Five-time Academy Award winner Francis Ford Coppola rings director Sarah Polley from his quaint hotel room desk in Peachtree, Georgia, to discuss Polley’s latest (and perhaps most important) film to date. Polley, the actor-turned-auteur, is in awe as they talk on Zoom through their laptop screens, because Coppola is only days away from starting production on “Megalopolis” — a passion project he wrote in the late ’80s, about an architect in a futuristic New York City.
With family and assistants buzzing all around him, Coppola seems fixed only on Polley, whose feature film “Women Talking” explores trauma among a group of Mennonite women after a sexual assault. Coppola confesses he’s been a fan of Polley’s work for years; Polley recalls how she auditioned for “Megalopolis” 20 years prior. The two longtime mutual admirers compare notes on film adaptation, wrangling ensemble casts and why nerves are sometimes the best sign.
Watch the full interview here as part of Variety’s Directors on Directors series, presented by MGM Studios and United Artists Releasing.
