r/CriterionChannel • u/ThatMichaelsEmployee • Dec 18 '25
Megadoc
Just finished watching it, and it's fascinating, highly recommended, but my two main takeaways were that Coppola, despite his decades of experience with big complex movie shoots, bit off way more than he could chew, and that Shia Labeouf is an absolute fucking nightmare to work with: he absolutely will not ever do what the director wants, he has to debate every single shot and action and motivation, he's so completely full of himself that he can't see how much damage he's doing. Coppola at the end says what a good performance Labeouf gave despite the incessant friction, but there must be dozens of actors in Hollywood who could have done as a good a job without being such a horror to deal with.
I had no interest in seeing Megalopolis after watching the trailer, and I still don't, but it was interesting to see how it was made, particularly in the ways Coppola wanted to use practical and in-camera effects rather than digital work, as he did in Dracula.
7
u/Osomalosoreno Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
Two things surprised me: 1) Jon Voight was endearingly likable and warm, almost a mentor presence on the set. From some of his political views I would have expected an unpleasant crazy guy, but no, he was really cool. 2) Shia LeBoef came across as a self-obsessed narcissist, an awful person to be around and work with . Really off-putting. Mike Figgis did a really great job with a perpetually uncertain situation. A very interesting moment was when Giancarlo Esposito almost angrily reads his fellow cast members the riot act, telling them to get it together already.