Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis

In 2007, Mihai Malaimare Jr. was a 29-year-old cinematographer working in Romania when he got his filmmaking dream job: shooting “Youth Without Youth” for Francis Ford Coppola as Coppola returned to the director’s chair for the first time in 10 years. Coppola wanted to reinvent himself and was looking for a partner who wouldn’t be afraid of trying new things, and in Malaimare, he found a willing and eager co-conspirator. “Even when he had what I thought was a crazy idea, I thought, ‘Well, it’s Francis Coppola so I better try it,'” Malaimare told IndieWire. “Then you try it and realize how much better the scene looks.”

Malaimare became Coppola’s cinematographer of choice on the movies that followed: “Tetro,” “Twixt,” and now “Megalopolis,” all of them self-financed experiments with which Coppola has attempted to find his own unique style after over 60 years of filmmaking. On “Megalopolis,” Coppola’s boldest roll of the dice yet, the director often found himself at odds with collaborators committed to more conventional methods of production. “We were in a studio in Georgia where a lot of Marvel pictures are made, and Marvel movies are very scene-centric,” Coppola told IndieWire. “I didn’t want it to be scene-centric. I wanted it to be image-centric.”

While Coppola’s differences of opinion with his original art department led to that team leaving the movie, he knew he always had one partner he could depend on. “No matter what kinds of constraints I’m operating under, or what kinds of pressures I put on Mihai, he always comes up with beautiful images,” Coppola said. “You know you’re always going to love the result.” For Malaimare, “Megalopolis” is the logical extension of method he and Coppola developed on “Youth Without Youth.” “It’s a really interesting dynamic, because secretly I enjoy being pushed out of my comfort zone,” Malaimare said. “Sometimes I find myself waiting for it to happen and craving any crazy idea Francis can send my way, because it always produces interesting results.”

Coppola has famously been thinking about and talking about “Megalopolis” for decades, and it’s been a part of his discussions with Malaimare right from the beginning of their association. “The idea with ‘Youth Without Youth’ was to use what were then new digital cameras,” Malaimare said. Among the cameras Malaimare considered was the Sony F900, which Ron Fricke had used to shoot second-unit footage of New York for an abandoned early incarnation of “Megalopolis.” “Fricke shot hours and hours of establishing shots and second unit, and I remember watching that footage to see what the F900 could do visually. Even though it was for a different project, I was becoming familiar with ‘Megalopolis’ and Francis’ concepts for it.”

"The truth is that I find the experience of Megalopolis existing and being seen by an audience very similar to what it was like when I made Apocalypse Now," explains legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola as we chat over Zoom. "When Apocalypse Now came out, people saw it and said, 'Wow, what the hell is it?' There was an ambivalent confusion because it was clearly a film not made with any rules."

The director, who also wrote and produced the science fiction epic, isn't phased by, and is certainly no stranger to, his films receiving mixed reactions. Coppola would much prefer his films be considered divisive rather than boring.

"People don't expect to see food or drinks that are made without rules. Coca-Cola tastes like Coca-Cola, and they don't like it if you change it, but movies are also meant to be a certain kind of experience," he muses. "With Apocalypse Now, the experience was like, 'Wow. I have got to see it again.' People went to see it again because it wasn't boring; it was unusual, and they're still seeing it 40 years later. The same thing has happened with Megalopolis. Because it's not really boring, they're willing to see it again. My hunch is that people are going to see it again, and each time they see it, it becomes a different movie because it has a lot in it that is not apparent in the first viewing."