"Baffled" First Reaction on Script of Coppola's 'Megalopolis'

0:00Guest 1Because one of the things that I think Francis did, it made it was a, it wasn't an easy read because he only gave you, and much like the film is, you only get these little snippets of all these characters. You don't get an actual plot line that you could sit there and map out on a piece of paper and go, "This happens, and then this happens, and this happens, and it..." It kind of a lot of things are all sorta happening at once. And so he doesn't, and he didn't want to make it too obvious what was happening so that you would keep the mystery going, but it made it very... It was a hard read. It definitely... I had to read it, every time I got the script, I had to read it twice and mark it up the second time.

0:40Guest 2Yeah.

0:40Guest 1Kind of follow it and go, "Okay, he's cut this out now. Oh, he's moved this over here. Okay, we have a new character. Oh, we've cut a whole character." You know, it was a, it was a real thing to follow and…

0:59Jawad MirI spoke to Glen a couple of months ago about Bram Stoker's Dracula, also directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which has become one of our most viewed conversations in our, on our podcast. Didn't realize there was such a big fan base for Dracula. But…

1:16Guest 1I neither.

1:18Jawad MirBut, you know, I saw Megalopolis trailer when it came out, and then I tried to watch it at TIFF here. They didn't have any press screenings, and then I went to see it a couple of days ago. And it was an interesting experience because I'm still trying to digest it, and I still think…

1:40Guest 2Absolutely.

1:40Jawad MirI'm, I'm, I'm just being honest, right?

1:43Guest 2Yeah, hey, welcome to the club.

1:46Jawad MirAnd I thought the second half was easy to grasp and get digest, maybe because you get used to it, but the first half wasn't. So but aside from that, visually, performance-wise, just things that have never been done before, it was quite mesmerizing, sometimes hypnotic almost, to be embedded into that world that you have never seen before.

2:15Guest 2Nice. That's…

2:16Guest 1That's what was amazing

2:17Guest 2... Compliment.

2:18Guest 1Yeah.

2:18Guest 2Yeah.

2:20Jawad MirSorry, go ahead, Bruce.

2:21Guest 1That's what Francis wanted to create his own world and have you go into it, and when I've told people to go see it, I say, "You just have to sit down and accept from the very beginning of the narration. Just go with it, and don't look at New York as being New York or, you know, anything else. Just go with what they're saying and follow that, and it will take you off onto a fable," which is what he calls it.

2:48Jawad MirYeah. My, I, when I came back from the movie, my wife asked me, "So how was it?" Right? And I said, my words were, "It was interesting because it was a combination of the Roman Empire, plus what's going on in the United States right now, plus Shakespeare, plus..." It was just, you know, a combination of things done in a very creative way. So which brings me to talking to both of you guys about the editing because, not that editing doesn't play a part in any other film, but I think in this film, it played a huge part because just the way it was completely unconventional. So just talk to me about, you know, the process of working on a film like this, whoever wants to take the lead and then follow up after that.

3:33Guest 1Go ahead, Cam.

3:34Guest 2Well, I f… I think if we perhaps start about just talking about the dailies and how…

3:40Jawad MirSure

3:41Guest 2... We kind of, you know, became familiar with the material. And, you know, Glen pop in whenever, but I, you know, we had set up at this hotel that Francis had purchased in old days inn, which is a whole other story, which we can kind of follow up with later. But they, y… you know, his team, Mas and Robbie built a, some, you know, makeshift edit suites and a project every day, and Glen, you know, in the morning, they get the footage. Our wonderful assistants, Gretchen, primarily and Dana, with the help of some other people, would get us going, and we'd watch the footage. And then Glen and I would kind of talk over, like, a commentary as we watch the material come in and sort of dissect s… scenes and talk about things, and we, that's where we kinda got to know each other really in sort of our, you know, impressions of the material and how you wanna cut a scene.

4:52Guest 2'Cause we both wanted to keep up with the material individually, but at the same time discuss it obviously. So we wanted to be very familiar, with, Francis's shooting and the, all the takes. And at the end of each morning, he and I would sort of embark and go and cut, the scene or scenes that we had that day, and sometimes we would discuss, "Okay, well, I think there's a path that we could take. There's, you know, this path, or you could go, take another path." And we would just go off, and then at night, Francis would come back with Roman, his son, who was shooting a lot of second unit, and we'd watch the footage again. And we'd get this time now Francis's, Francis's impression of the material, and that was always fascinating because sometimes you read it completely different from the director. And then that night or the next morning, we kinda go and take his notes and feedback and adjust stuff, and we kinda repeat that for the next seven months.

6:00Guest 1And that was what was cool, was when I first asked Francis, I said, "Well, how do you want us to do this?" He said, "Well, you guys just figure it out." And so we both looked at each other and said, "Yeah, we both wanna cut everything so we know it." And so that, exactly as Cam described it, that's what we sorta did. But it was really great 'cause at night when he would watch it with you, he didn't have to say much to tell, give you an idea of which way he was thinking you should go. But also it was really great for us to, like, have spent the whole day cutting it, and then watching it a second time in dailies on a big screen, because then all of a sudden you'd say, "Oh, shit, that's the piece I was looking for that ma… would make my cut better." And so you would kinda... It was really great 'cause then often you'd go back even the same night and just go for 15 minutes and go grab those four shots that you saw again in dailies the second time and went, "Yeah, these gotta go in the, my cut, my cut," you know? And that made it, that was really great. I enjoyed... I haven't watched dailies with a director in, God, 10, 15 years 'cause now all they wanna do is, there's some, they shoot normally, Francis didn't, 'cause he had a single camera with a second camera, but not oft… often did he really shoot anything more than two cameras.

