Cassie Hager
“True genius is often misunderstood.” That’s the first phrase from the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which caused a stir upon its release for all the wrong reasons. One thing’s for sure: it grabs your attention from the get-go. Instead of diving into the meat and potatoes of the plot, it kicks things off by spraying an array of insults directed at Coppola’s prior work. A critic from the now defunct The Village Voice named Andrew Sarris is quoted as saying The Godfather is “sloppy” and “self-indulgent.” A Google search shows that The Village Voice did exist, and that Andrew Sarris was a celebrated critic who passed away in 2012. The problem is, Sarris apparently never said those things about The Godfather. Internet sleuths discovered the same fakery for the other critics whose “quotes” are passed off as legitimate.
Setting aside that bizarre choice, listing all the nasty things people have said about your work over the years is kind of strange. It’s an interesting power play that few people other than Coppola could pull off. It raises the question: why not find actual bad reviews and use those for the Megalopolis trailer? Coppola has enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers in Hollywood and is bound to have collected a healthy list of haters. Why fake it?
After the backlash, rumors spread that Lionsgate was working to completely wipe the Megalopolis trailer from the internet. At the time of writing this, however, it is still easy to find on YouTube. The entire controversy posed an interesting question. Is it OK to make things up, so long as they are negative or self-deprecating? If the reverse had happened – say, the trailer featured a laundry list of faux praise, the argument would be nonexistent. Of course, that would be wrong. So why should it be alright to do the opposite?
The answer apparently isn’t so black and white. A very informal survey of my social media followers revealed that nearly 40 percent think the made-up quotes are no big deal. By now you may have noticed I haven’t mentioned a single part of the trailer past the quote controversy. Nothing about Adam Driver’s intense delivery or what appears to be some great visuals. Not many other people have, either. Whether purposeful or not, the pull quote controversy is what everyone is talking about. We will see if that buzz alone is enough to bring people out to the theater for Megalopolis on September 27.
