Francis Ford Coppola says studios are only making movies to pay off their debt

Francis Ford Coppola knows a little something about not having enough money to make the movie you want. The legendary director notoriously funded his controversial sci-fi epic, Megalopolis, directly from his own pocket (and at the expense of a few of his vineyard holdings). But to hear him tell it, he’s not the only one struggling under the financial burdens of the modern era.

“I fear that the film industry has become more of a matter of people being hired to meet their debt obligations because the studios are in great, great debt. And the job is not so much to make good movies, the job is to make sure they pay their debt obligations,” Coppola said at a press conference following the film’s Cannes premiere last night (via Variety). “Obviously, new companies like Amazon and Apple and Microsoft, they have plenty of money, so it might be that the studios we knew for so long, some wonderful ones, are not to be here in the future anymore.”

Coppola, on the other hand, is certainly not one to compromise his artistic integrity to meet any budgetary (or any other) constraint; a philosophy that reportedly led to some pretty bad behavior on set, including allegedly attempting to kiss female extras before a scene to “get them in the mood.” But whether all of this actually led to a “good movie” is very much up for debate.

Megalopolis—which reportedly includes a deep fake Adam Driver sex scene, Shakespeare’s entire “to be, or not to be” soliloquy, and a moment where a real live person in the theater talks to the characters through the screen—divided critics more than any other film in recent memory last night. “This is a tale about a flailing American society mirrored by metaversal meanderings born of string theory, mashed-up with end-of-Republic Roman machinations just to provide a bit of operatic spice,” A.V. Club reviewer Jason Gorber wrote in his response. “It is, in a few words, batshit insane.”

In some ways, it seems like this heightened discourse is exactly what Coppola wanted. “I think it’s the role of the artist, the films, to shine light on what’s happening in the world,” he also commented at the press conference. “If I may say, one of the things about our wonderful cast is that they reflect all sorts of political ideas. This is not one notion.” It sounds like there may never be a consensus on this particular film either.