Of all of the completely miserable issues printed within the Hollywood trades on any given day, this has obtained to be among the many worst: “It’s so not good, and it was so sad watching it … This is not how Coppola should end his directing career.”

This was in response to an early screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a $120 million sci-fi epic that the legendary Godfather director has been making an attempt to make for roughly 4 a long time. The quote, from an unnamed “studio head,” was revealed in a piece in The Hollywood Reporter positioning the movie because the type of film nobody within the enterprise needs to funnel cash into as a result of it (allegedly) doesn’t have field workplace potential. While that quote was, in journalism parlance, the kicker, the true zinger got here within the addendum on the finish: “This story has been updated to include that Megalopolis will premiere in Cannes.”

Shot. Chaser.

THR’s piece doesn’t present the gender of the studio exec quoted, however I’m going to exit on a limb: Sir, what the fuck are you speaking about? Even if Megalopolis is 2 hours and quarter-hour of Adam Driver (sure, he stars) doing paper doll performs, Coppola has survived a lot worse. This won’t finish his profession. If something, quotes like this sign an finish of—or a minimum of the huge want for a reboot of—Hollywood.

Earlier this week, Bilge Ebiri wrote a full-throated plea in Vulture, declaring “Hollywood Is Doomed If There’s No Room for Megalopolises.” Matt Zoller Seitz took a barely completely different tack, addressing France immediately from his desk at RogerEbert.com and begging Cannes Film Festival individuals to cheer the movie and save the US from itself. Both identified that a lot of Coppola’s movies—Bram Stoker’s Dracula, One from the Heart—didn’t totally join with audiences or critics after they had been first launched. The latter nearly bankrupted him—proper after he mortgaged everything he owned to finance Apocalypse Now, which at the moment sits, alongside different Coppola movies, on the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies of all time.

I’d prefer to make an entreaty of a special sort: Nerds, assemble. We have an extended historical past of crowdfunding and letter-writing to manifest the initiatives on which Hollywood has wobbled. Bjo Trimble saved Star Trek. Queer sci-fi, Veronica Mars, The People’s Joker—we’ve raised money for all of it. Studios don’t assume Megalopolis is bankable; it could not appease any streaming service’s algorithm. Who cares. An on-line petition with sufficient backing can present a advertising marketing campaign to rival the multimillion-dollar one Coppola has envisioned. It’s price a shot,

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