7:11Guest 1So these days most directors shoot three or four cameras all the time, and all they wanna do is go back into their hotel room, you know, jump in their underwear and order dinner and watch dailies by themselves and race through everything, 'cause there's so much to look at. So we were able to look at everything with Francis for the most part, which was brilliant. Very unusual these days.

7:33Guest 2Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's quite a luxury.

7:37Guest 1It was.

7:38Guest 2Yeah.

7:38Jawad MirSo you guy… you guys have been spoiled pretty much now.

7:42Guest 1Yeah.

7:42Guest 2Yeah, I mean, it, you always kinda go from one project to the next and you hope to continue certain, you know, traditions or adjustments and bring them along and, but that's one that might be hard to kind of carry on with, but…

7:58Jawad MirRight

7:58Guest 2... It w… it w… it felt sort of sacred, you know, to sit there with Francis and watch his footage.

8:08Jawad Mir100%. You know, you look at, again, I, you look at Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, he's been around for what, 54 years now? You know, since making movies, since he's been recognized as a director. I'm sure he did stuff before that. But, you know, you see The Godfather, you have these establishing shots, very kinda calm approach. Apocalypse Now, similar. Dracula was a little bit different, but still had that calmness to it. This film was very different bec… I just felt like it's, I think it's a huge thing for someone at the age of 85, to be able to put together a film like this with keeping in mind the attention span of people nowadays, and how it kinda goes from scene to scene and shot to shot. I just thought that was, that was one of the things that I really admired about the film, aside from the, you know, whatever else was there, was the fact that he was able to figure out... And I do think in about 10, 15 years, this film will be appreciated, 100%.

9:10Jawad MirMaybe I will probably appreciate it more than I did the first time. But it's just a, it's just a comment that I might, wanted to make. But aside from that, was, the cut that you guys did, was it very similar to the script or was there a lot of modifications and changes? Because again, it's a very unconventional film, so I'm just trying to understand how that sort of took place between the script and the post-production.

9:35Guest 1Well, I'll just start to say that really when you first assemble a film, you know, you're sorta, as an editor, sorta obligated to cut it all together in order the way that it is in the script, just so the director can see what he shot. And I always say you always wanna take a piece of every angle that he shot and somehow get it in there, even if it might be too many cuts in the end, because you wanna be able to remember and see all the angles and kinda 3D the world that he was creating by different camera angles. So, you know, the first time you cut it together, you're sorta obligated to put everything in, but immediately you wanna start taking stuff out when you see it's not working or doesn't need to be there. But you sorta can't do that, and that's, again, one of the reasons why I think Cam and I both said, "You know, we're better off if we both cut the, all the dailies to, you know, ourselves so that we get a chance, one, to see it all, but also because i… if you only cut half the film and the other editor's cutting the other half, you would have time to go back in and keep refining your cuts.

10:42Guest 1But if that would start to mean you'd start losing stuff, you'd start getting rid of lines and, you know, bad setups or whatever, and that can be a real mistake to a director when they walk in and go, "What happened?" But any comments, Cam?

10:56Guest 2Yeah. No, I agree completely, and also because I'm sort of used to working with directors in recent years where they're screening material maybe not every day, or, like, I should say cuts rather than material, but more on the weekends, and they're getting a sense of how the film's sort of coming together, and therefore you can kind of jump to the next process of, you know, like Glenn says, removing lines and jumping scenes. But in this situation, Francis didn't wanna really see anything other than the material and watch it with us. So you kinda did have to live with certain things. But we were always constantly building alt scenes and cuts of things just to have them on hand, so when he did wanna get into, you know, you know, developing more of the story, we were already a little bit ahead of him, I think. And, you know, especially with the material that was more experimental and theatrical. For example, the Shakespeare scene.

11:59Guest 2You know, Francis sh… shot that More as, I wouldn't say a throwaway thing, but it was more of a warming up the day and Adam and him kind of getting loose, and it's something that invariably ended up in the movie as, you know, the movie…

12:19Guest 1'Cause they actually shot it in two places

12:21Guest 2... S… started to ask for these things.

12:24Guest 1Yeah.

12:24Jawad MirRight. Yeah

12:24Guest 1'Cause they shot it in two places. They shot it first, on the, in that scene where it is, but then they also shot it when he got up on the ledge and stopped time. There was also that whole section…

12:36Guest 2Yeah

12:36Guest 1... Where he did the same speech.

12:39Guest 2Yeah.

12:40Guest 1So that was kind of interesting. Same thing, two places. But ultimately what we did, I thought this was cool too, was when Francis finally finished, we just sat down and rolled both... And Cam and I had talked a lot, but we hadn't watched each other's cuts, partially just to kinda keep yourself virgin and keeping you in your own head and going the way you wanna go. And it was really fun to sit down and give Francis two options on each scene, just like we'd play a scene, and then play another one. And we made it so you didn't really know whose it was. We kinda, I kept switching it up, saying, "Well, I'll play Cam's first, then I'll play mine. Next time I might play mine, then Cam's." And so I don't think Francis really even understood. He knew there were two cuts. He just sort of, "I like that one. Okay, I like that one. I like that." And we went through and built…

13:29Guest 2Yeah

13:29Guest 1... A new assembly out of our two cuts, and it was... I think that was, I would've thought, if I was a director, I would've thought that was great because you instantly see two different editors' takes on your scene. So that was kinda cool.

