Studio Pulls Trailer With Invented Quotes

Despite Megalopolis trailer, Pauline Kael really liked The Godfather
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 21, 2024 7:15 PM CDT
Studio Pulls Trailer for Megalopolis With Invented Quotes
Director Francis Ford Coppola appears at the photo call for the film "Megalopolis" at the 77th international film festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 17.   (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)

When it debuted at Cannes, Megalopolis did not elicit the enthusiastic reception from critics that Francis Ford Coppola surely wanted. Some found it baffling if fascinating, Bilge Ebiri writes in Vulture. The studio's response included releasing a trailer for the film on Wednesday with quotes from several mostly negative reviews of previous Coppola films, including The Godfather. The quotes ostensibly came from reviews by famed film critics, including Pauline Kael, most of whom are deceased. The goal seemed to be to show that his films have stood the test of time, and are highly regarded now, after overcoming initial panning by those know-nothing critics. But the critics' quotes appear to be fiction; Variety confirmed they couldn't be found in the original reviews they're supposedly from. The trailer lasted less than a day. Lionsgate recalled it later Wednesday and apologized to the critics and Coppola. "We screwed up," the studio said, per the AP. "We are sorry." For example:

  • The Godfather: It turns out that Kael did not write that the film was "diminished by its artsiness." Nor did she say that about Godfather II. In truth, both reviews were glowing, per Vulture. Of the first one, Kael wrote, "This is a bicentennial picture that doesn't insult the intelligence." Nor did the Village Voice's Andrew Sarris call The Godfather a "sloppy self-indulgent movie."
  • Bram Stoker's Dracula: Roger Ebert, in giving the film three stars, did not call it a "triumph of style over substance." He did say that about 1989's Batman. And Owen Gleiberman did not mention the film's "absurdity" in Entertainment Weekly while describing the movie as "a beautiful mess."
  • Apocalypse Now: Rex Reed didn't write or say the quote attributed to him, but he did find the film a "gumbo of pretentious twaddle." There's no evidence that Vincent Canby described Apocalypse Now as "hollow at the core."

Gleiberman told Variety he wishes he'd called Dracula "a beautiful mess" at the time. Quotes aside, he said, the trailer's narrative is false: "Critics loved The Godfather. And though Apocalypse Now was divisive, it received a lot of crucial critical support." Megalopolis arrives in US theaters on Sept. 27. (Coppola has been accused of bad behavior on the Megalopolis set.)

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