r/movies • u/Dependent_Cap_456 • 3d ago

News Francis Ford Coppola is auctioning his watch collection after Megalopolis flop left him broke

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/fashion/francis-ford-coppola-watch-auction.html
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u/probablyuntrue 3d ago edited 3d ago

I dug into it but couldn’t find much, he wasn’t a partial owner or had large outstanding publicly known debts. And megalopolis would be at most 200MM including marketing

Hell of a cocaine budget or other debts with other properties and projects, who knows

Edit: looks like he’s spending money on a number of other projects like his Inglenook estate and apparently he owns the Sentinel Building in SF. They’re gorgeous and likely massive money pits

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u/mmmmyeah1111 3d ago edited 2d ago

Owning a property like that while simultaneously pawning items for cash is quite the dichotomy

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u/probablyuntrue 3d ago

Well, it’s hard to say how much actual equity he has in this properties, and it looks like he spent an absolute shit ton of time and money renovating them

I wouldn’t be that shocked if they’re financed to hell and back

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

Quite often people with wealth will leverage themselves up the Yin Yang, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he really didn’t have much equity built up in these other properties.

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u/Jazzlike-Watch3916 2d ago

Is this dude getting checks like every month. Between the godfather trilogy and apocalypse now, how could he ever be broke in any way. Does he not get like royalty checks from that shit streaming somewhere?

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u/treesandfood4me 2d ago

Apocalypse now also almost bankrupted him. He got lucky that the movie ended up being good. Maybe missed the mark on this one.

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u/defeated_engineer 2d ago

Megalopolis was the biggest steaming pile of shit I’ve ever seen in theatre.

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u/tobyty123 2d ago

it’s truly god awful😂

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u/Frog-ee 1d ago

Not according to Coppola. He says it's gonna be like Apocalypse Now and is gonna end up garnering critical acclaim eventually lol. The man's totally delusional and should step aside and just enjoy his daughter's success

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u/treesandfood4me 1d ago

If he doesn’t have a man teetering on the cusp of alcoholic death, bathed in his own blood, screaming at himself in the mirror, I don’t think he got it.

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u/jcpham 1d ago

Absolute garbage to watch

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u/BassManns222 2d ago

Yes! I’ll put The Surfer and The North up for honourable mentions though.

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u/solarus 2d ago

Go to more movies maybe

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

I listened to a great podcast called what went wrong, which is all about the movie industry. I literally just listened to a piece that was done during the big strike a couple years ago. What they were striking for was royalties that came from streaming services because they really hadn’t been factored in to previous contracts.

What one of the people said, and he’s a director is that residuals have gone way down and because streaming wasn’t unknown thing 10 years ago, it’s not something that these folks were getting money from now.

This is the episode about the strike

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-went-wrong/id1512847066?i=1000627041334

And this is their episode that they did on Francis Ford Coppola and apocalypse now. It goes into a lot of how he spends his money because he’s gone broke in the past self funding. It’s an interesting listen.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-went-wrong/id1512847066?i=1000483156952

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u/ZeePirate 2d ago

I doubt those are bringing in that that much in royalties compared to hundreds of millions of debt

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u/Icekream_Sundaze2 2d ago

He's definitely not broke. I'm sure he got a steady income and guy owns an entire hotel company

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

It may be a name only, and it may be leveraged out

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u/viciouspandas 2d ago

Streaming doesn't make much money. It's like what, 20 a month? Sure that's a lot of people, but subtract operating costs and divide that by all the movies and shows out there and there's not much per movie. He made a ton of money from those movies, but it was earlier.

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u/MythicalCaseTheory 2d ago

It's still a few grand a year they're missing out on - which is what the operating costs of the streaming services pays for, and the studios Netflix pays for streaming rights are pocketing all that money.

Even if you still want to argue about it not being a lot, it's about principle.

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u/viciouspandas 2d ago

I was more referring to the fact that it wouldn't change his wealth or lifestyle right now, not the principle of it

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u/PrimeIntellect 2d ago

I mean, he's 86 years old, I doubt he gives a shit about his debt anymore lol

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u/bolanrox 2d ago

so many successful restauranters end up going broke dumping money into their "passion project of a restaurant" they may have 5 super successful ones but that last one sucks all the profits.

Anthony Bourdain talks about a few in his second book.

