got political while discussing his new film on Monday, suggesting that the upcoming presidential election may mirror the downfall of Rome. At a conversation as part of the New York Film Festival — which was also streamed to 65 theaters across the U.S.
and Canada with support from Imax — Coppola was joined by and to talk about his long journey to making “a Roman epic set in modern America as Rome,” as he described it. follows a conflict between Cesar (played by Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian future, and his opposition Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo. “People always said to me, ‘Why do you want to make a movie about America as Rome?’ Well, today, America is Rome, and they’re about to go through the same experience, for the same reasons that Rome lost its republic and ended up with an emperor.
It was very prescient to do a movie about America as Rome because it’s going to happen in a few months,” Coppola declared. “And it was the same reason; the Rome of that time was so prosperous, Rome is making lots of money so the senators were actually very interested in their power and their own wealth, and they weren’t managing the country. Well the same thing has happened here.
Our senates and our representatives are all wealthy and manipulating their own power rather than running the country and then we’re in danger of losing it.” Lee deadpanned, “Back in Rome, were.