“Literature speaks in many ways. It speaks to the present, of course, and to the future, if it is good literature. But literature is also a way for the writer to make a dialogue with the dead. This is the power of literature. It is not like religion: religion gives you the feeling that you are eternal. Here, there is no eternity at all, but it opens the possibility of dialoguing with the dead.”
Archiv: the knowing few
Francis Ford Coppola: ‘I Have Nothing Left to Lose’
At Cannes, where it premiered in May, Megalopolis managed to be the single most divisive film of the festival; love it or hate it, Coppola’s huge swing for the philosophical fences is a truly singular work — and is exactly the movie that he wanted to make. (It’s set to hit theaters on Sept. 27.) That Coppola somehow managed in his eighties to will this long-gestating pet project into being and self-finance it against his winery for $120 million is borderline unbelievable, even given his legacy as someone willing to bet a fortune and/or a film studio to follow a dream. “I have everything to lose here,” he says, referring to this portrait of the decline, fall, and Phoenix-like rise of a civilization. “And, in a way, I have nothing left to lose anymore.”
The U.S. Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun
(July 11, 2023)
Whenever people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them that I’m a translator from English to English.