Performance at FFC Megalopolis Screening
Grace performed for the second time at Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis screening and Q&A in Chicago at the 3600-seater Chicago Theatre.
Graces parents Tina & Dave drove to Chicago to attend the event (Tina posted from the car)
Apart from Tina, filming Grace singing "My Pledge" from the wings, very little video has been posted at all. However, Tom Smith found a brief clip (18 seconds) of her singing the other song from her performance, the new song “Selfish”. (no original source for that given, I’m afraid).
Entertainment reporter (and apparently also a Grace Fan - see photo in bottom left corner) Jerry Nunn briefly summarized the experience of the show like this on his Instagram: "Grace VanderWaal gave a captivating performance after the screening of Megaflopolis. Francis Ford Coppola missed his own private reception and then insulted audience members during the Q&A. Time to wine down now after a long day!"
Jordan Ruimy, writing in his movie blog "The World of Reel" provided a vivid description: "Francis Ford Coppola might be a prophet or he might have lost his mind — either way, he’s not boring. What followed was less an evening and more a whacked out spiritual odyssey into the mind of a man who either knows everything or has gone completely off the rails. Possibly both. Either way, the crowd was no doubt blessed to witness this. There was no moderator. No script. Just Francis. Alone on stage. Rambling next to a whiteboard with a handwritten list of topics: Time. Work. Money. Politics. Education. Law. Caste. War. Art. Sport. Celebration. He rambled about how we invented time — and in doing so, we invented our own suffering. He mused that robots should do the toiling for us, maybe take over TSA and toll booths. “Waymo cars never hit old people,” he assured the crowd. Then he raved about EZ-Pass. Grace VanderWaal then came out to sing 'The Virgin Song.' At one point, he started speaking in Italian and saying slurs that only he is allowed to say."
Author/film critic Connie Wilson also appears to have had a somewhat surreal experience : "Will Coppola seem on top of his topics? (Yes & No. He rambled, but so did the film.) At one point, the actress who played Vesta Sweetwater in the film (Grace VanderWaal) shared with us that she wrote the songs she sings while suspended from a swing, supposedly shilling (in the film) for millions to support her in her quest to remain virginal—although she is really 23 and not virginal. Grace sang two songs. We had now been sitting, watching the film, for over 2 hours (138 minutes), and there were also the introductory remarks and FFC’s comments as he rejoined us (“I even put on a tie”). [I think I would have been permanently crippled if I had remained in my seat much longer without getting up. We arrived at 6:30; it was over 4 hours later. People were beginning to drift away from the marathon viewing now. FFC was not nearly done and shared more random factoids, always promising to circle back to another mentioned topic".
Filmbuff and sometimes videoproducer Aaron Salazar provided a live blog that gives an even more vivid impression of the event.
Other posters on TikTok and Instagram were more positive, though. Few of them mentioned Grace. Among the positive "reviews" were the Chicago Concert Review, who wrote about Grace: "[Coppola] was briefly joined by VanderWaal, the “America’s Got Talent” winner turned acclaimed singer/songwriter, who played the virginal teen pop star Vesta Sweetwater and provided gorgeously chilling renditions of her soundtrack selection “My Pledge” and a new original."
Grace went to the event in Chicago in style – on a private plane, and posted a TikTok miming to Niki Minaj in a clip where Steven Colbert Interviews Minaj about what seat to choose on a plane: "Steven: When you are flying on a plane – window or aisle? Niki: Window – who would pick an aisle? Steven: If you have to go to the bathroom, you don’t have to crawl across people, Niki: I don’t fly in those kinds of planes." (this is a TikTok meme)