe? It must be because the others are frozen. Because she's the one that's moving in every one. But I thought she – doesn't Julius tell Caesar to stop time? Maybe I'm misremembering it. I don't know. But they're frozen. I mean I think she does, but it doesn't – It's the baby that does it. Well, the baby doesn't know what she's doing. It's very upsetting to me. It's a very upsetting movie. The feeling I get is that they're leaving the future for the next generation.

For the sequel, Megalopolis 2, Babyopolis. My notes then say Pledge Allegiance. Did something happen after this? Was there like a speech or something? There's a title card, and I think it's the narration read by children.

Yes. Oh, yeah. And it's like we pledge allegiance to the human race or something like that. I pulled this up in front of me because I wanted to make sure we had it. Because it meant so much. You printed it out and laminated it. You put it up on the wall. I pledge allegiance to our human family and to all the species that we protect. One earth, indivisible, with long life, education, and justice for all. Is what the kids say. So stick that on a placard in front of your house for the next election about the values in this house. Yeah.

Look, the problem with that is that it comes at the end of Megalopolis. I do like the idea of a pledge that is not a nationalistic sort of just like pledge to a –

It doesn't fit with this movie, which this movie is about. No, no, the movie doesn't really. It's a real Robert Moses viewpoint movie where it's like the people don't know what they want. The people are sheep. They have to be shown by a genius what is best for them. And someone needs to make the decision. It is a movie that I think is the person making it thinks they're making a pro-

pro-equality justice movie, but they are making a, essentially in many ways, a fascist movie about, because there is one man who understands and he needs to take control and you should not question him and eat no matter what he does. And I'm just, and maybe I'm just mad because I realized I should have said Toilets Andronicus because Toilets and Crested is a poem, right? Like it's not a play. No, Toilets and Crested is a play. Is it a play? What am I thinking? What's his epic poem then?

I don't know. I'm less familiar with this poetry. Viewers, Shakespeare, if you're listening, write in and tell us which play you want to have a toilet in. If only we had two English majors on this podcast.

Yeah, I mean, we're getting into the final judgment sort of area, but like that's – there's much that is striking about this movie. There are parts of it that sort of took me sort of in spite of myself. Guys, Toilets and Crested, I was thinking of the poem by Chaucer and then Shakespeare playing it. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So Toilets and Crested will work. Thank you. Okay, let me just amend the scoreboard. Okay, get it out.

On further review, the call against Toyots and Cressida has been overturned. You've crystallized something for me, Elliot. Like the only thing that makes sense to me about this movie as a statement, the only way I can read this is Francis Ford Coppola being like,

geniuses are good and above everyone and they shouldn't be questioned. And maybe I'm one. Because politically. I think you strike that maybe from the record when he's talking. Politically, it's all over the place. It doesn't make any sense. It's not staking out any particular understandable philosophy. It's just a bunch of stuff that happened. Yeah.

So instead of a fable, it should say a bunch of – Megalopolis, a bunch of stuff that happened. Yeah. Which is literally like the fifth chapter in every Dogman book. It's called Chapter 5, a bunch of stuff that happened or a bunch of stuff that happened next. So maybe Francis Ford Coppola should have made that Dogman movie. Stuart, what do you think?

Dog Man, yeah. I think he should have made that movie. Is that where... Are those the guys, the player character race you can play in riffs that have the body of a human but like the head and some of the traits of a dog? Is that Dog Man? I mean, that's kind of like a... What, like a Sinosopholic or Kinosopholic? That's the kind of thing you see sometimes in old tales of the saints. Some of them have dog heads. But no, that's not what Dog... Dog Man is about a... He's a police officer with a dog's head. Oh, that's too bad. We should get into... And it's his best-selling book of...

a series of books for children. We should get into our final judgments. But before we do, I just want to give... Oh, I thought we'd started already. I want to give Stuart some plaudits for how he handled that. That's cool. Anyone else want to give me plaudits? Earlier. All the plaudits. No, I just, you know, I was keeping an eye on time and early on, I'm like, oh man, we're never, this is going to be a four hour episode. But Stuart, you got us through. You have to pass.

