Francis Ford Coppola Defends Spending Fortune on ‘Megalopolis’ Instead of His Family

Francis Ford Coppola’s confounding epic Megalopolis finally debuted this week at the Cannes Film Festival, and the beloved, iconic director behind The Godfather franchise has been dropping bon mots left and right.

He’s 85 years old, after all, and who wouldn’t expect him to be a little quirky? Megalopolis, meanwhile, is reportedly so bizarre that it’s prompting trauma bonds between critics.

Megalopolis is a go-for-broke passion project that reportedly cost Coppola $120 million of his own money, prompting Cannes reporters to pepper him with questions about money at a press conference on Friday.

“One of the reasons why I’ve had the line of credit that I did to be able to do this is because in 2008—you remember that financial crisis—I borrowed in those days $20 million to build a winery [where] children could do something while their parents were drinking the wine,” Coppola explained, making a reference to his forays into the wine business that one of his grandchildren, Gia Coppola, has followed him into.

“This absurd risk of $20 million created a place that now every winery tries to duplicate,” Coppola said. His Sonoma County winery was directly influenced by gardens in Tivoli, he said.

“So I just took the money from that, that I wouldn’t have had had I not taken the risk, and I put the risk into [Megalopolis],” Coppola, who was accused this week of attempting to kiss scantily clad actresses performing in Megalopolis nightclub scenes, continued. “So I have no problems with the financial... also, another thing, my children, without exception, Sofia, Roman, they have wonderful careers without a fortune, they don’t need a fortune,” Coppola said, prompting titters from the audience.

Sofia Coppola is, of course, 53 years old and an Academy Award-winning filmmaker in her own right who hardly still needs handouts from her father (one would hope).

“So no matter what happens... we’re fine,” the elder Coppola said at Cannes. “It doesn’t matter. You know, all of you, the money doesn’t matter. What’s important are friends,” later adding, “When I die, I won’t notice it.”

‘Megalopolis’: Francis Ford Coppola’s Opus Is the Laughingstock Everyone Feared

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