Francis Ford Coppola Opens Up About How Philosophy Has Inspired His Life and Career

you know sometimes you make a movie because of a sentence that you hear in Apocalypse Now the sentence that made me make that whole movie and and pardon my bad language is I read a quote where a general where someone says we teach the boys to drop fire on people but won't let them write the word [ __ ] on their airplanes because it's immoral I said that's Apocalypse Now I wanted to start with the the Cataline conspiracy because it's such a fascinating thing to me that I feel like very few people know about but was arguably one of the most famous events in Roman history and you know the founders were all intimately familiar with it uh many centuries later but it's been largely forgotten today well it it has to do I think with the nature of history is that it very often is Twisted by whoever the Victor was uh to to you know make it turn out uh in in a prepared way and and the Catalan conspiracy there are a number of accounts the most famous one is salest I think uh but also sutus talks about it and and and presents it a In a Different Light so these historical events really are based on on interpretation having to do with who ended up with the power to write the history I are you familiar with this lady I think she's still living Mary beard who's sort of one of the yeah well I had one point asked her to uh read my rough script uh which was you know you could say was a uh taking America as a historical counterpart of Rome because we were founded on Roman ideas and um and I my original idea well oh what if the Cataline conspiracy was something between mayor kotch and uh Walter gropius you know who was a architect who had come to America that was how it was beginning to emerge in my mind Mary beard said something to me very interesting she said well uh the most successful Roman adaptations were done by George Bernard Shaw uh because he took he took great Liberties in other words he he he he sort of like in his famous Caesar and Cleopatra he just made it up you know based on what he thought made sense and so she suggested I take many many more that I was trying to follow the history a little too carefully and and and she advised I took more Liberties and she said read the stonia account of the Cataline conspiracy because in it young Caesar had more to do with it than history knows and as he was uh the young Caesar as you know at the age he was uh was was really an accomplice of of of sergis uh Cataline and and and that's when she said you know you can even call the character Caesar because you know frankly she said when you give this out to people they don't know who the hell sergis Cataline was but they everyone knows who Caesar was sure so I took her advice and I did a draft where I sort of just was more free uh with with what I was say and and of course you know I mean just to to shut up for a minute but you know if if it was since it was ultimately in the Cataline conspiracy it was it was C Cataline who survived he sort of wrote the history Cicero you mean yeah you know just like with Cleopatra I mean Augustus writes the history and made Cleopatra be this this sexy seductress but in truth Cleopatra was a genius yes and and and but she doesn't get credit for it because she no one on her side you know wrote the history so so I I rewrote it according to this suggestion and I made Caesar more the way he appears in the movie but that was taking great liberties with history as as you know it's sort of a prequel to to the the most famous event in history which is sort of Rome Civil War and the assassination of Caesar because you got all the main characters you've got Caesar you've got cisero you've got KO crus and and then and then of course catalon and and we've just sort of Forgotten all about these sort of preceding events one of my favorite books is this book called The Storm before the storm and uh the idea is that we kind of just see Caesar Crossing the Rubicon one day as if it it just popped into his head as if there wasn't all this history and all these other events leading up to this other major event yes absolutely I'm gonna get that book so thanks for the recommendation yeah you could argue though I think your point about it it it comes down to who tells the story caline's biggest mistake aside from you know trying to uh uh lead an Insurrection is that he he attempts to lead an Insurrection when the government is led by Rome's greatest writer and speaker that that was that was a fatal error right there also history tends to ignore some other events that had happened before which is the whole period of I don't know how to pronounce his name but suah and who is the there was another General after suah Marius Marius and that was a very traumatic period of Roman history and with the solar prescriptions and and what went on and and and Catalina sergis Catalina actually was an errant general or participant was sua which of course most people today know nothing about they talk about you know Caesar uh when they make the comparison of what's going on in America today they don't they they don't allow that there was a terrible period of solah and prescriptions and who whoever you declared was uh you know a traiter you got all his property yeah so so there's a lot about Roman history that is isn't commonly known I mean obviously uh and at our time of our founding of course the young any intelligent young man had Latin training so they knew a lot more than we know today I think yeah I was so I was so struck by uh reading rereading some American history and when Aaron Burr uh sort of comes onto the scene he he is like universally referred to by all the other Founders as a kind of modern Catal and and they would have known your average person when they heard that insult would have known what that meant whereas today if you if you called uh some Modern political figure a Catalin people would be like what are you talking about had you by the way ever read the gorv Vidal's book on Aaron bur no that's another great book uh Vidal was a you know brilliant for all his other complications he was a great scholar and he wrote a beautiful book uh on on Aaron Burr and also on who's the first CH Christian uh uh Emperor uh Ju Just um oh Constantine yeah well a lot of what I learned I learned from gorvy doll interesting so have have you always loved uh Roman history well um you know I I I didn't I was a very poor student uh in fact I was