The trick is forgetting things like satellites falling on you. But of course, this is where we give our final judgments, whether we thought that Michaelopolis was a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked. Is it a movie where you get some joy out of its badness? No joy to be found in Mudville? Or did we actually like it a bit? I am going to say good bad in the sense that

You so rarely get something this personal and big. Like I kind of, in a weird way, didn't know whether we should do this at first, like until, you know, like we got so many people, you got to do Megalopolis. I want to hear what you say about Megalopolis. But part of me was like, well, I don't want to like take someone down for like a passion. I want to give the masses what they want. I'm a genius. I know better than they do. Well, I feel bad about like taking like a passion project down. Like even if it's misbegotten,

Like I do appreciate the swing, but,

I don't think that this movie is successful and there's large chunks of it that are boring, but I say good, bad in the sense that like, I would not discourage anyone with any curiosity about curiosity about this movie from seeing this movie because it is quite an experience. You know, if you're interested, if you're willing to commit the time, yeah, sure. Watch it. Cause there's going to be some stuff in it. It's going to have you grasping your head and shaking your fist to the heavens. Uh,

So that's what I say. Stuart, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I feel I have less of an issue with, like, targeting passion projects because I feel like passion projects often suffer from a certain amount of, like, great man syndrome and delusion of genius. But I don't know. I feel like this movie would fall somewhere in the, like, between a good-bad movie and almost, like, there's parts of it that are a movie I kind of like. I mean, it's...

I feel like time is going to be kinder to this than at least current critics are. I feel like it reminds me in a lot of ways of either a Neil Breen movie or if Neil Breen had directed the Star Wars prequels because it feels a lot like those movies. Like they're like –

At least it doesn't feel like mass-produced garbage, but it is still kind of like garbage. So I guess that's not a direct answer, but I'm glad this movie exists, and I feel like if you're interested in it, you should check it out. It's a mess.

I feel similar to Stuart. I think it's good, bad with it. There's some things about it that I like that are enough to make it a movie I am glad to have seen, you know, even if I'm never going to watch it again probably. And I feel – I think you're right there. Not with your kids. Well, eventually, eventually. Dad, can we watch Megalopolis? You're not ready yet. You wouldn't understand. No.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get them to watch Metropolis, another kind of politically mushy movie set in the city of the future, and they have no interest, even though that's a great movie. But I think the future film critics will look back on it knowing what it is and being able to pick out the few kind of pearls that are in the morass of sludge rather than us looking at it now expecting something different than it is, which is what we're expecting is a

coherent story with interesting characters. And instead, future generations will be like, well, that was a fascinating capstone to Francis Ford Coppola's career. And now we can look the same way that I just finished reading Patrick McGilligan's biography of Alfred Hitchcock. And in that he's able to treat Hitchcock's later movies, which at the time were considered

and which are certainly not among his best. But now you can look at them and be like, here's the good things in them. Here's the not so good things in them. I think it'll be kind of like that. But at the moment, it's kind of nice to watch this movie now at a moment when you're, it's rare that I see a movie that has this level of production behind it and this level of artistic vision behind it where I'm like,

Like, what? Like, what is he doing? Like, why is he doing that? And that's something – like you're saying, Stuart, in an era of mass-produced casinos made for the people by the mayor, that's something to be at least glad that someone's willing to put their – the shares they sold in their winery where their mouth is. Roman, what do you think? You loved it, right? I think that –

What is it? Like 15 years of watching bad movies has rotted y'all's brain because this is a bad, bad movie. Roman, I've seen things you couldn't imagine. Crap movies glittering off the shoulder of...