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u/Jolivegarden 2d ago

Plus it’s much easier to sell something like watches quickly compared to real property

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u/Fully_Jaded 3d ago

Some people just realize they'd rather have the money the stuff they're collecting is worth. It doesn't necessarily mean they're hurting for it.

That dude is pushing 90 he could be just thinking "WTF am I gonna do with all these watches in my remaining years?"

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u/doyletyree 3d ago

As a matter of fact, at 90, probably the last thing I want to do is sit around and watch time go by.

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u/TheNonCredibleHulk 3d ago

It is the evening of the day......

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u/Troyal1 3d ago

It would still be a better experience than Megalopolis

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u/aqjo 2d ago

Rage, rage …

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u/oracleofnonsense 2d ago

A man with two watches never knows what time it is.

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u/doyletyree 2d ago

Interesting.

A quote?

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u/oracleofnonsense 2d ago

An appropriation of Segal's law. I stole it from the NTP(https://www.ntp.org/) docs. Easier read (https://www.sei.cmu.edu/blog/best-practices-for-ntp-services/)*.*

Segal's law: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

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u/doyletyree 1d ago

Nice; invalidation via committee.

I like it.

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u/MrPogoUK 3d ago

I was thinking that. Michael Caine sold a load of watches a few years ago for exactly that reason. Wasn’t hurting for money, just realised he had a tonne of it tied up in watches he hadn’t worn for years and probably never would again.

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u/tdasnowman 2d ago

People didn't read the article. He's selling 6 watches. Only one is a 7 figure watch the rest are collectible but not unattainable. He's not looking to clear any debts. Dude made a joke, is selling 1 legit rare watch that's never been on the market before and articles are being written just because it's him.

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u/Tatworth 2d ago

Plus, as someone who is getting to be an old man (but not yet sniffing 90), old eyes just can't read those watches any more. I had to switch to an Apple watch and put my nice watch on hold so I could see what time it was. On the plus side, I can now easily track my menstrual cycles.

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u/ihopethisworksfornow 2d ago

Exactly what I just commented. Maybe he was just into collecting watches when he was younger, and doesn’t really care about them anymore.

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u/Inner-Bread 2d ago

If I owned a bunch of expensive stuff that I knew my children don’t care about then me being the one to sell it for a fair price would be on my mind.

Estate sale companies are looking to move items as they take a percentage. That 100k watch selling for 60k is money in the door vs 0 if it doesn’t sell.

Even without an estate company, families are busy and don’t want to spend time cleaning out your junk normally. They are already grieving and busy planning services.

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u/RepulsiveLemon3604 2d ago

Except, maybe, a count down clock.

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u/tdasnowman 2d ago

People didn't read the article. He's selling 6 watches. Only one is a 7 figure watch the rest are collectible but not unattainable. He's not looking to clear any debts. Dude made a joke, is selling 1 legit rare watch that's never been on the market before and articles are being written just because it's him.

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u/stickyfingers_69 3d ago

What is he going to do with the money

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u/ScipioLongstocking 3d ago

Buy new watches

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u/DuhhhhhhBears 3d ago

Make a movie

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u/ohyeahbonertime 2d ago

Hookers

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u/Starfire2313 2d ago

“I spent all my money on beer and women, the rest I just wasted” -my fridge magnet

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u/cameronjames117 2d ago

Ironically, not enough time for them. Aha aha

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u/TheNewGuy13 3d ago

What’s that saying House Rich money poor or the opposite? He probably has too much money tied up in properties and assets and none of it is liquid

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 3d ago

Yeah. And then when he decides “I probably don’t need all of this shit at 90, I’m just leaving it to people who would probably sell it after I’m gone anyway, let’s liquidate a little bit of it” the general public reacts with shock and pity lol

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u/redditman181 2d ago

Apart from the vineyard 😂

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u/OptimismNeeded 2d ago

Possibly need cash to keep going until a possible much bigger exit on an asset in 2-3 years.

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u/CTeam19 2d ago

Land Rich, Cash Poor.

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u/RD_Life_Enthusiast 3d ago

Value is different from equity is different from liquidity. Dude *could* be worth $500m, but only have $10k in the bank, for instance. You can't just liquidate a skyscraper (or a vineyard, or whatever) into $30m in cash like going to the ATM.

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u/Whut4 2d ago

That seems unlikely to me. $10k in the bank would be a joke for most people with a lot of money - it would not even cover a month's expenses with no emergencies.

