"Coppola has been unable to find a studio buyer for the movie and it’s clear why: 'Megalopolis' is likely to confuse and divide mainstream audiences."

"No two actors in this movie are on the same page about how to perform it, and the result is a mishmash of acting styles and big, misbegotten choices that had some journalists at the festival giggling in disbelief. The dialogue is either bluntly declarative or totally impenetrable, and Coppola often interrupts the action with shots of featured extras so prolonged that you can tell with certainty that you’re looking at one of the filmmaker’s relatives."

From "Francis Ford Coppola’s 'Megalopolis': What to Know After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, we can answer your many questions, though some details still puzzle us" (NYT).

ADDED: From "Megalopolis Is a Work of Absolute Madness" (NY Magazine):

There is nothing in Megalopolis that feels like something out of a “normal” movie. It has its own logic and cadence and vernacular. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin. Some characters speak in rhyme, others just in high-minded prose that feels like maybe it should be in verse. At one point, Adam Driver does the entire “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet. Why? I’m not exactly sure. But it sure sounds good....

Watch out for mainstream disaffection based on the fact that this movie contains traces of Ayn Rand:

What do Lou Reed, Bill O'Reilly, and Adam Driver have in common?

Answer: They all walked out on Terry Gross — the magnificent interviewer of NPR's "Fresh Air."

Info gleaned from "Adam Driver skips out on his NPR interview after host Terry Gross tries to make him listen to a clip from his new Netflix film Marriage Story" (Daily Mail). Gross was on notice that Driver was sensitive about listening to himself. In previous interview with her, he refused to listen to a clip, and this dialogue ensued:

'I don’t want to hear the bad acting that probably was happening during that clip,' he joked.

'Does it throw you off to hear yourself?' she inquired.

'Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it,' he replied. 'And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change.'

Each of us only knows our own inner life. Some of us more than others have a sense of what Driver is attempting to explain there. I do think there's a great range in how minutely people examine and reexamine their failings and imagined failings. I'm going to guess that Driver's acting is great because he's so uncomfortable with himself all the time that it produces a fascinating on-screen spectacle. In an interview, he doesn't have a script, he's supposed to be producing his own words, and the weird uncomfortableness is not part of a movie, but really him. I can believe that experience, inside his head, is intolerable. Those who feel confident, who roll along unconcerned with imperfections, and who love the sound of their own voice probably don't realize how much they are enjoying freedom from the condition Driver describes.

Why did Lou Reed walk out? According to Terry Gross:

For years I had wanted to interview Lou Reed. When people would ask, “who’s the person you most want to interview?” My answer would be “Lou Reed.”

I finally got to interview him (this was a few years ago) and he ended the interview, in about six minutes or so, or less, because everything I was asking him, he didn’t want to talk about. He said, “I’m sorry this isn’t working” and he walked out.

Why did Bill O'Reilly walk out?

"I think he just, like, punched a wall or something."

Here’s my impression of the beauty blogger who lives next door to Adam Driver in Marriage Story who was trying to film a make up tutorial pic.twitter.com/pscYwRub60

— caitie delaney (@caitiedelaney) December 14, 2019

"How did this standard-issue marshmallow of a man seduce his wife out of a promising Hollywood career to act in his Off Broadway plays?"

"He doesn’t say smart, enticing things ('You pulled the rug out from under me and now I’m in hell' is standard fare) and thanks to his rendition of 'Being Alive' from Sondheim’s Company, I finally don’t feel like an asshole for using the word bathetic."

Ha ha. I'm enjoying the writing by Hannah Gold in "Marriage Story Made Me Feel Nothing" (NY Magazine). I haven't seen the movie or had any desire to see it, but I'm just really enjoying this takedown. Hannah Gold is really good.

[I]n a film ostensibly about a messy divorce there is only one fight scene and it’s rather disappointing. Glib chitchat about Monopoly and credenzas lights the way for a noisy spitballing of grievances.

I know. You can criticize this kind of writing. It needs to be checked for logic. How could spitballs ever be noisy? I'm thinking of the largest possible spitball making the loudest possible splat. Near the beginning I read "These snapshots offer the audience a glimpse of love forged in the persnickety details of intimacy," I wanted to word edit. How can "persnickety details of intimacy" work as a forge?  But I kept reading and enjoyed myself so much, I wanted to tell you about it.

And here's Adam Driver singing "Being Alive":

Kanye West wore a "Make America Great Again" cap on SNL, and he said some pro-Trump things and got booed and cut off.

People reports:

He started off by singing, “I wanna cry right now. Black man in America, you’re supposed to keep what you feel inside right now. And the liberals bully you and tell you what you can and cannot wear, where you and they can’t not stare. And they look at me and say, ‘It’s not fair. How the hell did you get here?’ Well…”

Wearing a Make America Great Again hat, he then delivered an unexpected speech in front of SNL performers like Colin Jost and host Adam Driver as some audience members booed. “Actually, blacks weren’t always Democrats,” he started. “It’s like a plan they did to take the fathers out the homes and promote welfare. Does anybody know about that? That’s the Democratic plan.”

Trump weighed in:

Like many, I don’t watch Saturday Night Live (even though I past hosted it) - no longer funny, no talent or charm. It is just a political ad for the Dems. Word is that Kanye West, who put on a MAGA hat after the show (despite being told “no”), was great. He’s leading the charge!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2018