‘Megalopolis’ extra describes “shock” of Francis Ford Coppola kiss
An extra who performed on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming movie Megalopolis has revealed the “shock” they experienced when the Apocalypse Now and The Godfather director suddenly kissed her during the filming of a particular scene.
Last week, videos were published online in which Coppola was shown making his way through a crowd before suddenly stopping and kissing a female extra. The woman was Lauren Pagone, who had been dancing in a nightclub scene and had already appeared in a number of moments in Megalopolis as a background actor.
Pagone said that the director approached her out of nowhere, pulled her towards him, hugged her and then kissed her without her permission. “I was in shock,” Pagone recently told Variety. “I didn’t expect him to kiss and hug me like that. I was caught off guard. And I can tell you he came around a couple times.”
Apparently, Coppola had announced over a microphone that he would perhaps be kissing some of his actors without their permission, noting, “Sorry, if I come up to you and kiss you, just know it’s solely for my pleasure”.
Variety published the videos of the scene in question last week, but another woman who featured in the production, Rayna Menz, said that Coppola hadn’t acted out of order. She said the director “did nothing to make me or for that matter anyone on set feel uncomfortable.”
Pagone, however, did not agree with Menz’s sentiments and felt annoyed that her fellow extra had spoken on behalf of the entire cast and crew. “I don’t appreciate anybody speaking for me,” Pagone said. “I would never speak for that actress.”
She added, “I’ve kept my mouth shut. I’ve kept quiet. But it’s frustrating that she’s putting out there, ‘Hey, it was great for everyone’, when she doesn’t know what other people were feeling. You can’t speak for anyone but yourself. My experience was different.”
Coppola has not yet commented on the incident, but such occurrences seem to be indicative of the kind of questionable production ethics the director has shown on his most recent movie. The film’s intimacy co-ordinator, Samantha McDonald had also said that she had not been on set for the nightclub sequence.
Reportedly, Coppola had asked extras to repeatedly kiss one another in the scene and then came into the shot and started kissing them himself without any sort of warning. This is said to be just one of several instances in which Coppola displayed such behaviour.