Here's the thing. I think this is a bad, bad movie. And I think that if you compare it to other... This is like a false premise of like, it is interesting whereas all like superhero movies are boring. At least this thing exists and it has some kind of vision or whatever. But that is not what you are, what this thing is occupying space of. It is occupying the space of like...

take time to stare at a loved one's face for two hours or something like that. Oh, Roman. Roman, if that's the way you think, you're never going to be able to make it in this business. I was never going to do that. That's the thing. Literally do anything else. Learn a language. I meant to be. Certainly there are better ways to use the limited time you have on Earth, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, if it had...

this vision and was messy and was chaotic and whatever. But it's just like, as you dig into the ideas of the movie, I think those ideas are bad and dangerous ideas. Like, I think that they actually are pernicious, like, that make the world a worse place. That's why I, like, I kind of, I was almost wooed by this idea of, like, the passion project that you don't want to take on and criticize, except for that the passion project is kind of this weird, like,

great man, genius, that this idea of this fake populism of like caring about the people and that even the movie cares about people and serving people but then ignores them, ignores their needs, like that there's this like phony, like kind of Me Too crisis in the middle of this thing that's completely dashed by like facts that exonerate this man. You know, all that sort of stuff. Like if it was...

If the underlying core of this was sort of more benign or innocuous, I would have more charity towards its big swings. But I think that it actually has terrible ideas at its core. I feel like that almost makes it more interesting to this guy. I get that, yeah. And so like if you're like again – In case you're worried that this movie is going to sway people.

I mean, I don't think it is either, but I just feel like it should be held accountable for its dumbness. I would argue it does because he spent so much of his money for a huge flop that is being publicly pilloried. You're saying he owned himself. But you know, and I know this too, because we're all – I'm a little older than you guys are, but like –

you've watched, but thank you. But like, you've watched like really misguided millennials in Gen Z resurrect the, the, the Star Wars prequel trilogy and talk about it's secret genius. And you're like, no, you don't understand. We were there. It's fucking awful. Like you have to, you have to trust us on this. The book is closed on, on that matter. And, and, and,

And you're right. This is going to be resurrected and people are going to find things in it. And it's just going to be just...

That's going to be such an irritating process to witness in 20 years. Because it truly is like of the moment, just to take it in the moment, it is dealing with these ideas of, you know, populism and politics and, you know, like, and greatness and being sort of, you know, great men being sort of like somehow thwarted in their great, you know, like, what's so crazy about the movie is like, with all this crazy stuff that happens, like,

You know, everything is just given to Caesar. Like, he, you know, he has this magic particle that heals his face. Like, the richest man in the world gives him all the money he needs to do his thing. A satellite clears the land for him to build his thing. It's just like, it is...

It is full like this moment of like billionaires and so-called geniuses and bad populism and pretending to serve people like this. These are bad ideas to play with poorly right now. And that's that's that's what I think. That's the part that really like incenses me about it as a movie.

So you've given the passionate swaying the masses speech that the movie fails to be. Yeah, that's fair. I'm one of the dumb masses. I want to follow this guy. Tell me about your utopia, Roman. But I want it to be so much better.

Like, I can deal with all the nonsense of it. In fact, one of the things I think is the most—the miracle of this movie is that I think Adam Driver, at the center of this, comes out pretty unscathed. Yeah. Like, he is—he commits to this nonsense in this way that is almost—

I just don't even know how he does it. Like, you know, he he sounds like he just leans into it, but he's not hammy. It's like that's the part where I'm like, I liked him more coming out of this movie than than not than I ever have. But like it just added to my esteem of him.

Well, it's something that we see a lot in the movies on the podcast is that when you are an actor who's in a movie that doesn't make sense or is not good, you never win points by being openly disdainful of the movie or by acting like you know it is. Like I think one of the things that helps with Adam Driver's performance is when he's saying nonsense or he's doing things that doesn't make sense, he is still acting as if the things that he's doing make sense and are rational and coherent. And I think you're right. He comes out of it – I mean I feel like there's –

most of the main performers in this come out pretty well. They're goofy and stuff, but I'm just surprised like how he comes out. Like there's a lesson in here with like watching him and maybe that's worth watching, which is like,

even in life or in a movie or as a piece of art or whatever, just lean in and do the thing. You will be cooler if you just do it rather than try to resist. Well, that's also like, from what I understand from hearing people talk about it, like he had a much better sort of experience on the movie because he leaned into the working process of the movie. And I understand that like, you know,