13:44Guest 2Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

13:45Jawad MirI'm so glad you guys, I'm so glad you guys did that because I always talk about this, that, you know, if you, if a, if five directors got a script and they were told to go make a movie, whether it was a short or a feature, how each of those would interpret it. And in a similar way, two editors interpreting a scene, and I think that is something that should become more common because it's for the greater good of the film, right? You're br… bringing different perspectives in. Not one is better or right or wrong than the other. It's just that there are two, someone will have a completely different approach to a scene versus somebody else, and they may both work together, or they just, one may work. So I think that's a really cool exercise.

14:21Guest 1And also, Fran… Francis would remember the other cut. He w… he was, you know, 'cause he shot... I always say that, like, a director sits on the set, and it's like, you know, molasses to watch all the different setups happen and the takes happen over the course of a day. Editors just sort of see it in a, you know, a one-and-a-half-hour blitz of watching dailies, and it's like, "Oh, wow," you know? But they have really watched it slowly evolve. And so he'll remember sh… he would remember shots and go, "Oh, you know, in that other cut there was a blah, and let's put that in." So there was a lot of, even going back into the different versions and going, "Oh yeah, let's clip out that bit and put it in now that we've also assembled them."

15:03Guest 2Yeah. Yeah.

15:03Jawad MirPretty impressive for his, a 85-year-old director, like, to, for him to remember that. That's really awesome.

15:09Guest 2I mean, I, Francis can run circles around a lot of people who are much younger, I would say.

15:14Guest 1He has amazing memory.

15:14Guest 2Yeah. Like, he is pretty fit in that respect.

15:19Guest 1Very sharp. Still very sharp.

15:22Guest 2Yeah.

15:22Guest 1Amazing.

15:24Jawad MirThat's awesome. So when you guys were... Okay. A… again, I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I'm just curious. You know, you're hired to edit this film, Francis Ford Coppola's film, big star cast, everything, and as an individual yourself, as an audience, you start putting it together as time passes by after dailies after dailies, and you have, like, a scene or a chapter or two chapters, and you start watching it. Did it ever occur to you guys, each of you separately, like, where is this going? Is this something that's gonna be appreciated by audience? Anybody gonna watch this? Just, you know, as an audience member.

16:04Guest 2Yeah. I mean, I mean, personally, I remember reading the script, to be candid, and being somewhat baffled by it, and even to the point where, you know, there was a long period of time in sort of the gestation period before the shoot, and Glenn had been getting scripts well before, like years and years and years. So he's been a part of this for much longer. But, you know…

16:31Jawad MirRight

16:31Guest 2... Working with Francis and sending him notes, because he would send the script out to a lot of people, but you know, you'd spend a lot of time considering, where to, you know, give him a note and where to kinda wait and see how things go. But obviously it's like a roadmap in a way, and at certain points in the process it was like, you know, I don't know how this is all gonna come together, but I have faith in Francis, and I have faith in the process. And so to get to the point of shooting the material, you know, it was always an endeavor. And as we were building it, and because it took so many turns tonally, and, you know, I think when we got to shooting, the script was actually pretty locked in for, you know, day to day with the exception of, you know, something that would come up on set or a location issue. But when we got the material, it was kind of like as scripted. But then of course it, I think it changed a ton in the edit.

17:36Guest 1Totally

17:36Guest 2... And yeah.

17:39Guest 1Yeah, 'cause one of the things that I think Francis did, it made it was a, it wasn't an easy read because he only gave you And much like the film is, you only get these little snippets of all these characters. You don't get an actual plot line that you could sit there and map out on a piece of paper and go, "This happens, and then this happens, and this happens." And it kind of, a lot of things are all sorta happening at once. And so he doesn't, and he didn't want to make it too obvious what was happening so that you would keep the mystery going, but it made it very... It was a hard read. It definitely... I've, I've had to read it, every time I got the script, I had to read it twice and mark it up the second time.

18:20Jawad MirYeah.

18:20Guest 1Kind of follow it and go, "Okay, he's cut this out now. Oh, he's moved this over here. Okay, we have a new character. Oh, we've cut a whole character." You know? It was a, it was a real thing to follow. And about a year before he got into pre-production, he called me up and said, "Hey, can you take the first three pages and just go to YouTube and set up the scene of this movie? 'Cause every time I try to explain it to somebody, they don't get it." And I was like, "Oh, well, how do you do…" You know? And so I read the first three pages, and it had the stuff about the satellite, the Russian satellite, and it had stuff about the mayor and the, and the Black mayor that had just gotten elected, and it had stuff about the trash not being picked up and the city in debt, and it had all this stuff about Caesar being, having won the Nobel Prize and developed Megalon. And it was all kind of like little bullet, almost like bullet points. Might have only been two pages, just bullet points of what was going on and, to set the scene. And I remember just, like, going to YouTube, going, "Oh, fuck.