such a bad student but partly because my father was always moving in I was always the new kid in school and I used to get in those days if you had a bad report card which I got every every term you'd get a beating I got a beating from my father with a strap and he said to me once I remember if you don't get better grades I didn't have I wasn't smart enough to say but that you take me out of school every six months you know which was my defense but he always would threaten me he said if you don't get better grades I'm going to send you to a Jesuit school where you get a beating if you don't get grades and boy do I wish do I wish I had been sent to a Jesuit school because I would know Latin and Greek yes and and uh what a gift that would have been if I could if I could read Latin and uh and Greek uh which which you got in a Jesuit school you know if you went to one of those so my my my sadness is I I was a bad student I I I I I I you know I couldn't do anything that I really had I want to be a scientist my father said you cannot fail algebra twice in a row and be a scientist so did Roman history seem part of your heritage as an Italian I I'd just be curious like I I see it as sort of just the ancient world I'm not seeing this sort of I don't see it as a so much as a place right I see the Roman Empire I'm not thinking Italy but I'm just curious how what your perspective is well I as a kid I remember my name is Francis but I was really named after my grandfather Franchesco and when I was a kid being an Italian was sort of like there were certain neighborhoods you couldn't move into and and my parents didn't teach us the language uh and gave us angelized name my brother was austino we called them August Augie and I was Francis and that was to avoid this uh you know that we were low class Italians we couldn't move in neighborhood but my father my mother always said oh but you're an American and America is the greatest country in the world but my father would say but you're also Italian and the Italians contributed to all the great literature and music and and Opera and classicism and of course I was born in 1939 so this is when World War II was going on and and the Italians were were you know allied with the Germans not the good guys yeah but you know interesting thing which I'm sure you know is that the the figure who really went back to ancient Rome and sort of resurrected fascism was denunzio the poet and uh and he was the one because he he was a brilliant uh he knew about history and and and musolini who was a journalist was imitating denunzio with all the H and all that stuff and Hitler was imitating musolini so it really goes back to an Italian poet Gabriela denunzio who who was the who resurrected the fascist idea as it existed in modern our modern world wars yeah there's always been this battle to to sort of say who who owns these stories who not just who tells the story but then who owns the figures and who gets to claim to be a descendant of them and then yeah art has been this process of writing and rewriting and retelling these stories from different perspectives what is your ultimate read then on the Catalan conspiracy I I I tend not to love uh Cicero he of of all the the sort of Agents I find the more I read about Cicero the less I like him he seems kind of obnoxious and annoying yeah no there's no question I mean the the reason he he em emerged in my mind is because the famous anti- Cataline speech is something every Latin School Boy knows yes and and and so I wanted to get that in my movie word for word which I did have you seen have you seen my movie yet uh no I I haven't seen it yet I'm very excited Ed Eddie told me all about it we have to show it to you it's pretty weird I mean it's uh very definitely unusual uh and and it it probably does more of what I wanted to do than I realized interesting because you know when you when you're making an unusual movie or a movie you don't know how to make which is usually what I find myself doing the movie starts making itself and and you start following you know you start saying well let's do more of that and less of that yeah and and little by little the movie is if you know what you're doing then you just do what you know how to do but if you don't know what you're doing which was when I made Apocalypse Now I had no idea what I was doing and and and megalopolis I had no idea what I was doing so little by little I was following what the film was suggesting and you know we would look at the stuff all of the collaborators and we'd see some really weird stuff that we had shoted to get going and we say let's do more of that so there's kind of an emergent property when when when you're following a story yeah the the you and the collabor first of all as you know theater and Cinema is a collaborative art yeah I mean it's not one guy sitting alone writing a book it's a it's a team of people uh who are or who are creatively collaborating together which is a thrilling uh I I've often said that collaboration is the sex of creativity because I mean to work with a dozen other people who are talented in maybe specific Fields but all of you together are are are coming together to make this group art which is what theater is uh why it's a group uh that you belong to and and of course as the Director you're sort of the ring leader perhaps but you're really also a follower of what the actors are doing what the composer is doing what the what the visual artists are doing so it's a very exciting project but you sit together and you and you evaluate what you're getting and that process of when you say let's do more of that and less of that is the film telling you how to make it in other words you you as a group are recognize like in Apocalypse did you ever see Apocalypse Now of course there's a scene in Apocalypse Now where all the boys are on the boat and they're all stoned and they're they're setting off smoke grenades on the boat the red ones and blue ones well smoke smoke grenades the purpose of smoke grenades why they're colored is on land if there's a safe place for the helicopter to come down or an unsafe place and don't land here you set off a red smoke grenade and if it's a safe place it might be a blue or if it's yellow it's be careful so so smoke grenades are like a code but on the boat there's no purpose for a smoke grenade they have them because when they got on land they might need them but the boys were just sending off the smoke grenades in the in