If you don't want to lean into that, that's fine because it sounds like this was not a good working experience for a lot of people. If you don't want to be like told to do something different every single moment in the difference of a couple of suddenly kiss you. Or harass. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not necessarily making an argument to ignore that, but I am saying that he seemed to embrace like

okay, like as an artistic thing, I'm going to roll with this and be like collaborative and like really like commit to it. And that's probably part of why he does come out feeling like he. I mean, we also, I don't think we need to get into it, but I'm sure there was also an element of Francis Ford Coppola probably treating him better than he treated other people, you know, because he's the star that he identifies with.

True, true. And he loved 65. So he saw that and he was like, you were shooting dinosaurs. No, no, Francis, those weren't real dinosaurs. He's like, I saw that movie you made where you got away from that comet that hit the earth with the dinosaurs. So I'm having a satellite hit the city. Let's see if you can get away from that one. And then Francis Kripal is watching his own movie. He's like, son of a bitch did it again. He got away from another thing falling out of the sky. Like...

And Adam Driver's like, Francis, you made this movie. Like, you knew it was going to happen. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know how you did it. It doesn't seem like my movie. Yeah, I mean, my movies are good. This one, I don't know. I mean, what if it was like Severance, where when he went to set, he had a different personality than when he left set? Probably. After the break, more from the Flophouse.

Thank you.

If someone's lurking around, agents see them in real time, talk to them directly, set off your spotlights, even call the police before they've had a chance to break in. This time of year in particular, with packages coming to the house for the holidays, I am glad that there are eyes on my house making sure nothing untoward happens.

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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. My favorite part of the holidays is that the kids are around and they consent to playing board games with me. We play like Wingspan and Settlers of Catan, and we often play very rousing games of Codenames. Family games are what makes me feel happy and cozy. How do you stay cozy during the winter months? For some, wrapping up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate or watching a movie with your family is the best way to spend the month of December.

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Visit betterhelp.com slash invisible today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash invisible. Let's answer a couple of questions from listeners. This one is from Nilo, last name withheld. This is from FF Coppola. Or perhaps Nilo, I don't know. But they write, intergalactic greetings, floppers.

I have a gigantic projector built in space capable of projecting a movie onto the moon. What should I show on it? And of course, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is from the earth to the moon. You want to see that.

moon man get, you know, a rocket in his eye. Yep. Yeah, everybody's gagging for it. Everyone wants that. They'll look up and be like, oh. Finally, the real moon's going to get the just desserts that the full moon got. Finally, the stand-up and cheer moment of the year. But what else? A moon fall, maybe? I was going to say Akira for that scene when Tetsuo blows up part of the moon. I mean, so I'm going to think about this a little more practically. We don't have sound, right? Because it's just being projected on the moon. Yeah, Akira works perfect.

You have to tune your radio to a certain frequency. Oh, maybe, yeah. I'm trying to think of something that would be kind of like that the visuals would pull all of humanity together as one shared family once it's projected on the moon. One Week by Buster Keaton. Mm-hmm.

I don't know. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, you're basically talking about the biggest movie in the park that you can imagine for the summertime. And so it's going to be like Toy Story. Yeah. I don't think it's going to work. Worst things you can go with in Toy Story. No, but it's going to be some Pixar movie that you can bring all the kids to and then, and that's it. Well, listen, I wanted to be family friendly because if my kids are out looking at the moon, I don't want them seeing something that they shouldn't see. Yeah. Yeah.

What shouldn't they see? It's on the list. I mean, I don't think they're ready for Akira. Well, when are your kids going to be ready for Akira? Daddy, daddy, why is Tetsuo expanding into a techno-organic mass? Why is he crushing Kaori when he's trying to love her? One of these crimes of the future. So, Dan, that's your vote is crimes of the future? Yeah.