19:22Guest 1How do I try to create Megalon?" And I found, it's actually the woman scientist that he had also been talking to pre, I didn't realize it, but she had done stuff with s… silk, building silk kind of structures using, you know, silkworms to create their own, you know, s… solid material or, you know, stringy material, and then wrapping it into shape. And she did these beautiful things in an art gallery that were, like, 15 feet high, and they were still growing as there was, the silkworms were still eating. So I grabbed that off of YouTube. I grabbed a guy that, I didn't know it was gonna be, Adam at the time. I think that was e… before they got Adam. It was gonna be somebody else. But I grabbed somebody that was getting a Nobel Prize and put that in, and just, and got some old satellite footage and just stuck this whole thing together, and he showed that for a long time to a lot of people, including a class that he sort of taught that summer, where they went through and did some readings through the script.

20:24Guest 1And he kept, he sa… he told me later, he goes, "I showed that to everybody just to, like, so I didn't have to keep explaining it. They could just watch this three-minute, four-minute thing that I created." It was really funny. So that was just a, an intro to how he was still kinda creating it and changing things around pretty close to the spring, the following spring, when he did start really locking it down, and then pulled one big character out and gave some of that character's attributes to, Shia's character. And that actually really glued the film together, I think. When Shia took over being the banker that, another character had been in the script, that really, I think, m… made it a much more cohesive... And again, what you were saying about the second half, because you know what's going on with Shia as well as Wow, you start to feel that it's closing in around, th… Hamilton Krass as his character.

21:24Guest 1And so you get to know, y… you feel like there, y… you know, there's a plot developing. Whereas in the first half, there's sort of, like, four plots developing. And they all sort of come together, partially because of some changes he made in the script, which I thought were great, in the spring.

21:40Jawad MirYeah, I think, I was gonna say Shia's character, and his performance were probably for me, the standout part of the entire film. Like, he really carried, even though it was Adam Driver's film, it was, it was him who kind of just gave it a little bit of more, you know, like you said, cohesive, I guess. But, yeah, again, I mean, I have to watch it again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait for it to come on…

22:08Jawad Mir... Streaming or v… DVD and watch it again. But Cam, I've already spoken to Glenn about, you know, how he got connected with Francis Ford Coppola. Tell me your story about coming onto this project and how it all sort of unfolded.

22:25Guest 2Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. I had worked with Guillermo del Toro for a while, and Francis had seen Nightmare Alley, which he liked, and he knew Francis, or sorry, he knew Guillermo from a sort of a production that never kind of happened, but, The Count of Monte Cristo, and so there was some familiarity there. And I happened to be in Los Angeles, and y… yeah, I got that, like, call from the agent saying, you know, "You'll never guess who wants to meet you." Would've never guessed it would've been Francis. But I was exhilarated, just even the thought of just to go meet the guy and talk to him, and, you know, he's such a, iconic filmmaker and a master that just to have a cup of coffee and walk away would've been enough, let alone walk down this path, of Megalopolis with everyone.

23:30Guest 2So yeah, I met with him, and, you know, I thought I'd be there for an hour, and it turned into five, and, we just got along. And he didn't even offer me the job. He just said, you know, "Give me your cellphone." And I was like, "Okay, I guess that's a good sign." And then…... We just, he texted me and emailed me, a… asking about casting and whatnot. So it just sort of, like, naturally unfolded. And, when he, when he hired me, he's like, "I work with many editors." And I said, "Okay," like, "I look forward to that." And, Yeah. And then Glenn and I met in Georgia, and we hit it off, and, you know, like he… Glenn's my brother, on this journey for sure. So I feel very fortunate to have had this experience. That's kinda it.

24:28Jawad MirNo, that's, that's really cool. The one-hour turned to five-hour. And it's always about the personalities, right? Like, if they click, the work is always has to be good too, but if the personalities don't match, then that doesn't mean anything. Glenn…

24:41Guest 2Yeah

24:41Jawad Mir... Was there, was there a reason for two editors? Was that just Francis' vision? Or h… what was, what was the story behind that?

24:49Guest 1Well, if you really look at all of Francis' movies, they all have multiple editors, and, a very few don't. There's a couple. Conversation, Walter, I think, is the only editor on that. There's a few that Barry Malkin did. But generally, they have multiple editors because he likes to see other, you know, viewpoints and wants to see different ways stuff gets cut together. And, you know, it's a lot like, you know, there's multiple scriptwriters on any movie, even though one may get the credit. It's the same kinda thing. You just sorta need different perspectives to help push along, especially if you wanna move it along a little faster than you might just…

25:33Guest 1... Do on your own with one editor. If you s… have another editor, you could kinda send them off on different, you know, tasks or directions. Take this scene and try this. And when he first, we first actually started cutting the movie with Francis, he gave us half the movie. Put, Cam on the first half, and I went to the second half. And so for a number, about two months probably, we each just worked on one half of the movie, but we always screened it together, and we'd always talk about it. But, we screened it on a weekly basis. That, I think, was another kinda cool thing 'cause I think it pushed the film along pretty fast when Francis first got into his, quote, "director's cut." we screened it every Saturday night, for, wasn't it, like, 10 weeks or something, Cam? I think something like that.

26:23Guest 2Yep.

26:24Guest 1And that really pushed it along. I kept thinking at the end of every week, and Cam can talk about this too, but at the end of every week, you'd see a real progression of the film. You wouldn't just see... You know, 'cause sometimes you can just sorta just nibble at scenes and tighten 'em up and do stuff, but not really do things, not move a scene around or cut it in half or do something for a while. But Francis was right on it and ready to start. And it dropped minutes every time we'd s… from one screening, one Saturday night screening to the next. It was dropping five, 10 minutes at a time. And it was really great to see because you got heartened by the fact... 'Cause the first time you assembly is usually too long. It has, because it has everything in it.