the wind and because the they were stoned and it was beautiful so we all saw that in the in the deles and we said let's do more of that let's do more of that and and little by little Apocalypse Now start to become more surreal yeah and then that's how the movie is leading you and in fact when I got to the end of Apocalypse Now I had no idea how to end it because it had become so surreal that the ending which was a typical big battle scene ending was no longer appropriate and Brando who was such a smart guy a brilliant man said to me oh you've painted yourself in a corner haven't you he realized that I had taken the film so far off into the surreal that a normal ending wouldn't work well the same thing happened with megalopolis it as we looked at it together we collaborators and we we there was a lot of weird stuff I do just to get going you know to sort of you you do the first few takes and you might do some unusual things to sort of spur everyone's creativity and then the the later takes get more and more normal well we started saying we we all like the the early takes which which were the weirder ones said well let's do more of that and it's that let's do more of that let's do less of that that starts to determine how the movie gets made well let's let's talk about the the oration real fast I have a chunk of it here when o Cataline do you mean to cease abusing our patience how long is that Madness of yours still to mock us when is there an end of that unbridled Audacity Of Yours swaggering about as it does now shame on the age and its principles it's just so amazing whether it whether it was fully deserved or not you can't you can't argue with the Brilliance of Cicero no and and it was that speech that was my hook I said can you imagine being in New York and having mayor cotch saying that to Robert Moses sure yeah that that was the that was in a nutshell you know sometimes you make a movie because of a sentence that you hear in in Apocalypse Now the sentence that made me make that whole movie and in pardon my bad language is I I I read a quote where a general or someone says we teach the boys to drop fire on people but won't let them write the word [ __ ] on their airplanes because it's immoral I said that's Apocalypse Now yeah yeah you know sometimes it's just one sentence and so this this Cataline oration uh in which was in Latin and every school boy know in America every school boy knows that uh I said what if I could do that and that led to the whole movie yeah it is kind of amazing I've been talking about this like whether or not you actually needed to learn Latin or Greek these days the magic was the way they taught it for so many hundreds of years was that you had to repeat these magnificent sentences and epigrams and ideas that were kind of seeping in by wrote over and over but like when I learned Spanish in in high school it was like where do you want to go to lunch you know where do you live you know what are your parents' names where is the Post Office yeah D estala bibla you know you're not learning the greatest uh turns of phrase ever coined by human beings and I wonder if that's why languages are so uninteresting to most school kids well the school boys in in our founding of of our nation were reading Caesar the galic wars he there the whole thing they knew it by heart yeah Washington was the only founder who hadn't read the classics in Greek or Latin he was considered not as smart cuz he only read them in English only in English right and Jefferson on the contrary yes but Jefferson was not a stoic Jefferson was an epicurian yes do do you know do you know much about Epicurious you you you've given me such good tips I feel that this kind of conversation I owe you a few good ones tell me about epicurus I know a bit about him I I think he gets a also gets a bad rap yeah he gets a very bad rap because epicurus uh did not believe in life after death part of the epicurian philosophy is he talks a lot about it in a beautiful way he says you know where there's life um when death comes you don't exist yes the Catholics uh had their biggest business was the paying of what do you call them uh indul what is that called indulgences IND yeah so the Catholics basically wanted to bury epicurus whose philosophy was much different than people people think epicureanism is to be fat and just go to feasts and eat that that's not at all what he was about but his anything of epicurus or even a Roman poem that was about epicurus uh was banned and disappeared and it only turned up in the 14th centur in some monks library for the reason you said is because just like people used to have to recite it over and over again they used to have to just copy the text down over and over again to practice there's a wonderful book that I recommend to you that you'll thank me a million times that it's a good read it's called the swerve have you ever heard of it yes Incredible Book oh you read it yes Ste stepen Steven greenblood is a is a is a treasure yeah he he wrote he's a Shakespearean scholar but he wrote the swerve and it was an eyeopener for me I I then became an epicurian because so much of what's in the Epicurious philosophy has nothing to do with in fact he famously said if I had a glass of water and a and a biscuit I would be eating as well as Zeus you know yes so fortunately Thomas Thomas Jefferson was an epicurian and that whole idea of the pursuit of happiness in our you know that appears nowhere else on Earth uh except the American whatever written by Jefferson is right out of Epicurious so I don't have to give you a tip because you already know no no and and I'm so excited having read this swerve I don't know if you've been following this but uh I in Pompei you know one of some of the things that were frozen in the ash were were libraries and they're starting to be they're starting to be able to uncode some of these Scrolls uh with these cameras and with AI and they think they may have a whole epicurian Library there that they're they've just discovered the F what a what a treasure oh what a treasure that would be my goodness yeah there could be a we we could have totally missed what epicurus was actually about we don't really have that much from him but I'll tell you uh just but we we have that poem what's the Roman poem Dana luus yeah on the of things yeah we have that that's what the swerve was about they found that poem and that poet was the inspiration of Dante and uh and uh all the great Roman WR