What were you saying, Roman? Sorry. I said, I saw Paris is Burning and Lincoln Center outside, and that was a lovely experience. So, you know, that could be one that you could do. That'd be great. I like it. This second and final letter is from Anne-Marie, who writes, Hey, y'all. And this is clearly in response to our recent break into Flop TV episode.

episode we had. Tickets and season tickets available now for Flop TV season two. I wanted to add an additional theory about how someone could dance on the ceiling. A few years ago, I played dancing on the ceiling for my then four-year-old niece, and she said it was her favorite song. I showed her the music video, and she kept asking, how did he do that? And then posited that he had sticky stuff on the ceiling so he could stick to it like a bug.

So there's another. Yeah, that's how bugs stick to things. Alternative. That's a good theory. Well, it's not really. I don't think it's really how they stick to stuff. That's how it works in Inception too, right? Is Chrissy Nolan just smeared sticky stuff all over the ceiling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt bounced off of it? Yeah. So was there a question there, Dan? No. It was just sharing an idea. It was just a charming tale of a child's imagination. Yeah.

Sort of like, you know, ET. I guess that's not imagination, but it sparks imagination. Anyway. I mean, I love old special effects are great. The greatest special effect of all time is Kermit riding a bike. It'll never be beaten. It'll be the greatest. Like.

Like that's the thing that's wowed me the most for all my life. There's also a scene, a woman goes from nice looking to evil looking in camera in a movie called The Octopus in a way that uses makeup that only shows up on certain colors of light and they had to gel their movement from the light. Oh, that's cool. And that effect, it's from a movie from the 30s and the effect looks amazing. Yeah, I still think the best special effect is that scene where the guy falls over in the movie The Gate and he turns into a bunch of little guys. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.

And also there's the moment in Throne of Blood when Shiro Mufuni gets an arrow through the neck and I'm always like, did they really kill him? Um...

On that note of credulity, let's move on. Actually, Elliot, I just checked. Tashir Mifune's dead. Oh, no. They did it. Officer, arrest Akira Kurosawa. We've solved the cold case. Let us move on to our final segment, our final regular segment of the show, which is... Dan, I'm looking as you scan through your letterbox. I see Dick's the musical on there. That scene with Nathan Lane spitting lunch

lunch meat on those puppets. Isn't that great? I appreciate the spirit of Dix the Musical. I didn't enjoy it as much as I think you did. So why are you recommending it, Dan? I'm not. Again, I haven't even introduced the segment. I'm just looking over Dan's shoulder. We're recommending movies that we have seen of late or just like that might be a better use of your time

Then say Megalopolis, take Roman's advice, either stare at your loved one's face or watch one of these. Just stare at their face for the full runtime of Megalopolis, which is like two hours and 18 minutes. And they'll be like, what are you doing? Can you stop that? Is Megalopolis showing on my face? I recently just, I just rewatched Lost Highway, which I hadn't seen since around the time it was new. David Lynch's Lost Highway. Yeah.

And, you know, because I'd seen it when it was new, it kind of had never struck me like, oh, how much this is a dry run for Mulholland Drive. Which is not to say it's not valuable in its own right, but it's like, oh, okay, like you're revisiting so many of the themes. I didn't even think about that of sort of, you know, Lynch's films are...

I think it's a bad idea to try and just decode them. But if you're going to go down that road, like there's a lot about sort of... Is that road Mulholland Drive? Yeah. Disassociation after...

sort of a horrible event, trying to make sense of your life through these sort of fantasies. Lost Highway was his first trip down that Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive. And you're going to want to go down Lost Highway. You're going to take a turn onto Mulholland Drive. Yeah. It's going to get you to the Inland Empire. Yep. If you want to see Bill Pullman just wail on a saxophone as well. Yes. That's your best chance.