27:11Guest 2Yeah.

27:11Guest 1There were prob… I don't know. Was it three and a half hours or something? It wasn't three.

27:15Guest 2I think it was, it was like, I remember the first one being close to four, and it was almost…

27:20Guest 1Yeah

27:20Guest 2... Unwatchable.

27:22Guest 1Yeah. Maybe…

27:23Guest 2But we watched it.

27:24Guest 1Madison Square Garden…

27:25Guest 2But it quickly... Yeah

27:26Guest 1... Was probably 25 minutes at that point.

27:28Guest 2Yeah.

27:29Guest 1Everything.

27:29Guest 2It quickly dropped, like Glenn said, e… every week. And we would screen it. But, you know, Francis, has a lot of what he calls apprentices, young kids that he hired in around Georgia and, near Atlanta, and they would participate in the screening. But, you know, after Glenn and I would just kinda bounce and leave and let Francis sort of curate the discussion. But it was more helpful just to watch it with a group of people and then h… hit the week, coming up with

28:03Guest 1Oh, man

28:03Guest 2... Our own opinions of it, so.

28:05Guest 1Yeah, and also 'cause he would, every Fr… Monday morning, would have a whole slew of notes that he had gathered from watching it with these kids and making his own judgments. And so we always were like at, out of the gate on Monday morning. We never sat there and went, "Okay, what are we gonna do today?" It was like, "Whoa, here come the notes." You know? Start attacking.

28:26Guest 2Yeah.

28:27Jawad MirThat's, that's so cool. I, the reason I asked about the additional editor, because normally with films, the editor comes on board second one because the first one has to go, or the film has gotten extended or whatever. But this is really co… I didn't know that's the reason Francis has multiple editors, so that's, that's really cool. You know, the director's cut you mentioned, how long was that? Just out of curiosity.

28:52Guest 2I mean, i… i… in a project like this, I think director's cut is, it was always evolving. So i… it's sort of like there was an assembly that, you know, we had this sort of…

29:01Jawad MirRight

29:01Guest 2... Quote-unquote, "bake-off," of selecting scenes and which ones to use. But e… eventually, you know, i… it was just a process for Francis because he hadn't seen cut scenes until he, you know, stopped shooting. So it was just a matter of like, "Oh, this has gotta go. This has gotta, like, be dealt with," so.

29:23Jawad MirRight.

29:24Guest 2It…

29:26Guest 1But I think it got down to…

29:27Guest 2I th… you know, it was, it was always a director's cut.

29:30Guest 1Yeah. 'Cause we didn't have a, we didn't have a studio, which was what s… was so great. One of the things I've always thought and said to myself is, God, if you can work with directors that have final cut, you're so much better off than having to deal with studio notes. 'Cause studio notes can be good, but a… and they can help a di… a director find there's footing if they're a little loose in some places. But, generally, it's a, it's the no vote at studios. It's like one studio person will say, "I don't like this. I hate this. I hate that." And then you start mashing a film and just sort of flattening it, and you don't get the valleys and peaks that is what makes a great director a great director. And so, that was the great thing, is there was no studio to, tell Francis he needs to shorten Madison Square Garden or whatever they might have said, which would've been wrong.

30:27Jawad MirYeah. It…

30:28Guest 2Right, which makes the film so singular and, yeah

30:31Jawad MirSorry, go on, Cam

30:31Guest 2You know. I was just gonna say that which makes the film so singular and unique and, you know, you're watching this film and, you know, Caesar has a lot of qualities that are like Francis's, and there's, you know, this... I think there's a lot of biography in the film, and I think you're at times really walking through this director's brain while you're watching the film, and you're, you're having this, watching this conversation go on between the audience and him. And not to say, like, it's some swan song piece or he's saying goodbye, but there's a lot of, you know, homage to other films in the picture, which might not be totally evident. But y… and there's also just lots of personal things that he's working through and as an artist, which makes it beautiful 'cause he took a massive, bold leap and a lot of risks to make this film that you would be up against, like Glenn was saying, in a studio system.

31:32Guest 2So it clearly makes it a unique project and unique film…

31:37Guest 1Absolutely

31:37Guest 2... In that respect.

31:40Guest 1Absolutely.

31:41Guest 2Yeah.

31:41Jawad MirYeah, no, 100%. You know, I… Glenn, you and I talked about this, that how, when we screened Dracula, like, you know, you guys went through the process and everything, and he's like, you know, he got studio notes, and it was like a fiasco for him, what was not working, what was working. And then I saw his interview with somebody, I don't know who it was, recently. It was about Megalopolis, but he talked about The Godfather II, that how when he first did a screening in San Francisco, how people didn't like it because... He couldn't figure it out. Then he went underneath his bed for, like, couple of hours, and it hit him that the time periods between the past and the present were too short. They were 10 minutes each. So when he extended that to almost 20 minutes, it just worked. With this film, was there any moment like that? Like, "Oh, it didn't work. Something is not working out," or, "How is this gonna happen?" Or, "How are we gonna deal with it?" Even though there was no studio involved, just on that level.