writers I have a quote from from epicurus uh that I that I think you would love because it goes to what you were just saying I I ended one of my books with it uh this is the last letter he wrote he said on this happy day which is the last day of my life I write the following words to you just like to to me that like Cicero would say that you know to philosophize is to learn how to die epicurus seems to have done it very well so we we see him as this guy's trying to avoid pain and love pleasure but but his Brilliance was really his ability to find pleasure in ordinary even painful situations yes no I I I consider I'm not I don't consider myself a stoic but I consider myself an epicurian but I'm a stoic too because you know uh to basically what I know I know and what I don't know I ignore the Roman poet juvenal said that between the stoics and the epicurian uh there was only a shirt like one of one of them wore a shirt and the and the other lived a slightly harder life but but they were actually much more similar than um than than we think I agree yeah I certainly think so all right so so let's talk uh because you mentioned Shakespeare green blot wrote this amazing book uh called will in the world that's incredible also and he has a book called Tyrant which I loved but but I was thinking you know a common theme between this movie and then of course apocalypse now but is also the theme of Shakespeare is the ability to find old stories and then place them in a new context but use the arcs and the characters and the morals so talk to me about the job of an artist to sort of find and then reimagine old stories well for me to do that I would have to bring in another giant into the picture who is the German Gerta and what Gerta said uh and he was of course of big influence to our wonderful American Emerson this game is a is a is a tag game and gerta's position was whatever he read and whatever he learned it was only that he that which he could use in something that was important uh and and I I believe that because because you know I have a pretty good memory and and I wasn't a big reader as a youngster but as I became older I I I started to read much more and and I had this habit of whatever I was working on I would try to find something that was nothing like it so I could rest my brain but what happened is when I would read something that has was nothing like what I was working on instead of it resting my brain it made me want to change what I was working on to me more like what I was reading and and that kept happening because I would be choosing you know I you know I deliberately choose things that had nothing to do with what I was working on for example at one point I I I I chose a Chinese a great Chinese book that is well studied and loved in China called the the the story of the stone or the dream of the Red Mansion written in the 16th century and I found myself trying to change megalopolis into being more like that which I did because that was one of the few books I ever read that the dream life of the characters was as important as the waking you know we all dream and then we get back to what our life is but who knows whe whether our life is the dream life and not the that and in this Chinese novel which is a beautiful book The Dream of the Red Mansion uh uh the dreams are part of the character story and so I made megalopolis more like that so uh so I found that whatever it was that I was supposedly trying to get my mind off the movie it was in fact I was bending my mind to make the movie more like that and and that happened a lot and one of the reasons why the film is so unusual but that was ger do you know anything about the uh that whole period with Emerson in America was before the Civil War that they were called the transcendentalists MH of course well they were they were interesting because they were men and women working together which really so the first time intellectually as partners as intellectual partners and they were of course the light of learning in those days was the Germans was Gerta and and you know all of those guys and so they were all reading and and translating Gerta into English and gerta's whole position position was that what you read was only important is if you could make use of it if you could put it in your work and and that's what I believe like uh I I believe that that that whatever I think is great in the cinema which there's a lot that's great you know it's people ask you what are your 10 favorite films I said they ask me what my thousand favorite film or who are the greatest filmmakers what's your list of the top 10 great filmm I say I give you I'll give you 500 you know that it's too abundant sure and and very exciting our literature what if you look at literature as what you're able to take from yeah and be inspired by and and copy even you know I don't know who was that said it says poor artists borrow great artist steel I don't know who that was someone but that was what Gerta did sure he wrote a book called what the hell was that called wilham Meister uh German woman and that was him stealing from Shakespeare yeah you know that was Gerta saying I wanna I want to be as much like Shakespeare as I can be when Shakespeare stealing from Plutarch and from Montana and from these sort of Danish Legends and other play and other plays they were all stealing from each other Marlo and and in fact I think stepen uh is writing a book on what a kit uh what's his name a kit another another playwright very famous play right that no one knows anything about uh it wasn't Marlo it's someone else you see your movies and your you're thinking as products of all of that you have read and consumed and all the great stories and myths of History I certainly don't think it's something of mine I I I am the yeah it was what it it did to me and and and know I once read an obscure book by bzac I don't know where the hell I found it uh in which U someone's talking to bllac and says to him you know a lot of the Young Writers are just stealing your stuff and bolac said that's why I wrote it because if they take my stuff and make use of it then I will live I will be immortal in their work that's beautiful bzac understood that this is a process that the young are inspired by the old and then they become old and they Inspire and it's sort of like having a great grandson or a great great great grandson is that you live through them and and artistically uh what Balzac would saying and and what