Francis Ford Coppola commenced filming his long-gestating passion project, Megalopolis, in Atlanta in November. Among the sprawling ensemble cast are Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza, who is sporting blonde hair for a character called “Wow Wee”. I’m sure that name isn’t an indication of anything about the movie, which Coppola is spending his own money on because no one would finance it, I’m sure, another indicator of nothing. More filmmakers should put their money where their mouths are when it comes to passion projects, but at the same time, when everyone is like, “I don’t know…” maybe, just maybe, there’s something to it. Food for thought.

 

Anyway, with the hairstyle and fur cape, Plaza makes a surprisingly good Hitchcock blonde. She’s an iconic brunette, so the blonde hair was jarring at first, but she is rocking it. I wonder if she’ll be blonde for Agatha: Coven of Chaos? It’s also filming in Atlanta right now. Driver, meanwhile, is all bundled up. It’s unseasonably cold in the South and going to get worse all week, and I really feel for Plaza having to do this scene without a coat. I truly believe half of acting is just pretending like you’re not cold in any given moment.

I’m not sure where Plaza’s and Driver’s characters fall in the ensemble, but Megalopolis is supposedly about a woman torn between her classicist father and contemporary lover, and all this has something to do with ancient Rome. Again, I’m sure this is 100% going to work out, and I KNOW Coppola made The Godfather and The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now, literally some of the most important and vital films in the American canon, not to mention the second-tier films like The Outsiders and The Cotton Club and Peggy Sue Got Married and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, all of which would be god-tier for anyone else who DIDN’T also direct The Godfather. But let’s not pretend like the last 25 years have been equally productive. It’s not even the draw down on the amount of work Coppola has done, it’s the quality of that work, which is, er, not what it once was. Will Megalopolis be a return to form? Maybe. Either way, it’s interesting to see what Coppola does with all that wine money.