Francis Ford Coppola on philosophy, ancient Rome, and creative legacy

Executive overview

Francis Ford Coppola, in his first-ever podcast appearance, speaks with Ryan Holiday about the ancient ideas that shaped his life and work. His film Megalopolis draws directly on the Catiline conspiracy — Cicero, Caesar, Cato — reimagined as modern America. History is always written by victors; the art is taking the material and making it your own.

Coppola is an Epicurean first, a Stoic second — and Marcus Aurelius has been a practical guide through personal grief, not just an intellectual exercise.

Great artists don't borrow from the past — they steal from it and let it reshape whatever they're making.

The Catiline conspiracy and Megalopolis

• The Catiline conspiracy is largely forgotten today, but was one of the most formative events in Roman history — a prequel to Caesar's rise
• History is written by winners: Cleopatra was a genius, but Augustus wrote her as a seductress
• Mary Beard advised Coppola to take liberties rather than follow the history too carefully
• She suggested foregrounding young Caesar — a more recognisable figure — as the protagonist
• Cicero's famous anti-Catiline oration appears word-for-word in the film; that oration was Coppola's original hook
• Catiline's fatal error: attempting insurrection against Rome's greatest orator

How Coppola makes films he doesn't know how to make

• When making a film you don't know how to make, the film starts making itself
• In collaborative art, the director is both ringleader and follower — following what actors, composers, and visual artists produce
• The method: shoot material, watch dailies together, identify what's unusual, then say "let's do more of that"
• Apocalypse Now became surreal this way — smoke grenades on a boat, shot for no reason, pointed toward the film's tone
• Megalopolis evolved the same way: early, weirder takes won over later, normalised ones

Reading as creative fuel

• Coppola deliberately reads books that have nothing to do with his current project — but they always end up changing it
• Goethe's principle: what you read only matters if you can use it in your work
• The Dream of the Red Mansion (16th-century Chinese novel) led Coppola to weave dreams into Megalopolis as part of characters' stories
• "Poor artists borrow, great artists steal" — Goethe stole from Shakespeare, Shakespeare stole from Plutarch and Marlowe
• Balzac welcomed young writers stealing from him: "That's why I wrote it — I'll live in their work"

Epicureanism and the pursuit of happiness

• Epicurus is misread as hedonism; his actual philosophy was finding pleasure in simplicity
• "If I had a glass of water and a biscuit, I would be eating as well as Zeus"
• The Catholic Church suppressed Epicurean texts; they survived only because monks copied them as penmanship exercises
• Jefferson was an Epicurean — "the pursuit of happiness" comes directly from Epicurean philosophy, nowhere else
• The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt covers the rediscovery of Lucretius and the Epicurean tradition

Grief, Marcus Aurelius, and losing a son

• Coppola lost his son Gian-Carlo in 1986; for 30 years, it was the first thought he had every morning
• He was struck that Marcus Aurelius — who buried six of his eleven children — still got out of bed and wrote with hope
• Aeschylus: "We suffer unto truth" — pain drips on you drop by drop until wisdom comes; Coppola found the quote transformative
• After losing his wife of 60 years, he drew on Marcus Aurelius: honour the person you lost by trying to be more like them
• He now calls friends who are alone or unwell — something his wife did naturally — as a way of keeping her present in his life

On making the big bet

• Apocalypse Now was the biggest gamble: he was personally on the hook, interest rates over 20%
• He does not value money; he believes friendship and mutual aid outlast financial wealth
• His measure of success: Megalopolis will be watched for 40 years, like Apocalypse Now — early reception matters less than staying power
• James Joyce on Finnegans Wake: "I've put so much in it that it'll take 50 years to figure out — they'll sell the whole time"
• The film's core argument: the human being is a genius species, capable of solving any problem if we employ our gifts