girta says is that by taking and being inspired by these great artists of the past who were probably inspired by a great artist it all goes back to you know safo and those kind of people people you know that and Homer whoever the hell he was or she was you know we they live through us that's why when you tell me that uh they may have discovered more of epicurus I mean imagine if someday we get lucky and discover more of escalus or more of so we have like we have like seven plays of escalus and he wrote 300 I I was just reading this book called Papyrus I'm just so excited to tell you this so I was just reading this book called Papyrus which is about the history of paper and the early writings and one of the things the woman is saying is that those Scrolls because they weren't books so they weren't like books on the Shelf they were in these Scrolls and the the the boxes you would keep those Scrolls in she says most of them held seven Scrolls and so the reason they think we only have like seven plays from escalus is that just a single box but imagine if somehow somewhere with our technology like with you mention in in imagine we find more escalus or more Sophocles or more ureides or more someone we never heard of you it's thrilling it's so thrilling I mean they discovered gilgames like in the 1800s I I love Gilgamesh me too it's it's all about how the teenagers are not listening to their parents did you ever read that wonderful Persian book called Shanah Hamad by um ferozi no that's like Gilgamesh it's a early Persian it's great it's a the thing about these things like Gilgamesh is they're like 7,000 years old but they're great reads like Homer my son is eight or he's turning eight and he's obsessed with the Odyssey and he loves all the jokes and we've cons he's he's read comics about it and he listens to music about it and he he he he's read these different translations together and and there's just something amazing about watching a young person get excited Ed and lit up by the jokes that were were you know passed down orally for for thousands of years and they still work like the timelessness of it is incredible I think Gilgamesh is a good example yeah that also is like that and this book shahama the Persian is called the Epic of Kings it's another one like that they're great reads yeah the the badita is of course is another one just these these myths and yet to think that you know we have we have thousands of years of continual use and discussion in western civilization of the Odyssey so it's so much more familiar with us but to think we've only had like 150 years of Gilgamesh because it was lost for so long it doesn't have the same cultural prominence but that doesn't mean it's not as brilliant and it doesn't have teach the same lessons that's true are you familiar at all or interested in in Sanskrit and ancient Indian myth yeah have you ever heard of of a woman named Wendy doniger no she's the pretty much world's expert on that subject a woman the the first girl I ever kissed I was not the first boy she ever kissed I was 17 she was 16 but she went on to become wow this this I still know her she's a great uh brilliant lady I've been I've been reading a lot about TE Lawrence lately and sort of Lawrence of Arabia yes and just the the epicness of that life you know sort of feeling like it was plucked like like he talks about in the intro his his intro in The Odyssey says like you know to be able to translate The Odyssey you have to be able to have killed people and you have to have fought lions and been attacked by Pirates and just just the the sort of tradition of the Epic stories that we have is just such an incredible thing what's the name of the woman of that time who was around with all those guys there's a famous English woman who was there with Lawrence yes uh Gertrude Bell I think yeah I think it's Gertrude Bell yeah she was another figure she well Alec Guinness and Lawrence of Arabia played fisel 2 yeah and fisel 2 was a great great great man and I think gerred Bell knows what happened to him because he vanished very mysteriously fisel 2 I also I was fascinated I had no idea that basically after he becomes the most famous man in the world he just enlist in the British Air Force and he's a mechanic for like 10 yearsing and like the the fame sort of breaks him but he he decides just to do manual labor as a way to kind of reset himself it his life is itself almost kind of a Greek myth well there are some extraordinary human beings that you know uh I've had the pleasure of I'm so old now course you're obviously a young man but I'm so old I actually met some of these people you know I mean I met uh one of the most extraordinary people I ever met I know he's an actor and everything is Marlon Brando he was a he was a one of a kind and and and uh you know some of the kurawa I met some some really great great great and and I know Stephen uh uh green green greenl he's a wonderful man who who else like that stands out to you like so the people that your life intersected with that you can hardly believe Marcel duop when I was 16 wow he was he was fascinating uh some other Figures were less less famous a man named Fred Co who was an early founder of uh television drama Fred Co um of course a lot of filmmakers like Jean Jean Renoir and Billy Wilder and and and and and people like Jack Warner and and Daryl xanic and and Samuel Goldwin some of those people did you ever meet F Scott Fitzgerald I never did no and the authors let me see who did I ever meet I'm in love with Edith Warton I have a big painting of her but I never I went to her house in h Connecticut she was one of the greats in literature I'm trying to think I this is probably interesting only to me but did you ever meet John fonte yes very well he was a wonderful man he's my favorite well did you ever see that beautiful film with Nick KY and uh uh about the is it Billy Holiday or someone where he's building his father he's building he's a writer and his father is a brick layer and comes Full of Life full of life yes yeah I knew John fonte he was a nice man wow he he I think ask the dust is is my maybe my second favorite novel that's a that's a beautiful book yeah and you know who knew him he just passed away Robert town did you you know who Robert town is yes he he found like that that I think I think that's one of the most incredible stories in all of literature that there's a copy of ask the dust in the Los Angeles Public Library and both towns