Francis Ford Coppola vaguely denies allegations of inappropriate Megalopolis behavior

Francis Ford Coppola has now addressed the allegations of inappropriate behavior that have been made about how he acted on the set of his new film Megalopolis—sort of. Although Coppola didn’t, in his new New York Times interview about the movie, talk directly about the accusations against him, which largely centered on statements that he tried to kiss some of the female extras on the movie while filming a nightclub scene, he did say a bunch of things that can roughly be rounded up to “I didn’t touch anybody.”

To wit: “I’m not touchy-feely,” he asserts at one point, adding, “I’m too shy.” (Along with statements that his mother raised him to be respectful to women, and that he apparently knew one of the women accusing him of impropriety since she was nine years old.) The Times interview notes that Coppola was digressive on a lot of topics he talked about—including things like the historical inspirations for his very expensive, largely self-funded new movie—but it’s still fairly disconcerting to have allegations of behavior that appear to have made people genuinely uncomfortable on the movie’s set essentially waved away with “My mother didn’t raise me like that.”

(As to the other accusations from the original Guardian article, basically alleging that Coppola acted like an 85-year-old auteur on the set of the movie, firing his effects crew, refusing to ask other people’s advice, and using outdated filming techniques, they go largely unaddressed in the Times piece.)

Megalopolis opened to decidedly mixed reviews at Cannes, splitting opinions on whether Coppola’s movie is madly ambitious, or just a chaotic mess. It’s not clear when, if ever, the film will arrive in American theaters, as it’s yet to get a full distribution deal. (Although it will appear in roughly 20 cities in IMAX some time in September of this year.)