32:42Guest 1One thing that, Cam and I had also done, the one thing Francis did wanna see was kind of like, you know, a reel of just, you know, a fun reel to show people what the film was kind of looking like, and we m… we created this thing that was about 10 minutes long. And the first thing we put in there was Caesar walking off the edge and stopping time. And I think one of the first big breakthroughs was after Francis... And he'd watched this, you know, promo reel that we did. He probably watched it 100 times with, you know, 50 different people. And about f… I don't know, was it three or four weeks into editing when he f… when he said, "You know what we gotta do? We gotta take..." That scene was originally, like, scene 17, I think, in the script. It happened after the buildings had actually fallen down, in which Julia sees Caesar stop time. And one of the first big things that Francis did that was really great, that just changed the caliber, was to take that scene of him walking off the le… or walking up to the ledge and putting it in the beginning of the movie.

33:50Guest 1It changed every time. I can remember when we watched it that way, it was just like, oh yeah, this sets up the movie… ... He's making, telling you right off the bat, we're gonna stop time. You know, we're gonna have some wild stuff happen in this movie. Did… didn't you think, Cam, isn't that one of the first things that w… was really a great change?

34:10Guest 2Yeah. I recall working with him on the weekend, and he said, "All my movies have these memorable openings, and this movie right now in its current state..." You know, it was, it was working as far as, like, a documentary style, newsy kind of thing. But he's like, "I want there to be a punch. I want there to be, like, this show-stopping moment." And we kinda just scrolled down the timeline, and he was like, "Well, there you go." Like, that doesn't get bigger than that. I mean…

34:45Jawad MirYeah

34:46Guest 1But I think it was 'cause he kept…

34:47Guest 2You can see the time

34:47Guest 1... Seeing our promo. I think it was 'cause he kept seeing the promo reel after…

34:50Guest 2Yeah, I think so…

34:51Guest 1... Talking about the promo

34:51Guest 2... For sure 'cause it, he also mentioned how it distilled, like, all the exciting moments, and he's like, "I wish the film could just be as exciting as the promo."

35:00Guest 1He did say that, yeah.

35:02Guest 2But I, you know, to answer another part of your question about, like, at what point did the movie click a bit more, I think we got to a point where we dropped some big scenes that were... You know, they worked obviously on their own, but in terms of the, not even the rhythm, but just getting to sort of the meat and potatoes of the film, and explaining things that kinda even didn't go anywhere in the end of the film, like Megalon and sort of the application, where I think Francis, and s… the same could be said about time stopping, but m… these are sort of, like, these metaphors of things rather than being something where, again, like a traditional studio note might've been, "You need to flesh out what Megalon is. You need to flesh out the city that's..." You know, those are the things that are sort of untraditional to this film that Francis didn't give a shit about. Like, you know, time.

36:02Guest 2And it, he explains it very eloquently, elegantly in the film with Julia and Caesar on the scaffolding when she says, you know, "Architects freeze it. Musicians rhythmatize it." time to him is something that, is something an artist plays with, and as editors as well. So I think the conceit of opening the film with that is something… That was very interesting, and I think, once we kinda cleared the path of the film to get rid of this extraneous sort of plotting that might've been more typical, it sorta opened up the film to kind of breathe and... Yeah.

36:49Guest 1Yep.

36:49Jawad MirYeah. The opening sequence, I remember when the first trailer came out, it started off with that sequence, and even when I saw it in the movie theater, the most amazing thing about that opening sequence, even if it was... That was the film, like, that opening sequence would stand alone as a short.

37:05Guest 2Yeah.

37:05Jawad MirAnd the way, the way you guys did the, you know, in the script, in the post, in the s… you know, in the direction, the cinematography, it doesn't look like... I never felt, "Oh my God, that is such a cool effect." It was never like that. It was more like, this scene is an amazing scene from the standpoint of the character that is in the film, and that's what... And that does hook you on. You know, I said, like, the first half wasn't, was interesting. The second half was easier. But I think the opening itself, like I said, is a very powerful opening. And I really enjoyed it.

37:46Guest 2Great. Yeah. I do too.

37:49Jawad MirWhat was it like when you... It premiered at Cannes. Were you guys there at Cannes?

37:54Guest 1Yeah.

37:56Jawad MirSo the reaction that the audience gave, and then the critics gave, and then the buzz and the word of mouth, and then it came to a similar way.

38:08Guest 2Yeah.

38:09Jawad MirWhat did that... What was that like experiencing on something that you worked? And nobody... You know, it's not that it's a bad movie, but people, you know, people have their opinions. So how do you, how do you deal with something like that on a film like this?

38:24Guest 1You know, I read l… quite a few of the reviews after Cannes, and I always say when I look at movies I've worked on, I can agree with almost every review, whether it's good or bad. Some of the bad ones have good points. They say stuff that doesn't work, or they don't think it was good. But, you know, that's what's great about film. There's a democracy in film, and not everybody has to vote for it. And you know, it's a pla… this movie is for the people that want to endeavor in it, or, you know, want to go with Francis on his journey, and it's not for everybody else. So it was interesting to read all the reviews, and I didn't disagree with people that said, oh, it was, you know, incoherent or it didn't make sense or, "What is, what is Megalon? I don't even get it." You know? You know. I went, yeah, you probably could say that if you know, weren't going with the film. But if you do go with it, like I sorta said in the beginning, and follow the narration and follow, you know, kinda where it is, what they are saying, it does come to a resolution that works for Francis and works for me.

39:33Guest 1I, you know, I enjoy the end of the film when they do start talking about the future and man, and I find that to be, you know... Not many people, not many films will stand up and make, d… declarative statements about the future of humanity, which I thought was cool.