and uh Charles Bukowski stumble upon it and they ReDiscover this book that was basically lost because Hitler had bankrupted his publisher right interesting no I I I I I it's a I love that movie I love as uh full of life and and we we bought the rights for as the Dusk and and bobtown was very much you know I have a big brother uh syndrome I had a brother who was five years older than me he was wonderful older brother I I you know he he wrote stories and whatever he was I wanted to be the junior version of so he wrote stories his under the name August Floyd Copa so when I cop him and tried to write stories I would use my middle name the same way Francis Ford Copa so The Godfather became such a success that I became so suddenly famous that he couldn't be August Floyd copel anymore because it looked like he was imitating me but I was imitating him and and but and and all my life I looked for those older brothers wow could guide me and that was a role that Bob town so kind helped me so much you know when I made the Godfather everyone hated the movie no one said a good thing about it and the first person who told me that there was something to it was Bob Town wow and he and he said there's one thing that you can do to make it better and I said what is that he said there should be a scene in The Godfather between Brando and Pacino father and son I said well that doesn't exist in the book could you write it and he said I'll write it for you and he wrote that scene wow wow Bob Town my uh my other favorite Hollywood novelist and may maybe you know this person too so I'm just nerding out here I love Bud schulberg too uh what makes Sammy run is incredible but I love uh the harder they fall is I think his his actually his best one and then he wrote one about his time with Fitzgerald also that's amazing the disenchant I wrote a screenplay a very unusual screenplay for the disenchanted which he loved no really and I told the story not in flashbacks but in Flash forwards which was when that was very unusual I wish I had that script I I I I I don't have it I do too but Bud schulberg Bud schulberg liked it well this brings us full circle because uh Marcus Aurelius makes a a brief uh appearance at the end of that book his he uh I think it says something like and then he was ceased to be Whirled about as as the as the Fitzgerald character dies he has ceased to be whed about so so the sort of through line of the stoic philosophy brings us a full circle here well as as I think everything does you know I've had an interesting experience as I told you that you know I always am looking even now I'm right you know what I'm reading right now no I'm I'm maybe a third in Tender Is the Night oo what do you think well it's it's beautiful writing I'm trying to there's a little bit of a controversy because I'm told that there are two versions of tenderers than I that it wasn't successful at first so he and his editor straightened out something I guess I I don't know which version I have but but but I think what's unusual is that in the in the original tender as the night there's a huge flashback in the middle of it that goes back and tells the story of Nicole and Dick Diver and I don't know what's going to happen and maybe maybe I don't know which one I have yeah yeah have you read tenders the night I have I've read it in high school but I don't remember which one I read well that's the thing I hate it when when the publisher changes it because then you don't know which one to read but but I'm going to get to them but I but I I have a funny thing that'll make you laugh is that so usually when I'm reading a a book and I'm finished with megalops now so when I'm reading is not going to change it because it's going to be shown but I am uh I I I I you know as an 85y old and as a man who wonders whether or not my life whether or not I'm really some sort of solipsist movie director who whose life is the movie he's making because you know when I was young and I made The Godfather everyone critics and stuff said oh he's like Michael corio this this director he's conniving and he's he's silently taking over then I made uh Apocalypse Now and they said well he's a megalomaniac he's making this he's Curts he's like Brando in and then I made a movie uh called Gardens of Stone about uh Jimmy Khan is an officer who befriends a young Cadet uh in the squad that buries the dead and and and and loses his son and while I was shooting the movie I lost my son and I I really remember thinking my God am I cursed I have to live every movie that I'm making I I'm making a movie about a guy who loses his son I have to lose my son like what is this is too weird you know and and recently I I sort of came back to wondering as I approach as my family in Italian says Vino amort which means the vicinity of death that's the age when you start to be in your middle 80s and used to be in your 70s now it's getting later and I begin to wonder I said Gee maybe maybe I'm just maybe I'm a sort of solipsist movie director and you know I lost my wife recently who I loved dearly and what about love who are these people I love well maybe they're aspects of myself their characters in this movie I'm making about myself and perhaps I'm you know we all know that it's better to write the story from the ending the other direction because you don't understand life when you're a kid and many philosophers like Kirk aard and others have said that you know we live our life from young to old but you can only understand it if you look at it from old to Young and and and and and I I said well you know so I put into Google what's a book I can read that can make me understand my life as a solipsist and I got an answer and it was you know who Charlie Kaufman is yeah he's this wonderful crazy screenwriter sure he wrote a book a novel called ant anind uh a seven 800 page book called antkind and that's what Google said you know if you want to read something about being a so I got it and damned if if you know as I said everything I read changes my movie but this book is changing my life because it's so I finished it after 750 pages and it was not it was not unsatisfying and the ending was was sort of interesting and I don't suggest to read it although it's hilarious because a long it's a long read but but that's my my latest experience is reading this crazy Charley Kaufman novel I well I love that and and speaking of books just cuz I know he he's a through line in the movie one of the characters