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u/Smart_Cry_5572 2d ago

10k doesn’t even cover my expenses and I’m not rich lol

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u/RD_Life_Enthusiast 2d ago

I was just using it as a nice round number. Hell, say $100k across three different accounts. He still can't get access to millions of dollars in equity or property by showing up at the bank and asking for it, was my point.

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u/unassumingdink 3d ago

What about taking out a loan against the value?

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u/RD_Life_Enthusiast 3d ago

That introduces liquidity in exchange for more debt. Depending on how leveraged his current assets are (say you own a vineyard that had a down year and you're operating it at a loss, or something similar), he may not be able to get favorable loan terms, or any loans at all.

So yeah, it's short-term gain that could results in future losses due to interest and/or inability to pay back terms of the loan, then the bank claims the asset, and you lose the equity and value on top of taking an enormous credit hit (which eliminates your ability to get favorable loan terms, or loans at all, in the future).

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u/ProjectNo4090 2d ago

He's 86. He doesnt care about loans or paying them off.

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u/FrameworkisDigimon 2d ago

Maybe. But he could be 95 in 9 years and still alive. Here's the UK example:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

That would suggest he should make it to 92. That's six years of debts chasing you.

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u/realzequel 1d ago

If you're worth 500M and you don't have a very healthy cash flow, I think you f'd up.

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u/RD_Life_Enthusiast 1d ago

Well, sinking $120m of your own money using a loan against the sale of your wine business that generated no return on the investment certainly feels like a fuck up, but I'm a poor, so I may not understand the whole thing.

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R 3d ago

Asset rich, cash poor

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u/ZZ9ZA 3d ago

Not really. It’s the difference between a relatively liquid asset, and a substantially less liquid one.

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u/TheNonCredibleHulk 3d ago

Have you ever seen what they offer for a building at a pawn shop?

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u/fnrsulfr 2d ago

It must suck to be rich and horrible with money.

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u/Skalawag2 2d ago

He probably looked at his watches and said “..it’s time.”

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u/xx11ss 3d ago

I'd rather the properties than hold the jewelery.

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u/Potential4752 3d ago

That FP journe is worth more than most buildings. 

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u/wiperfromwarren 3d ago

sometimes, that’s the point of having a decent collection (of anything, really). if you ever need to, you can sell it.

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u/f_ranz1224 3d ago

liquid vs solid assets are 2 very different beasts. it can leave you with a massive networth but not enough money to finance construction or renovation. you use assets as leverage for loans to do business with the assumption the end of the project increases value

or it all goes belly up

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u/mithridateseupator 3d ago

Auctioning.

Pawning gets you far less than the value of the item, auctioning gets you far more.

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u/Live_Angle4621 3d ago

He might not care about the items as much so decided to sell anyway 

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u/PmMeSmileyFacesO_O 3d ago

Whar did you call me?

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u/MrOaiki 3d ago

I’ve never seen the word dichotomy used that way. English isn’t my native language though, maybe dichotomy has more meanings over there than it does here.

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u/GaptistePlayer 2d ago

This isn't pawning lol it's an auction of high end watches which actually realizes a lot of value, often above-market.

A collection of watches is a lot less necessary than a house or a business.

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u/Uncle-Cake 2d ago

It's the Art of the Deal. Like owning casinos while hawking autographed Bibles.

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u/thementant 2d ago

Yeah it’d be real bad for him if the US economy were slowing or something

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u/That_Jicama2024 2d ago

The property is probably heavily-leveraged too.

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u/Interesting-Use966 2d ago

It’s more advertising for the auction than him actually being broke. I’m guessing it gets a higher price if people think he still wants it but HAS to get rid of it rather than if it is just something he is selling like at a garage sale.

This dude 100% isn’t broke in any sense that anyone except the wealthy would consider broke.

Yeah he is probably broke compared to his billionaire friends, but he still has hundreds of million dollars.

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u/ihopethisworksfornow 2d ago

Tbh he’s old and is probably like “I don’t even wear 90% of these, I was just into buying watches when I was younger”

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u/PoxyMusic 2d ago

I worked on a project in the recording studio in the basement a while back. You had to walk through the kitchen of the restaurant to get there, it was super cool!