39:53Guest 2Yeah, absolutely. And I think... I mean, there's critics that I respect and love and admire and always will race to see what they have to say about a film, so it's sort of exciting to see what they had to say about this film in particular. And like you say, Glenn, I can agree with all sides. And at the end of the day, though, I feel like y… you know, there's a certain cynicism that can creep into, critics in anal… analyzing pictures. But Francis is quite earnest and clean in sort of the messaging of the film, and I think that's the most beautiful thing. So to take away from that, to me, you kinda miss the point of the movie in a way, so.

40:42Jawad MirYeah. Well, I'm…

40:42Guest 1Yeah, he wasn't trying to fake you out, which is what some directors do, and in fact…... That means it doesn't work or something. He was never trying to fake you. He was giving you his earnest decisions of what he wanted the film to be, and was willing to go to great lengths to get it with, you know, spending all that money that he spent, doing everything that he did to get what he wanted. It's what he wanted. And

41:05Guest 2Yeah

41:05Guest 1... So I think, you know, hats off. There aren't many directors that can really say in a film, "This is what my film, this is the film I wanted to make 100%." Usually, it might be 75% or whatever.

41:18Guest 2Right. There wasn't a lot of compromise.

41:22Guest 1No.

41:22Jawad MirWell, that's good. Yeah, you know, the thing with critics is, like, everything, whether it's audience critics or professional critics, everything is subjective, right? Like ... You will have a film... Nowadays, there's a lot of people's political views that sorta go into your criticism of a film. Like, not necessarily about the film, but about the ideology and all that. I mean, one of the most recent example that doesn't matter what side of the politics you're on, the new movie with, Dennis Quaid, who plays Ronald Reagan

41:50Guest 1Oh, right

41:50Jawad Mir... On Rot… on Rotten Tomatoes, I think it's, like, under 10% by critics, and the audience is, like, 90%plus positive. And it's just, you know, it just goes to show that sometimes people, what… whatever reason, bring in their politics knowingly or unknowingly too, which I think for a film is not a good thing because a film is a piece of art. You're telling a story. You gotta put those things aside and appreciate the art and the cinema that you're watching. Or if you don't like it, that's fine, but I'm just kinda speaking in the broader s… you know, terms that how critics bring in all their own politics. And that's why when I read Megalopolis, I didn't even bother, you know, getting that influenced by them, and I'm like, "I still have to go see it." And everybody was like, "Are you crazy? You're gonna waste money and time to go watch?" I'm like, "I don't care. I'm going to see it."

42:33Guest 2Yeah.

42:34Jawad MirIt's Francis Ford Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's movie. I have to go watch it.

42:39Guest 2I mean, at the heart of…

42:41Guest 1No, go ahead

42:41Guest 2... Sorry, it just, at the heart of every re… review, that's basically it. Like, you just have to go see it.

42:47Guest 1Yeah. And that's what he wanted. He wanted people to go see it and make their own opinion. 'Cause he's not a very overtly political person. He doesn't talk about politics. I've known him for years, and years, and years. I remember one time when I was working on, Eli Coppola's film, I think, I can't remember. She had to go off to a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser, 'cause Nancy lives in the Napa Valley right there, and they've known him for years and stuff. And he was trying to convince her not to go because he had somebody coming, an actor coming in for dinner, and he always likes to have Eli be the person that kinda smooths over the silent gaps that might have happened in a, in a dinner party…

43:32Guest 2Right

43:32Guest 1... Scene. And, you know, but I've, I almost had never heard him talk about politics at all. Although I know, I know he's left leaning and ev… we know, that's obvious. But it, he, it's not like he talks about it or it's a huge thing. But it was part of the world that he was creating, in this movie that goes back to his childhood. There's a lot of things in different decades. So the Black mayor is Roger Dinkins. And the Robert Moses is the architect from the '50s, who took down the Lin… whole building tenement to create the Lincoln Center, and everybody was up in arms about displacing people. And so he took all these different decades that he was a real New Yorker in, and kind of was piecing them together against the backdrop of also what he read, was reading in the Roman, journals of various people that, he was interested in. So you know, so it's political, but more in a, his own, growing up in that world, as opposed to now coming down and going, "is it Trump or, you know, Kamala?

44:45Guest 1Who's..." You know, it's not like, it wasn't like he ever talked about that, or Biden. I never heard him mention anything. So it's a per…

44:54Jawad MirYeah, no, there's been…

44:54Guest 1Political

44:54Jawad Mir... Yeah, definitely. It's, there are scenes in there where somebody might interpret, "Well, this is what this is supposed to be," and that's fine. But at, as a whole, it doesn't have that element that I felt, because I, you know, I didn't feel anything political in the film, even though there were certain elements here and there. It was just more about power, greed, and, you know, deception, and finding acceptance, and all that stuff. Which are universal themes which we all relate to.

45:23Guest 1True.

45:24Jawad MirAmazing. Anything you guys wanna add, before we wrap up? This has been amazing.

45:29Guest 1I'd work with him anytime, anywhere, any place. Together.

45:33Guest 2Likewise. No, it was, it was really special.

45:36Guest 1And actually having two editors is good. I actually, when I've worked on movies that... So as I've come in as a fix it editor on movies, I've started movies, I've been fired off of movies. Every editor has. You're not an editor until you've been fired at least once. You know, I've often thought it is surprising that more directors don't have multiple editors. I think a lot of them are control freaks, and they feel if they have two editors or three editors, they'll lose control. But if they just have one and beat down on that one, they'll get what they want. But you know, I often, I like Francis for that. Worked on Dracula, had a couple of editors. In Godfather III I got to work with, you know, Barry Malkin, and Walter Murch, and Lisa, Fruchtman, and it was really great to see these editors that had, you know, either won Academy Awards by then or were nominated. And they all had their in, own way of kind of working.