quotes him a few times what's your relationship with Marcus aurelius's meditations well I I you know I I have he's quoted a number of times in the movie there's uh I wrote down every time he there's a beautiful scene where the father and daughter sort of the Cicero scene and uh she she says at first it is responsibility of of leadership to work intelligent with what is given and not waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices and that's sort of appropriate for the cathalene character who's a futurist yeah and then she looks to her father and she says the object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding yourself in the ranks of the insane which is very appropriate for today yes and then she she kisses him and she says finally the universes change our life is what our thoughts make it which is which is Marcus the great Marcus aelius what a great what a great what a great emperor Rome had yes the the only maybe the only philosopher what a terrible son he had yes yeah you could argue that um waen Phoenix's Commodus uh is maybe uh uh too generous like he was actually worse he was worse he was worse than Caligula yeah how does that if anyone could be worse than CIA or Nero yes I I am FC I'm fascinated with that how does such a great man raise such a terrible Son Well it comes down to how many wives did he have who who was who was Kus his mother fosa Marcus only had one one wife and they were they were pretty uh it it was uh we're told he loves her deeply there's some rumors that she's Unfaithful but we're told he he loves her deeply the problem I think is Marcus Aurelius buries six of his 11 children which I I don't know how a family could possibly withstand that kind of tragedy you know in the old days I mean a generation before us people usually had six seven eight kids and they lost two yeah and and and I I lost one son and I tell you it's a it's a sentence of 30 years before the first thing you think in the morning did it happen did it really happen it's only after 30 years that that it wasn't the first horrible thought I had in the morning wow and made me and made me think of that great escalus quote there there's an escalus quote about how the pain drips on you drop by drop until by the awful grace of God you know it took me 30 years for the horror of realizing I lost my son to not be the first thing I thought of in the morning I've sort of thought that when people say Marcus aurelius's writing is depressing I think that this guy got out of bed at all in the morning after after the tragedy and death and pain that he felt actually he must have been the most hopeful optimistic person who ever lived I don't find uh you know I found that there's a there's a um Marcus Aus quote I'm sure you know it I don't want to get to look at it but I lost this wife of of of 60 years and and I'm so sorry it's sort of devastating but there was a Marcus arus quote that really lifted me which was the if the if if you lose I I I don't know literally but you'll know it if you lose a you lose a loved one uh honor her and in a sense try to be more like her and then she'll live in your actions and so my wife was very good and and I I just try to be like her and when I try to be like her I I I you know like she was very if someone was alone or sick or something she'd call them up and and be comforting to them and I'm not like that you know so I started to do that people that I I know some guys my age who have no grandchildren are just there and call them up and say how are you and being like her yeah and they were so pleased and oh it's so kind and and and so I I keep my life my wife in my life with Marcus arus advice by by trying to be more like her I find that absolutely beautiful uh oh man that's yeah it is you know you know that es that escalus quote you just mentioned I was just writing about this last week because did you know that that the the night that that that uh RFK found out that Martin Luther King had been assassinated he was giving a speech in Indianapolis in in a in a black neighborhood and he could feel a a riot coming on and he he quoted that speech to them and he spoke about his own uh loss of of his brother and that was one of the few cities in America that didn't Riot and so again these ideas from the classics coming right back to Modern Life and being of use it's such a such an incredibly wonderful and important tradition I think well someone sent me that qu when I quote when I lost my son and it was the only it was the only quote that that I understood emotionally that that that ultimately it drops on you drop by drop until by the awful grace of God comes wisdom or something whatever came yeah I think before that he Sophocles or escalus says uh you know we suffer unto truth that's the only way that we learn the important things about life and about existence we suffer into truth how beautiful well you know there there the loss of a child is not something I would wish on my worst enemy in fact I don't even have any enemy i i i i find I you know everyone in my life who maybe did me wrong had reasons that in their story to do it so I the only person it's tough to forgive is yourself MH how many years have you been married I have been married for or let's see uh I think we're approaching 10 but I've been with my wife for 20 years we we met in college when we were 19 years old how wonderful well I I I hope in my movie they ask in the story she says to the character of all the institutions your your Utopia wants to preserve which is the most important to you and he says marriage wow I you know marriage is going to change because everything around it is changing but I do hope we can preserve it because there's something so more beautiful about it than meets the eye at first glance you know you know what's funny I I had first read Marcus Reus in college a few weeks before I met my wife and I remember we were on our first date and I was telling her about this book that I'd read we were we were talking about it and um so many years later I I I go to the Shelf to pull down a a copy of of meditation I was going to get something out of it and I found a receipt inside and I learned in that moment that my wife had went and bought herself a copy from Barnes & Noble like like a few days after we had met how wonderful yeah yeah I have a I have I have a beautiful set I you know what I own here I could show it to you it's right there I have the lobe Library oh all the little green and