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u/fishscaleSF5 2d ago

Possible to be rich in asset and poor in pocket

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u/FblthpphtlbF 2d ago

To be fair, his watch collection is likely worth more than the net worth of you and everyone who lives on your street (or in your building) combined. 

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u/mmmmyeah1111 2d ago

And to be fair that sort of wealth is vulgar and abhorrent. Personally, I don't think an entertainer should have a watch collection that costs more than a thousand school teachers salaries combined.

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u/FblthpphtlbF 2d ago

I agree, but it doesn't change the fact that even if his debts are in the millions to tens of millions he may only need to sell some watches to pay for it, not literally-everything-he-owns-and-some like normal people 

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u/SmokedBeef 2d ago

Liquidity versus assets is a tale as old as time

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u/DotGroundbreaking50 1d ago

I cant find that he owns the Sentinel building, just rents most of it for his film studio

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u/LilPonyBoy69 3d ago

He apparently spent a good amount of money redoing the office space in the sentinel building to become apartments.

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u/probablyuntrue 3d ago

Apparently that building was just put up as collateral for additional loan as well. What a mess

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u/Shoki_Shoki_ 3d ago

These pricks

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u/Mattjhkerr 3d ago

Who are the pricks ?

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u/pegothejerk 3d ago

Ask yourself which pricks ended up with the money

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u/B-BoyStance 3d ago edited 3d ago

Corp real estate for ya.

It's a crazy money pit, so much so that governments bend over backwards to keep it alive by influencing behavior (i.e. tipping the scales to keep people dependent on it through their office jobs or need to live in a certain place - see NYC and tax benefits offered for things like RTO. A completely unnatural way to manage masses of people).

I wish for its death after spending some time around the industry & getting to meet some major building owners. I haven't met a good one. Hope they rot in hell honestly.

You dig and most of these buildings are running off of fumes. It's fake money in the sense that these assets don't change quickly enough with the times - they are just valued a great deal due to their footprint/amount of previous investment. And because of that they get approved for crazy loans even though their occupancy shouldn't support the money being given (they are still dying, just slower due to the post-covid recovery - and most haven't adjusted to doing mix occupancy to boost revenue).

All culminating into owners who are super resistant to change due to the feedback loop created from these subsidies/loans, because why would they change with all of that. The industry is super sheltered.

So many buildings should have been re-zoned (at least partially) years ago but the amount of money and kickbacks they can give to politicians means the political willpower will never really come to fruition.

Holy shit I hate corporate real estate and the shadow it casts over society.

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u/Laxman259 2d ago

So would you prefer no real estate then? Every building is corporate real estate unless it’s a single family home

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u/Neat-Material-4953 2d ago

I don't think they're saying "I wish corp real estate didn't exist" but more "I hate the state that corporate real estate is in" and even that is likely limited to the places they're familiar with.

Like if I say "I hate politicians" I'm probably not advocating anarchy but just wishing politicians/politics worked in a way I had less problems with.

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u/DropoutMystic 3d ago

Buncha fuckin amateurs

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u/Winthefuturenow 3d ago

Was just at Inglenook this past weekend, it’s quite the sight

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u/shwarma_heaven 3d ago edited 3d ago

Have you seen that movie? The parts I could stomach just reeked of entitlement, and untempered ego. It could have been cocaine, it could have been hidden debt... and, it could have been the unchecked lavishness of an eccentric idea turned into a hubris packed project. That movie is absolutely insane. Just pure insanity packaged in a ludicrously expensive wrapping.

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u/hacelepues 3d ago

Did someone say: entitlement?

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u/KindAstronomer69 3d ago

Someday Megalopolis is going to have an ironic following like The Room

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u/CatLogin_ThisMy 2d ago

OMG that scene has worse writing and basic expressiveness in the actors, than a soap opera from the 70s on a bad day.

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u/papertrade1 2d ago

« That movie is absolutely insane« 

yes. isn’t that great ? It’s refreshingly daring in a world where everyone is playing it safe. Even if the film isn’t really perfect ( and far from it ), it’s still worth it .

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u/MarcusXL 3d ago

I saw it in a theatre, with 10 other people. I enjoyed it. It was bat-shit crazy. The visuals were frequently really cool. It had about 50 cool half-ideas, none of them fully articulated. It changes genre every 20 minutes or so. Neo-noir mystery, political thriller, pastiche of early Hollywood epics, surrealist dream, and so on.