46:36Guest 1And a lot of editors, actually, it depends again, how you come into editing. But if you come in the side door and you were never really an assistant, you never really knew how anybody else did it. And you just make your own style up, and then you get good at that style, and hopefully you have a career with that style. But it was very interesting, when I did work with other editors to see other people's styles. And I did get something from just about everybody, that I ever worked with. Some little nugget of like, "Oh yeah, I should think of it like that. Oh yeah, maybe I should, do that." you know, Walter Murch had some very interesting approaches. 'Cause when I worked with him on Godfather III, he actually was the only one cutting on film. That film was totally edited digitally, except for Walter when he came in kinda late into the whole movie proc… making process. And, he wanted to work on film, but it was really interesting watching his... He would sit there, and I'll just give you a quick thing.

47:37Guest 1He was gonna recut the opening of the movie, which is the big party scene. And I had cut it with, recut it with Francis, and it was 27 minutes long when I started working on it with Francis from the first editor who cut it. And then I got it down with Francis to, like, a 17-minute tight version that he wanted. And then he said, "Well, let's give it to Walter and see what Walter does." So Walter recombined, 'cause it was, it was also a work print cut. We were cutting digitally, but he followed with a work print. He had the work print all put back into its original reel so he could watch dailies, all in, you know, s… in, you know, in the course of a couple days. But anyway, it was really interesting because when I started cutting it with Francis, I just dove right in. And as soon as Francis said, "We're gonna, let's start with this part of the party," I would immediately pull out dailies and just start grabbing stuff and throwing stuff together, and Walter didn't. Walter didn't... I kept asking his assistant, I said, "What's he doing in there?" And he goes, "Oh, he's still watching dailies." I said, "For days." He was, like, watching dailies, and he was making notes, copious notes. And I learned from him that...

48:38Guest 1And then in the last two days of a week, he cut a whole 27-minute version of it back together. And I was s… I was so amazed that in two days he did it, and I realized his style was totally different than my style. Because back in the film days, you had to, you couldn't just keep cutting your work... Print. You, it'd turn into shreds if you keep k… making re-cuts and cuts. So he really thought it out before he made any cuts, and I was a kind of a jump in and just start throwing stuff around kinda guy, getting into the closet and grabbing stuff and it was just two different styles. And I tried to learn from his style that, no, when you watch dailies, you should really come at it with a, you know, an attack plan based on thinking about it and not just throwing stuff into the air and seeing what hits the ground. It was i… it was interesting.

49:31Jawad MirThat's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all that valuable information. Cam, do you have anything to add, man?

49:36Guest 2I felt like that was a great story. Just end it there.

49:39Jawad MirI know, I know. I was mesmerized by it, for sure.

49:43Guest 2No, I mean, just, because, like you say, it was the first time I ever collaborated with another editor that, I just... It was like a brother in the trenches. So I mean, there was so many moments where Glenn and I would be just talking, like, you know, Walter thinking and watching the footage. So we did that, but we just did it together.

50:06Jawad MirYeah.

50:06Guest 2And I think that was invaluable, because those conversations never left my mind throughout the whole process. So it was always like, oh, what Glenn just said there, that I didn't think of that, or because we had this conversation, it led to this idea. And to kind of deal and wield with Francis' a material, and b his intellect, and c his, like, just this multi-pronged monster of a film with, you know, there was moments where the kitchen sink is sitting in the movie. So how do you, how do you kind of call that stuff out, yet still honor the material and honor Francis, who's trying to make, you know, this passion project? So, I gue… I mean, every movie is a passion project, but, like, at this point in his career, I think it's, it's quite a movie to take on. So I think, you know, and just collaborating with everyone on our team, we were so fortunate to have the crew that we had.

51:10Guest 2Because, you know, we were all living down there in Georgia for quite a long time, so you know, that's, that's a different challenge altogether. But we kind of, we got through it and had a wonderful experience.

51:25Jawad MirThat's amazing.

51:26Guest 1Yeah, loved it.

51:27Guest 2Yeah.

51:27Jawad MirThat's super cool. Well, thanks, guys, so much, for, a working on this film. Again, like I said, I'm definitely gonna re-watch it maybe a couple of times when it comes on VOD or even DVD. I'll probably buy a DVD, and re-experience it and just... You know, it's, it's like, I was just talking to somebody just before this podcast, Mark Andrews. He's, like, one of the storyboard artists on Iron Giant, which tanked at the time, and now it's, like, a cult classic. I was telling him this story. When AI, Spielberg's AI, which was written by Kubrick, came out, I remember so into the film until, you know, Haley Joel Osment's character go underneath the water and the camera pans out, and I'm like, "Oh, my God. This movie's gonna end. This is so amazing." And then there's a whole last act, and I didn't get it for another couple of years, and until I saw the film two, three, four, five times. And I think similar is going to be with this film. You just have to sort of live in that world several times to be able to understand not only, but appreciate, what an amazing film, this will be in the future, and I think it is.

52:36Jawad MirIt's just about grasping it. So thank you so much for that, and thank you so much for your time and sharing all this valuable information.

52:42Guest 1Well, cheers.

52:43Guest 2Thank you.