A Megalopolis Live Actor on How He Got the Fourth Wall-Breaking Gig

After decades of development, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed epic Megalopolis is finally in theaters. Set in an alternate America, the bewildering film explores the power struggle between visionary Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) and corrupt mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). During its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, an actor in the crowd stepped up to the screen and addressed Catilina directly in a fourth wall-breaking press conference that stunned audiences. It’s a showstopping experience unseen in a Hollywood production since William Castle was pulling tricks on audiences in his low-budget horror films back in the 1950s and ’60s.

It would be a mistake to call this brief sequence a gimmick, though. It’s fully in line with Coppola’s late-period work that emphasizes technical innovation and privileges the theatrical experience. It’s not the first time either that Coppola attempts a kind of immersive experience. Nearly 15 years ago, the underseen and underrated Twixt, which featured just a few short sequences shot in 3D, aimed to reimagine technology as the landscape of innovation and possibility. Due to the film’s limited general release and the overall souring on 3D technology on a whole, it’s clear that Coppola needed to go bigger to replicate the magic of the big-screen experience he grew up with.

Not all showings of Megalopolis feature the alternatively named “immersive” or “enhanced” experience of having an actor in the room address the screen. (Or at least appear to — the dialogue is pre-recorded.) But in the few cinemas facilitating this iconic fourth-wall-breaking moment, the brief role of “live participant” has become sought after by cinephiles and actors alike. It’s not just a chance to be part of a Francis Ford Coppola film but also an opportunity to be a part of film history.

For Alex Rose, a publicist at Communications MingoTwo a press relations and promotional firm based in Montreal, it was simple as showing up for work one day. With zero acting ambitions and no extra cash to show for it, Rose landed one of the most iconic roles in film history, almost by accident. When they needed a man to play a journalist, he was the only guy in the office that morning. That’s how he stepped into the spotlight.

How did you end up with the gig? How long before the first “performance” did you learn you were doing it? 
I just received an email from Touchwood PR, which is a Toronto based PR company that we work with often because they don’t have a base in Quebec. Whenever they need something that’s Quebec specific, they’ll contact us. Honestly, in our office there are only women and I’m the only guy. One of the partners is a man, but he was on vacation for the period that Megalopolis was coming out. They said, it needs to be a man because the recording is a man’s voice, otherwise, anyone could do it. I had heard about it from Cannes and I was like, “For sure, I want to do it because it sounds like a unique experience.” I got the PDF and all the instructions, maybe a week before the first showing.

What was included in the PDF?
It was pretty specific instructions. They were specifically for last Monday’s screening, which was the simultaneous event that had the Q&A from the New York Film Festival. It was all the timings and stuff were queued to that. I think everyone got that same PDF that said, like “at 8:00, there’s going to be the Q & A and the movie should start around 8:30.” For those who’ve seen what happens, it was pretty down to the second of everything that we had to do. You know, walk from your seat to the microphone and put your hand on the microphone when there’s a feedback sound and, mime along to the dialogue, take notes and then go back and sit down. It had the entire thing mapped out. There was also a link to a video. I think it might have just been a test video. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone in the theatre watching it. But, there was a video of someone doing it, so then I just based myself mostly on that.

Who was the person in the video? 
I have no idea who the person was, a guy with a beard and glasses. It’s filmed from quite far away, there is not much to see.

Have you ever wanted to be an actor? Are you being paid for this gig?
I’m not an aspiring actor, I’m a publicist. I didn’t get paid specifically for this. I imagine it falls under the wages that I already get paid to do my job from 9 to 5 on Monday to Friday. I didn’t get any extra.

Do you get an IMDB credit? Is this a union gig?
I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t think so, but it’s hard to say. I don’t know how many people across the world are [doing it]. As I understand it, in Montreal at least, there were three screenings with the interactive element to it. The last one is tonight when we’re recording this but I can’t make it tonight, so someone else is going to do it. I don’t even know who that is. I don’t think that I get any credit, although it would be cool.

What is your understanding of how other live participants in other cities are being chosen or recruited? Have you spoken to anybody else who’s done it?
My understanding of it is entirely based on Twitter and people who are speculating on it. So I’m in the same position as everyone else. As I understand it, at Cannes, the actor spoke. It wasn’t a pre-recorded line, or at least that’s how it was reported. But, having done it a couple times now, I don’t know how that would work or be more effective, you know? Even though I’ve done it, I’m about as in the dark as anyone else about how everyone else.

You kind of fell into the role because there was really no one else in the office who could do it. But imagine there were more people. Do you think that there would have been an audition process?
I doubt it. I think it would have just really been like, “Who wants to do this?” I imagine in some contexts there’s people who want to do it more than I wanted to do it. I don’t think I would have fought in the arena for this opportunity. I thought it was cool to get it, it was a fun thing. But, as an opportunity, I don’t know how much of an impact it makes.

On Monday, the first time, there was a lot of press in the audience, and so there were a lot of people that I knew who were watching the film. I was sitting all the way at the front, far away from everyone else. Most people didn’t even know that I was there. It’s only afterwards that people wrote to me, I surprised them. They were like, “Was that you at the screening?” And I was like, “Yeah, it was.” There was that element of surprise that I think would have been harder to manufacture if someone was really gung-ho about wanting it.

