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Francis Ford Coppola Rings in the New Year at American Cinematheque With an Epic Salon About Money, Politics and Power
Francis Ford Coppola spent 100 minutes talking about big-picture political, economic and societal issues in an American Cinematheque New Year's event.
Coppola had 425 old or new friends who had eagerly snapped up $45 tickets for the Aero Theatre event as soon as they went on sale, willing to show up at 11 a.m. on New Year’s Day for four hours of film and discourse (and to subsist on a lunch not of mac-and-cheese but of theater popcorn). He offered occasional memoir-style asides like those above, but mostly remained in the realm of philosophy and socioeconomic thought, with an intellectual assist from two panelists he brought along, Juliet Shor, an economist and socialist who wrote the book “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth,” and Jim Augustine, an entrpreneur who works with tech companies interested in adopting the methodologies of creatives. Without stating it outright, he made it clear he identifies with the protagonist of “Megalopolis,” high-minded architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), as at various points he repeated verbatim a question that Cesar asks in the movie: “Is the society we’re living in the only one available to us?” (At one point midway through the otherwise straightforward film screening, the house lights brightened and a person approached the screen, silently playing the role of interrogating journalist, as the image of Driver looked down on him and uttered that same, overarching question about the big picture.)
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