“Across all my films, there is a common quality: there is always a world and there is always a girl trying to navigate it. That’s the story that will always intrigue me.”
Sofia Coppola made her feature directorial debut 25 years ago. The Virgin Suicides premiered at Cannes in the summer of 1999. Since then, Coppola has continued to stay true to herself as a storyteller, making beautifully uncompromising films.
Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, and On The Rocks, all lovingly made films. No Coppola movie lacks passion. If anyone ever wants to do a deeper dive into the mind of the filmmaker, check out the Sofia Coppola Archives, which features notes, script pages, emails, and more from behind-the-scenes of her movies. In the book, she also shares a few filmmaking lessons, including the following…
One Way Or Another
“I think filmmakers need that gift of being able to know there are challenges but simply believing that they will all work out, one way or another. You’re always up against the odds, trying to pull off a kind of miracle…. I had seen my dad be so determined to make difficult things work and I could hear his voice saying, ‘Just make it happen.’ I think I got that from him: the confidence to sort of will it to happen, to say ‘I’m doing this,’ and trust that somehow it will come to be.”
Simplicity is Best
“I wrote Somewhere as an exercise in minimalism. I wanted to experiment with how simply we could make a film, with the least number of shots and amount of coverage. Camera coverage is one of the things I find the most challenging: it can feel like a math problem, and you can get confused and shoot too many angles if you’re not careful. [Cinematographer] Harris’s [Savides] motto was ‘keep it simple.’ I kept that in mind throughout writing and making the film, and it’s something I always come back to.”
Time Will Tell
“There was a very mixed reaction at the [Marie Antoinette] premiere: a long standing ovation with a few boos thrown in. After that there was a very harsh press conference, where they asked me what it was like to be booed and a failure. We went in thinking how proud we were of the film and got totally slammed. Some French people were angry that an American had the nerve to make a film about their history, and in such a casual way. It’s good to remember that sometimes things don’t land well at first — especially if they are unusual for the time — and over time can get appreciated in a different way. I always think it’s good to follow your heart.”
It’s All One
“I think the best cinema is cinema with images and not words. That’s the purest form of cinema. The most powerful cinema I’ve seen has been cinema that is just images, great images. I mean, that’s the trick: To try to do it cinematically. And that’s what makes setting up a scene and doing a scene very difficult. It’s really easy - I think what people are taught, is to do these, especially in dialogue scenes, do a two-shot and then go in… I try to avoid that all the time. And I try to let it all become one thing.”