How does coordinating with the theater work? Especially last night, which was a more public screening.
It was pretty simple. I just had to show up at the movie theater and find a staff member and say, “Hey, I need the manager to give me the microphone.” Then the manager gave me a microphone. They were pretty hands off about it. I think most people who work in the theater had no idea that there was even this thing in the movie. They weren’t briefed beforehand because most of the staff that I spoke to thought I was presenting the movie when I asked for a microphone.

Were you given any specific instructions, for example, on how to move or stand or gesticulate at all? 
Not at all. I did it differently both times because I didn’t really know how I was gonna do it. I was kind of in the dark. The second time I leaned into it a little more. It goes by pretty fast, the line is spoken quite quickly and then there’s a lot of reacting to Adam Driver that you need to do in the scene. That’s where you can improv, so to speak.

Are you also lip syncing? And did you memorize the line?
I wrote down the lines on my pad because much of the line is the journalist quoting something back at Adam Driver that Adam Driver said. I wrote it down on my little pad that was like my prop. I looked at it when I had to quote it back. I learned the intro to it and then the rest of it I read off the pad because it had to look like I was quoting it to him.

The way you’re angled from the audience, I don’t think they can really see your mouth. I just had to go with the spirit of it. At least that’s the way it was at the Imax theater in Montreal. I don’t know that it’s like that everywhere else. A lot of the instructions in the video talk about crossing the stage but Imax has sort of like an orchestra pit and you can’t go all the way up to the front of the screen. I had to work around it a little bit. I don’t know if that’s the way for every theater but ours, at the Scotiabank Theater, the closest you could get to the screen is about 40 feet away on a sort of balcony. I had to improv that a little bit. The important part is just being in the right eyeline for the character. In the crowd, it’s pretty hard to see if the person speaking is actually speaking.

So that was part of the instructions that you’d have to have like a journalist pad?
Exactly. That was part of the instructions.

Did you have to buy your own notepad?
Yes.

Did you rehearse at all beforehand? 
Not really. I watched the video a few dozen times or so, just to get the rhythm right but I didn’t really rehearse.

How long is the video?
A minute and a half. It shows you the scene right before, like maybe 30 seconds of the preceding scene before the fade to black, then the whole journalist thing and then it ends.

Did you create a backstory for your character?
I did not.

Was the microphone connected to anything? Could you speak into it if you wanted to?
It’s a real wireless mic, but it’s not connected to anything. It’s off.

Are you required to sit in the theater until that point in the film? And do you just leave after, or do you stay?

I don’t think you’re required to be there beforehand. Yesterday, at least, I left after my scene because I had just seen the movie. I didn’t really feel like watching the whole thing again. I kind of regretted not seeing the other half a second time but I had somewhere to go. Before I sat down and watched it, it seemed like a daunting task to watch Megalopolis twice in a week. But turns out it wasn’t that bad.

So you’ve seen the film twice then?
One and a half times.

What do you think of the movie?
It’s hard to say. It’s really ambitious, and it’s wild. I don’t think that it’s nearly as bad as some of the detractors are saying, even though I understand where they’re coming from, because it is like a huge swing. I don’t know if I would say I think it’s great or important or really successful at what it tries to do. But it tries so many things that it’s really hard not to get anything out of it. I got different things out of it the second time. It’s fairly dense and off-putting in some ways. There’s a lot of very broad performances and flowery dialogue and that is maybe off putting, especially if you think you’re going to see a blockbuster in Imax. It’s a gamble in being the world’s biggest, most like outlandish arthouse sci-fi whatevers and I think it succeeds mostly in that sense.

What do you think the live segment contributes to the film? 
The thing is, living it and being in it, I don’t know what effect it has on the actual audience, right? I can only see it from my perspective, which is I’m doing the thing. I’d be curious what other people took from it honestly, because for me, it’s really hard to zoom out and see it from any other perspective. It’s a daring idea. Ultimately, it’s a very small and somewhat inconsequential part of the movie. Once there’s no interactive segment, you’re not missing much. But when you see that, it’s a bit of a shock, even if it’s a silly William Castle type of stunt in a way. It’s very old-timey. It harkens back to the ’50s. I think it fits thematically in the movie, and especially in the tone.

Were you nervous at all?
I was more nervous before I’d seen the movie. Once I was sitting down and I started to see what the whole thing turned out to be, I was a lot less nervous. I was just kind of like, “oh, okay, I’m part of this.” I’m just a very small part of this huge tapestry of excess and exuberance. I was more stressed out in the days leading up to it.

How did people react in last night’s screening?
People kind of laughed. Both times there were, like, incredulous reactions. The movie provokes a lot of that reaction from audiences, sometimes intentional, sometimes maybe not as much. Although my feeling is that a lot of it is much more intentional than people seem to think it is. It was hard for me to gauge. I would say they seemed surprised. I don’t know if it was a good surprise or a bad surprise.