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all in the family
Sofia Coppola tells Steve Pratt why her new film is so personal
profile
Sofia Coppola’s first screen appearance never hinted that, one day, she’d be regarded as one of the hottest young directors in Hollywood.
She was only a baby when she appeared in her father Francis Coppola’s gangster drama The Godfather in 1972. Not only was she a babe in arms but she also played a boy, Michael Francis Rizzi, in a christen- ing scene.
That was far less embarrassing than the harsh critical reception that greeted her appearance in The Godfather Part III nearly 20 years later, when her father cast her as Mary Corleone after origi- nal choice Winona Ryder dropped out through illness at the last minute.
Sofia has moved on big time since then. First with The Virgin Suicides and now with her festival and critic-pleasing film Lost In Translation, she has established herself as a writer-director in her own right. No one would dare write her off now simply as Coppola’s daughter or, for that matter, just the wife of Spike Jonze, quirky young director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
After the hostile reaction to her in The Godfather Part III, it was no wonder the Northern
Californian-raised Sofia concen- trated on design and photogra- phy rather than acting. She almost seemed to be avoiding deliberately following the foot- steps of her famous father.
She was unclear about what she wanted to do although admits that, perhaps subcon- sciously, directing was always at the back of her mind.
“I knew I wanted to do some- thing in the visual arts. And I’d always been around my dad’s film sets, so the interest was there. But I didn’t have the guts to say, ‘I want to be a director’, espe- cially coming from that family,” she has said.
The turning point was reading Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel, The Virgin Suicides, the year after writing and directing the short film Lick The Star. She felt she knew how to film this tale of teenage angst. She scripted and directed the movie, starring Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, which premiered at Cannes and won her the MTV Movie Award as best new director.
Now, four years later, comes Lost In Translation. This bitter-sweet story gives Bill Murray his best role in years as an American movie star in Tokyo to film a whisky commercial. He forms an unlikely alliance with a bored young
woman (Scarlett Johansson) in town with her photographer hus- band as they investigate the city and their relationship.
This must be the 32-year-old film-maker’s most personal work to date. Her screenplay was inspired by regular visits she has made to Japan.
“The whole story is very per- sonal to me,” she says. “There are different aspects of myself in all the characters. I definitely was thinking about that age, when I was in my early 20s, just out of school and not knowing what I wanted to do for work, and in cri- sis a little bit. There are so many aspects of my experience in there, although not totally in one character.”
What she gets from her father is a determination to make movies her way, on her own terms. After the success of The Virgin Suicides she took her time before going back behind the camera, and then insisted that Lost In Translation was filmed on location in Tokyo with a mainly Japanese crew.
She seems to have thrived on the problems this must have caused. “It was important for me to have control over it, to make the film exactly how I imagined it. The only way to do that was to make it low budget and not have
bosses telling us how to make it more marketable,” she says.
“I’ve been to Tokyo once a year for the last eight or nine years - and love going. It’s an adventure. I still don’t speak Japanese so getting anything, even groceries, is a huge thing. I still think it’s overwhelming. It’s great and modern, I find it strange and wonderful.”
She was also adamant that Murray was the only person to play the lead. As producer Ross Katz recalls: “I genuinely believe that Sofia would not have made it if he didn’t agree to do it.”
In person, she’s reticent and thoughtful rather than out-going and garrulous, clearly happier behind than in front of the cam- era. Perhaps one day she’ll direct her father just as he directed her, although she points out: “My dad is a better actor than me.”
Photos (l-r): Sofia Coppola; Bill Murray in Lost In Translation; Coppola and Murray discuss a scene on the Tokyo streets; and directing on set
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