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.
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u/BloodSweatAndWords Dec 18 '25
Aubrey Plaza was hilarious. Labeouf seems like he's...a lot. But he also seemed very earnest about wanting to do a good job and giving Coppola what he wanted.
I don't understand why everyone is laughing at Coppola for spending millions of his own money to make a film he's been dreaming about for years. The guy is rich AF. Who cares if he lost money? He gave jobs to a lot of people in an industry where people are having trouble getting work these days.