Francis Ford Coppola on the parallels between the fall of Rome and U.S. decline

In the same way that people might watch Bram Stoker's Dracula on Halloween or It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas, Francis Ford Coppola dreams that every New Year's Eve people will watch his latest film, Megalopolis.

That night, instead of making resolutions to quit drinking or smoking, the director imagines that people will resolve to have a conversation about the state of the world.

"What I want them to say is, 'We're going to have a conversation: is the society we're living in the only one available to us?'" Coppola says in an interview with Q's Tom Power. "[We would] discuss ideas about how we could make the world better. At every New Year's, that's what they're going to talk about. Because if they do, they're going to come up with some good solutions. That's my dream."

Megalopolis is an epic Roman fable set in a fictional version of New York City, called New Rome. It follows a troubled yet brilliant artist named Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) who seeks to rebuild the decaying metropolis as a sustainable utopia using a new material called Megalon. He runs into corrupt politicians, shady news media and degenerate billionaires — sound familiar?

More than 40 years ago, Coppola conceived the idea for Megalopolis out of a desire to make a film that compared the fall of Rome with the decline of the United States.

Right as the movie is about to come out, America is going through the same thing Rome did thousands of years ago.- Francis Ford Coppola

"I began to realize that America was Rome today," he says. "That America had been founded on Rome: we have a Senate, we don't have a king, we have Roman law, everyone knows what pro bono means…. So I came up with this idea to make a movie where we are essentially New Rome. And interestingly enough, right as the movie is about to come out, America is going through the same thing Rome did thousands of years ago and we may lose the republic."

But Coppola is more hopeful than cynical, and the tone of Megalopolis reflects that. From his perspective, there's no problem on Earth that can't be solved with human ingenuity and creativity. Every major issue we face — wealth inequality, authoritarianism, environmental degradation and so on — could be eradicated if only the system could be fixed first.

"We are living in a world of unfulfilled people," he tells Power. "In other words, we spend $7 trillion or more on advertising, selling the idea of happiness. Well, if your business is to sell a little bit of happiness, the people you're selling to can't be happy; they have to be unhappy. Our system that we're involved in is deliberately keeping human beings unhappy so they'll buy a little happiness."

Coppola says the film states very clearly that utopia is being able to ask any question and simply have a conversation. 

"All I'm saying is that the horrors of our world are unnecessary," he explains. "It's our system we have to talk about. And it's not like we should have communism — those systems also have problems. We have to quit selling happiness and keeping the people unhappy."

The full interview with Francis Ford Coppola is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. He also talks about how making his masterpiece The Godfather turned his life upside down, and why he always ends up becoming the characters in his films. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Francis Ford Coppola produced by Mitch Pollock.