I don't know. Some would say your only chance. There's not much to say about it. I mean, if you like Lynch and you haven't seen it, that's strange. If you haven't watched it, if you're not a Lynch person, maybe it's not going to be a start. What if you're like a huge Robert Blake fan? Yeah, but not as movies, more as personal life. Not his eyebrows. I love Robert Blake. I just hate when he has hair below his forehead. Is there a movie for me? Is there a movie for you?

Anyway. That's one of those movies – I feel like Lost Highway is the opposite of Megalopolis in that it is a movie that when it came out, I remember the reviews were like, what? Scathing. They were scathing because it had a nonlinear, not totally rational plot. But you watch it now and you're like, oh, now I know what Lynch does. I understand what he's doing. Honestly, the fact that film reviewers saw it at the time and weren't like, oh, it's a David Lynch movie. I have to watch it through David Lynch glasses. Yeah.

I don't know if I ever told this story, but I remember seeing it at the very small independent theater in my hometown. And it was a late screening, and we got out, and I was driving my friends home, and I remember...

you know, driving up to a red light, the light turned green and then it turned red again. And I had just sat there the whole time because my brain was processing what I just watched. Yeah, a lot. Let's go in the same order we did our Judgment Store. What do you have? Okay, I'm going to recommend a movie I saw a couple weeks back. I saw Anora, the new Sean Baker movie. It's a, I guess, a offbeat comedy love story.

about a young sex worker who marries the son of an oligarch in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It's a very New York movie in that way. There's a scene where they fucking go to Tatiana's in Brighton Beach. And I was like, whoa, I go there. And yeah, I mean, it has- Yeah, I'm like a Nora. Yeah.

It, yeah, I mean, I feel like it really captures the like rush and craziness of like love and hope and also like hoping against the crushing power of capitalism and shittiness. And then of course, it's things start to, you know, come back to earth and things get a little bit rough. It's got, you know, an incredible central performance by Mikey Madison as the title character. Yeah, I think, I thought it was great. I love it.

Yeah, check it out. Cool. I'm also going to recommend an offbeat comedy romance, but not the same one. This is a... I'm going to recommend the movie You and Me from 1938. This is a movie directed by Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis, the movie I mentioned earlier, but it's a very different movie than Metropolis. And...

So Sylvia Sidney is a woman who works at a department store, and the department store makes a point of hiring ex-convicts to give them a second chance at life. And George Raft is one of those ex-convicts, and they fall in love. She doesn't want him to know she's also an ex-convict because when you're on parole, you're not allowed to fall in love, and you're not allowed to get married. And so she has to hide from him that she is also a convict and that the –

repercussions of that involve him getting back involved in crime and it's a surprisingly sweet movie for a movie about criminals directed by Fritz Lang and it also has some musical numbers in it with some of the music written by Kurt Weill so it's a like it's a it's a real strange movie it's this kind of sad

somewhat anti-capitalist romance drama comedy crime movie with Sylvia Sidney and George Raft. But I really loved it. I really enjoyed it. It's the kind of movie that you could crank out in the 30s because they were making so many movies that sometimes one of these popped out where it was like,

this is kind of a stranger movie than it had any right to be. It could have been a pretty down the middle movie, but there's some great scenes in it. And, you know, Sylvia Sidney's been on my mind since there's that new Beetlejuice movie. She's not in the new one, but, you know, since she was in the old one, you know. So that's you and me.

Play Juno. Yeah. I was having a hard time thinking of what to recommend, but I think the one I'd settle on is Hearts of Darkness of Filmmakers Apocalypse, which is the documentary Eleanor Coppola made.

of Francis Ford Coppola making Apocalypse Now. One of the things that ends the movie, Megalopolis, at the very end, it says for Eleanor, which is sort of like this moment where I'm feeling like kind of seething...

for this thing. And then there's a sweet moment of their long-term relationship and how she was such a gifted filmmaker as evidenced by this piece that did like make me think, okay, he did what he wanted to. It's all okay. I, you know, like, and that was a nice sort of like homage to her. But she was an extremely good documentary filmmaker and

um, it made me appreciate Apocalypse Now so much more. It gave you so much insight into, to making a movie. It's just like, has so much drama. It's so fascinating. I, I really love Hearts of Darkness. I, I saw it as a kid. Well, not a kid. I guess I was pretty soon after it came out. I guess I was 15 or 16. And, um,

Hearts of Darkness, not Apocalypse Now. I had not seen Apocalypse Now. I caught this like on HBO or something. And then I saw it afterward. I'd kind of heard about Apocalypse Now. And it just... It gave me the blueprint for appreciating another sort of like good mess of a movie. You know, that's a... I think that's a good mess, Apocalypse Now, in a lot of ways. But I...

