I have found my people
Sea lions must've been saints in their past lives.
They are sea lions.
We’ve been traveling a bit lately, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time on meandering walks around hotels and parks rebranded as “spy missions.” More specifically, recon missions for K.I.D.S., or the Kids’ International Department of Spying. Though technically an adult, I perform a necessary role as Special Agent Moon’s “fixer” in the field.
What could ever be more a more compelling mystery than the little closet they keep the ice machine in? Why are hotels so serious about ice? What’s down this hallway? Does this go underground? Where are they going? K.I.D.S. demands answers!
Behold my cute-ass life.
On one such mission — what is that crazy arp! arp! arp! sound? — we turned a corner to encounter thousands of these glorious creatures.
Hunter S. Thompson said at the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards. I say we only truly know the kind among us when they get to come back as sea lions. Either way: water cats.
True fact worth noting: you are living through a time that Hunter S. Thompson could not. No disrespect. But also: shout out to you, you know?
Comics!
The Operation Ivy portion of this comic comes to a close over these two pages. I switched to a brush as opposed to a pen for these, and I think it serves the images. They’re a little more gestural, a little more focused on rhythm than detail. I don’t fuckin’ know.
Fip Flopp V. Exactly the kind of kid taking a briefcase to school. Subscriber easter egg: the cloud shape on the above page comes from the Operation Ivy logo!
This is going to be a graphic novel about Paul Redfern, but when it’s all said and done a lot of it is going to not be about Paul Redfern. You know how it goes. Ramen Ezra Lungs.
This is the 2-page spread introduction of the Flopp House, where the Flopps live. It’s based on like a decommissioned Chinese radio surveillance tower. There’s a neighborhood kid burning heaters on the balcony. That’s Craig. He’s cool.
The aim here to is to preview some of the characters you’ll meet more formally later, and to introduce the house as the wacky place where these weirdos all live.
Movie review: I love Megalopolis like I love Jupiter Ascending
My favorite thing is an artist at full send. Total commitment to the work. It’s all anyone can ask from them!
I keep hearing that Megalopolis is a critical and commercial failure, but I don’t think it’s either. I don’t know if it can fail, at least not according to the terms laid out in the movie itself.
Do you remember Jupiter Ascending? The Wachowskis’ massive-in-scope sci-fi space opera, in which a shirtless half-wolf Channing Tatum flies around on scooter boots, squiring a secret-princess Mila Kunis around the galaxy? No? It rules.
In the case of Jupiter Ascending, my theory is that the Wachowskis started out making a trilogy, but then the studio saw some roughs and told them ‘we’ll let you make one,’ so they made Jupiter Ascending, and it’s just exactly the insane mess you’d make if you had to squeeze 900 ideas into 2 hours, 7 minutes — with $175 million dollars to spend.
The catch: you have to have the 900 ideas.
I don’t care if you like Jupiter Ascending or not. And I almost don’t care whether or not it’s “good” by any traditional measure. It’s already good. If a movie studio gave me a frankly astronomical sum of money I hope I’d have the courage to make something as audacious and weird and personal as Jupiter Ascending.
Imagine the bullshit the Money Guys™ put you through at the 175 million dollar level. And still making Jupiter Ascending! You fucking win, Wachowskis. Don’t get me started on Matrix 4. They stuck the studio for $190 million on that one, and all the studio got in return was a movie about lighting 190 million dollars on fire. Art is what you can get away with, and The Wachowskis are undefeated.
Megalopolis is a little different. It has a 120 million dollar budget — ¡papitas! — but it’s Francis Ford Coppola’s own money. And: he’s like 84. And he has 120 million dollars to throw at a movie project. You’re Francis Ford Coppola. What else are you supposed to even do with 120 million dollars if you have it? Build a mausoleum?
So this is the insane mess you’d make if you had 120 million dollars to burn, but no more fucks to give.
Still, it seems small.
Not small.
Small in the same way Daniel Johnston’s music is small, but you can hear what he’s trying to do, and what he’s trying to do is very big. Or it would be. You can see what Megalopolis is trying to do, and what it’s trying to do is revolutionary.
Megalopolis is like the movie you watch when you’re waiting to get into the Haunted Mansion, but without the ride. You can sense it, though. You can sense that Coppola, who made Captain Eo, wants each audience member to experience the sensation of “stopping time” for themselves.
The individual scenes may have been better served as waypoints or cut scenes in an otherwise immersive, interactive environment. That would justify some the more egregiously expository speechifying, anyway.
As for the movie’s central “art can save us” stance? I’m sort of with him!
The idea that we make so much food we have to throw most of it away but people still starve to death on planet Earth seems like the prosecution’s exhibit A in the people vs. how dumb as hell the concept of a zero-sum game is. The idea that this is the way things work, because this is the best we can do? Ridiculous.
But listen. An 84 year-old’s vision for the future is going to be necessarily based on some outdated ideas. And any era’s ideas about the future are most telling about the era in which those ideas gained popularity, not in contrast to whatever future eventually came to pass. It’s incumbent on creatives to imagine the future as a stand-in for a more-perfect present, so it’s heartening to see a career iconoclast like Coppola bet the farm on a movie with a very hopeful message.
Minor quibbles:
Megalopolis — a deeply humanist movie shot against green screens — shares a problem with Trolls Band Together — a movie made with zero evidence of any human involvement whatsoever: parts of it appear ungrounded. Like the events unfolding movie aren’t taking place in physical space.
In old movies and sitcoms, you never see the ceiling, because that’s where all the lights and microphones are, and when you become too aware of the lack of ceilings it really takes you out of the experience. This is like that, but with floors, and it’s unsettling. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie suffers from the same problem.
Keanu should have been in the Adam Driver role, because Keanu would never have delivered that dumbass ‘I only have time for people who can think’ line, or it least not so seriously. I was legit like “should I leave?”
Major takeaways:
Aubrey Plaza is an all-timer. We know this. But watching dudes like Jon Voigt and Shia LaBoeuf react to her and try and fail to match her unhinged energy is so much fun to watch. No one knows what to do with her. It’s great.
Francis Ford Coppola makes beautiful movie moments almost by accident. There’s a part where Jason Schwartzman starts playing the drums, and for a spontaneous moment we’re in Uncle Yanco.
Coppola can’t help but capture small moments on a human scale, even as he tries to reframe the scope of cinema itself. Whether or not he succeeds in this is beside the point.
∞/10
TTFN
Bo