Jon Voight, devoted Donald Trump supporter, didn’t see the political parallels of Megalopolis

Jon Voight being a fervent conservative is not news, but boy, does it bog down his latest Variety profile. The cinema legend with a fascinating career can’t help but derail seemingly every conversation with conspiracy theories that his daughter Angelina Jolie has been duped by antisemitic forces within the United Nations. Jolie, he argues, has been kept in ignorance by her associations, and isn’t open to speaking with him about politics “because she’s of another mind about it.” But if one’s politics makes a person blind to other perspectives, it clearly must be true about Voight, too, because he didn’t even notice the politics of the movie he was in—Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. 

Critics who have seen the gonzo epic immediately picked up on an anti-Donald Trump sentiment, made so explicit that at one point someone throws a “Make America Great Again” hat. Asked about comparisons between Trump and his character Crassus, a lecherous old man and New Rome’s wealthiest citizen, Voight says, “I didn’t see that. If I had, I would have told Francis he was out of line.”  

At the Cannes Film Festival, Coppola spoke about “a trend toward the more neo-right, even fascist tradition” in our current society that’s reflected in his film (via The Washington Post). When he offered the mic to Voight, who has “different political opinions than me,” as Coppola noted to the press, Voight observed that the film was about making the world better: “I agree with this film, Francis’s vision that says human beings are capable of solving every problem we get ourselves into … we must bond together, we must help each other, we must listen to each other and we must take this on.” 

A lovely and notably inoffensive sentiment, though Variety notes that Voight sounds “hurt” and looks “confused” revisiting the Cannes moment now: “I’ve been telling Francis to make that movie for over 30 years,” he says. “I really don’t know why he thought that was the time to talk about our politics.”  

Probably because those politics are extremely relevant to the project being promoted! But some people don’t know when to put politics aside, including Voight. Though he insists he never brings the subject up on set, he can’t help but derail seemingly every conversation he has with Variety’s Stephen Rodrick by bringing up the same political talking points (the U.N., George Soros, Marxists, etc.) over and over again. So focused is he on his own perspective that he seems to have somehow missed that he just played a pretty unflattering analog of his own friend and savior in one of the year’s most talked-about movies. 

“I’ve been the most outspoken supporter of Donald Trump in Hollywood. I’ve been saying he’s the answer, the only answer,” Voight says “proudly” at the conclusion of the profile, in a conversation held shortly after the attempted assassination of the former president at a rally. “Now, after this, maybe they will look at Jon Voight in a different way. If Donald Trump is being revealed in this way, maybe they will see a supporter like me in a different light.”

For the record, Coppola apparently sees Voight in the same light as he ever did. “Working with Jon is always an interesting, potent and joyful collaboration,” the filmmaker says in a statement to Variety. “He’s an artist, and I enjoyed our time together making Megalopolis.”