STACK #239 September 2024

FEATURE CINEMA

“I don’t care. I never cared,” the filmmaker said when he met the press at the Cannes Film Festival a few months ago following unfavourable reviews. It wouldn’t be the first time that the director has been slammed down only to be vindicated. Just like he was 45 years ago with Apocalypse Now (1979), which would go on to win Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or. Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as ambitious architect and inventor Cesar Catilina, who hopes to use his discovery of a powerful “miracle” material, Megalon, to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster. Originally conceiving the idea for Megalopolis in the early 1980s after being inspired by the historian Sallust, he was compelled to make a film drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the future of the United States by setting the events Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t care what you think about his wildly ambitious self financed sci-fi drama, Megalopolis . Words Gill Pringle MEGALOPOLIS

R ising to fame as a member of the fabled Brat Pack in the '80s, starring in films Blame it on Rio (1984), St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), and About Last Night (1986), Demi catapulted to superstardom with her sexy role opposite Patrick Swayze in Ghost , the highest-grossing film of 1990. Now 61 years old, in The Substance she has a delicious role in which she proves game for poking fun at Hollywood’s obsession with youth. As Elisabeth Sparkle, she plays the star of an aerobics show who is promptly fired on her 50th birthday because of her age, instantly replaced by Margaret Qualley’s Sue. Returning home, Sparkle’s morale is at its lowest when she receives an unexpected proposal. A mysterious laboratory offers her a miraculous "substance": if she injects this black market drug, she will become "the best version" of herself, "younger, more beautiful, more perfect”. However, one can only spend a week at a time in this version of themselves - or consequences arise. What could possibly go wrong? Written and directed by French feminist filmmaker Coralie Fargeat - who took home the 'Best Screenplay' award at Cannes - she says she needed two powerful actresses to play “two faces of the same coin,” and to handle the film’s physical and symbolic demands. “This is a film about how women's bodies are scrutinised, fantasised about, criticised in the public space,” she says. “About how much, as women, we are led to believe that we have no choice but to be perfect/sexy/smiling/thin/young/beautiful to be valued in society. But it was Fargeat’s 40th birthday that inspired The Substance . “When I was about to turn 40, I started to feel very depressed because I thought, 'OK this is the end. The end of my life. I won't be able to please anymore, I won't be able to be valued, loved, noticed, interesting…' I was led to believe that my life was over… I studied political science; I am a feminist... and yet this sh-t had still found a way to permeate my brain. “So I decided to write this film. To confront this. And to make a political statement to the world: we should be done with this sh-t.” This year marks the long-overdue comeback of one of Hollywood’s most beloved actresses, Demi Moore. Words Gill Pringle THE SUBSTANCE

of the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC in modern New York while pointing a finger at the roots of fascism. In the summer of 2001, he held table reads in New York where Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Leo DiCaprio, Uma Thurman, James Gandolfini, and Russell Crowe were some of the actors who participated, and the film went into pre production. But, just months later, the tragedy of September 11 happened and work came to a halt. Coppola said he could barely consider making a film about the possibility of utopia in New York when everything had become so tragic and uncertain. The years passed with more script readings and workshops, but it was a combination of Coppola turning 80 followed by the pandemic that provided the impetus for him to fully develop the project.

The Substance is in cinemas September 20.

Megalopolis is in cinemas September 27.

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