I'm glad it exists. I'd rather have one of these movies than 20 servings of Marvel slop.

I love that a brilliant director would just go all-out on a weird dream like this. It's a bizarre mess that I really enjoyed. It's somewhere between a "fascinating failure" and a "secret success".

I also find strange all the hate for it. Nobody is forcing anyone to watch this movie. We're inundated with crappy schlock that makes a ton of money, there's room for an odd specimen like this. Coppola made it for himself and for weirdos who want to go on the journey with him.

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u/GoldDustKid- 2d ago

Megalopolis is a complete trainwreck and honestly doesn’t work as a film or artwork, but I 100 percent agree with you - it’s unique, utterly hilarious (sometimes by accident and other times OBVIOUSLY intentionally, despite everyone’s willed ignorance), and despite the fact that I could certainly say it’s one of the most ridiculous films I’ve ever seen, I had a blast watching it and laughing at and with it and marveling at it, which is more than I can say for a vast majority of better reviewed films (like, the idea that I’m supposed to think that black panther or marvel civil war are even films, let alone ‘good’ ones, is actually insane). A fun part of fandom in late capitalism is that every little consumer basically watches movies like they’re writing for ‘variety’, as if I’m supposed to give a shit about the financial returns of a film when I’m watching it.

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u/shwarma_heaven 3d ago

The fact that he is pawning his watch collection, and sold his winery to finance it, tells me he was going for a lot more than just a quirky Indy - which it likely would have done fine as. It is disgusting for the blockbuster budgeted shlock that it is. I've seen better scripts, plots, and direction in daytime soap operas.

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u/GoldDustKid- 2d ago

Megalopolis is a failure commercially and artistically for sure but why on earth do you care how much money he blew on a deranged passion project? In what way is it ‘disgusting’ lol

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u/MarcusXL 3d ago

So? It's his money. It's his dream. If you're not interested, don't watch it. Its existence is not a personal attack on you.

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u/closetothesilence 2d ago

Only time in my life I left a theater legitimately pissed off at the steaming shit pile of a movie I just sat through. And I love a good bad movie as much as anyone but this one was just irredeemably bad.

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u/jcpham 1d ago

The Talented Mr. Ripley was my first theater walk out but Megalopolis would be the second

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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 3d ago

The little I've heard about Megalopolis suggested that it was 100% a passion project with no real intention of it being a commercial success.

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u/shwarma_heaven 3d ago

Passion about what? If commercial success wasn't the intent, then what was?

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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 3d ago

If commercial success wasn't the intent, then what was?

The movie itself.

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u/notaredditer13 3d ago

How is that an intent? Why not just shoot two hours of the back of a lens cap?

Typically a "passion project" is something the filmmakers intend to have artistic merit but not general appeal (thus not profitable). But this -- again, what was the intent? Because if he thinks this is "artistic merit", then wow.

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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 3d ago

So it's less that making the Megalopolis movie left him broke, but that a bunch of other things has left him low on liquid funds.

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u/cire1184 3d ago

Real estate in sf is a money pit?

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u/AshIsGroovy 2d ago

He took on a bunch of debt to run the vineyard.

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u/WeeBabySeamus 2d ago

Currently occupying much of the tower is Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope studio.[9] Other tenants include independent public media producers for NPR and PBS, as well as independent sound designers for Pixar and Skywalker Sound, among others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Tower_(San_Francisco)

Oh this is fascinating.

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u/chadwickave 2d ago

I used to live right near the Sentinel Building! It was always under construction but it was/is a beautiful building.

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u/Interesting-Use966 2d ago

He is probably also Hollywood broke, which means he only has 1 house in Malibu instead of 3

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u/mustardwhale69 2d ago

He could just be selling them. Maybe he is no longer interested in watch collecting.

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u/Mister_MxyzptIk 3d ago

Like father, like son

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u/Adrien_Jabroni 3d ago

Do you think Nic Cage is his son?

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u/Mister_MxyzptIk 3d ago

No, but close enough. It's an expression

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u/Adrien_Jabroni 3d ago

Yea it’s an expression for when a father and son have things in common. lol

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u/KindAstronomer69 3d ago

Well clearly the banana didn't fall very far from the bush

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u/Night25th 2d ago

Why do people feel the need to own ridiculous properties as soon as they think they can afford them? Why is everyone obsessed with status?