I love this. It's one of the reasons why I love documentaries. I think it's just expertly and beautifully made. I think I also saw it before I saw Apocalypse Now. I saw it with my college girlfriend. We were at her house in Cleveland and we went to like, it was just like young film buffs and we're like, what arty thing can we get? We'll get this. I know it's a good documentary and it is a testament to it. Like even...

Without having seen the movie, I'm like, this is fascinating in its own right. And then it gets richer once you've seen the film. Or like most people, you've probably seen Apocalypse Now first and then catch up. Well, I mean, it's weird. I mean, I think people take things in a lot differently now. And like you never know. But I think this movie is great. I think it's actually better than Apocalypse Now. But that's my own flavor. That to me is not defensible. That's just taste. You know, that's...

That's just a personal choice. Dan, there are people who saw Spaceballs before Star Wars. People watch things in all sorts of crazy orders, you know. Yeah. These days. I thought you were about to mention a documentary about the making of Spaceballs. That would be fascinating. There are people who see May the Schwartz Be With You, a filmmaker's journey. That's not what Balls of Fury was? Yeah. How'd they rig up that bit where Rick Moranis goes flying through the... It's not a much documentary to find out. Was that real? Yeah.

Did they kill Rick Moranis? Did they kill Rick Moranis in that moment? All right. Well, we should wrap this up with a big thank you. No, I want to see. Sorry, now I want to see a comedy sketch and a show where they're like, okay, they're talking to the lead actor on a movie set and they're like, we saved this last stunt to the end of the shooting because you're going to die when you do it. The only way to get the shot is to kill you while you do it. Okay, that's why we shot all your scenes ahead of time. So I don't know if that's a good idea.

No, it's okay. We shot the rest of the movie already. We shot it already. We're done. We're wrapped on that. So this is your last thing you have to do. We'll be covered. Before we say goodbye, I want to just say thank you to Roman for being on this episode. We all know how busy you are, and so we're always charmed when you make time for our shenanigans. Delighted. Longtime fan and supporter. I'm so happy to be here. It makes me very, very happy.

What were you going to say, Elliot? If you want more shenanigans like this, just tune into the 99% Invisible Breakdown, The Power Broker. Exactly the same. It's exactly like this show. It's just like it. Yeah. Just cutting it up. Yeah.

Before we go, thank you to our producer, Alex Smith. He goes by the name HowlDotty on the internet. He does music. He does Twitch streams. He does a lot of stuff. Look him up. Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun. If you go to MaximumFun.org, there are a lot of great other podcasts you can listen to about culture, about comedy. You'll find something you like. But that's it for this episode. For The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalin. I'm Roman Mars. I'm going to take that again. I'm Roman Mars. That's it. What a professional. Bye. Professionalism undone. Roman's like, let me make sure I say that the right way. And then Stuart's like, ooh. On this episode, we discuss Megalopolis. Megalopolis.

Do you want me to have one? Do you want me to do one? No, I'll just start it over again. Stuart, you leaned in like you had one. So I didn't say anything. We're embarrassing ourselves in front of Roman. Okay. No, no, no. Roman knows we're cool. This is the whole experience. You can listen and subscribe to The Flophouse wherever you get your podcasts. And after all that, if you still somehow want to watch Megalopolis, it's now available on VOD. Hey, everybody. It's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard...

I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, and

So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Be warned that once you pick up a refreshingly cold drink from McDonald's...

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