Francis Ford Coppola has said he was “thrilled” to accept multiple Golden Raspberry nominations for his film Megalopolis, which ended up winning two awards.
On Instagram, Coppola said that he was treating the nominations, which are voted for by Razzie members, who pay for the privilege, as a “distinctive honour … when so few have the courage to go against the prevailing trends of contemporary moviemaking!”
Megalopolis, his epic sci-fi passion project – which earned largely highly critical reviews and made $14m from a $120m (£95m) outlay, much of which was bankrolled by Coppola selling off assets from his wine business – was up for six awards, including worst picture, director and screenplay.
In fact, it won only two – for director, and supporting actor for Jon Voight, although he shares the honour for his work on three other films: Reagan, Shadow Land and Strangers.
“In this wreck of a world today,” continued Coppola, “where ART is given scores as if it were professional wrestling, I chose to NOT follow the gutless rules laid down by an industry so terrified of risk that despite the enormous pool of young talent at its disposal, may not create pictures that will be relevant and alive 50 years from now.
“What an honor to stand alongside a great and courageous filmmaker like Jacques Tati who impoverished himself completely to make one of cinema’s most beloved failures, PLAYTIME! My sincere thanks to all my brilliant colleagues who joined me to make our work of art, MEGALOPOLIS, and let us remind ourselves us that box-office is only about money, and like war, stupidity and politics has no true place in our future.”
In interviews for the film, Coppola sought to define his movie as just the latest in a series of classics that went unrecognised as such by contemporary critics.
A trailer for Megalopolis took a similar tack, quoting well-known critics’ disparaging verdicts of Coppola classics such as Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and the Godfather. However, the trailer was taken down after it emerged that all the quotes were made up.
