Megalopolis: the cut starts with the script shock
On Kingdom of Dreams, the conversation around editing Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis begins before the first assembly: with the jolt of reading the script. That first reaction is not a bug in the process. It is information the cut will have to metabolize.
When a script arrives already strange, the editor's job is not to sand it into something familiar. It is to find the version of that strangeness that an audience can enter without losing the risk that made the pages electric.
Listen for how that first read becomes a compass later, when scenes multiply and the easier choice would be to explain the movie instead of letting it happen.
Go deeper on Kingdom of Dreams
- → EP 162: Editing Coppola's Megalopolis
- → EP 14: Craig Wood on Pirates of the Caribbean
- → EP 29: Richard Francis-Bruce on Se7en and The Rock
Browse more editor conversations in the Kingdom of Dreams archive.
Original Kingdom of Dreams craft take based on our conversation about editing Coppola's Megalopolis (EP 162).