red and and blue ones the whole the whole thing the whole thing the whole wall is covered with it I only wish I could read either Latin or Greek because everything I have is in Greek I have the whole thing yeah every other page right one page is English and then one page is the original those are just beautiful little books yeah it's a great it's it's a great publication I have the whole thing I'm very proud of it I wish I could read it Francis this has been the treat of a lifetime for me I have one kind of last question for you this might be a big one but but I'm I'm curious okay uh you basically make this enormous bet at this point in your uh life and career you go all in on this this idea which you've been working on for something like 40 years H how does an artist know that this is the thing and they haven't lost their mind right like I imagine there must have been moments where you doubted yourself or you thought this isn't going to work it's too hard how does an artist know what is the the big swing that they have to take and then what is uh you know a field too far well you don't you don't know uh but it just for me you know I I'm more interested if you said to me what do you want you want $1,000 or you want a thousand million or you want a thousand friends I'll say I want the friends I don't value money I I I I there's too many times in history where people had buckets of money and couldn't Buy loaf of bread yet there was a friend who said I'll give you half of my bread sure and I I believe I believe that uh that we are all one family together and uh and and I I don't think in the future there's going to be money I think it's going to be uh uh us doing things for each other that give us pleasure and and and uh you know I mean also also I I I realiz you know the biggest gamble I took was apocalypse now cuz I was on the hook for it and interest was over 20% and people are still seeing Apocalypse Now and I feel pretty confident that no matter what happens people are going to be going to see megalopolis for the next 40 Years and may be a period where it's a an apparent disaster but over time you know I I once read an article uh that James Joyce was talking about um fin Finnigan's Wake and he said I'm going to put so much interesting stuff in this that it's going to take you know uh 50 years for people to figure out what's in it and it'll sell the whole time you know it's sort of like that if you make a word I I believe that megalopolis is rich in what's in it and that people will see it again and it's not boring yeah it's not like most people who see it or don't like it if you say you want to see it again tomorrow they say yeah because it's it's it's never boring and there's always something new like apocalypse was so you know I feel sangu I didn't make it to make money I made it to for people to to to change how they feel about one another and and real you know there's a lot of things that have that are never said publicly you know I asked St uh green blad I said has any philosopher ever said the human being is a genius species the human being is be oned by light years any other intelligent creature we know he said well there was one guy named Miranda de la P DEA Miranda who wrote something called the origins of man but he got put in prison for it and he had her he had to to get out he had to say that yes the human being is um incomparable genius but God made him so that some so that someone could appreciate how great God was and that's how they got but he died at 39 did you ever hear of him no Miranda de la Pika his name is and he's the only one who's ever said what this movie says this this movie comes right out and says it to your face the human being is is beyond creature that that is beyond being admired it should be you know we are great what we can do is great there's no problem on this Earth that we can't solve that if we just could employ our our gifts to it and and and I believe that to be the what other creature can do what we do no I'm sitting here on a stupid device talking to you where God knows where you are I get to feel I know you and we made this thing we we we we we primates crawling around in the jungle how did we how do we do it we are geniuses and we are one family that's what I feel and that's what megalopolis basically says well I I I respect and I appreciate the bet my my uh my friend the filmmaker Casey neistat said to me once um look if if all we cared about was money we would have we would have gone in into advertising and he said you have to remember you don't make work to make money you make money to make more work and and that's kind of how I think you what if you're not going to go all your chips in on something you cared about what was the point of accumulating all the chips in the first place totally and and you know this thought those chips are nothing my real chips are my children and and what we're talking about is whether or not there's going to be a habitable world for them I have a great grandson he's he's 15 months old what kind of world is he going to live in if if if if if if we're gonna if we're going to destroy it in front of our eyes I you know I I I don't know I I I my my dream is that this movie every Thanksgiving people are going to see and know every new years's people are going to see megalopolis and at the end of seeing it instead of after saying well I've decided I'm giving up smoking or I'm I'm gonna lose weight or I'm I'm gonna behave better and I want them instead to say is the society where we're living in the only one available to us and what what could we do to make it better and every Thanksgiving that's going to be the conversation and that would be Utopia because if we had that conversation we would make it wonderful that's a lovely idea and I hope that happens also Francis thank thank you so much this has been incredible well it's a great pleasure to to meet you and where you you said you're where are you based I I forgot you're right outside Austin Texas please if you go to the the uh the Mexican restaurant yeah send me a note if you liked it I will I'll go do you know Richard Linker or or Roberto Rodriguez I know Richard a little bit we both live in the same little town here uh he he's the he's the uh the original in this town of bastri Texas but I have a little bookstore and a and uh and everything here in the little town they're both wonderful people I'll tell them you said hello okay bye-bye nice to meet you all right see you