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Sofia Coppola Makes Her Directorial Debut
If you have a Hollywood living legend
for a father, and a husband who received an Oscar nomination for his first
movie, and to top it all, you happen to be a young woman director, then
you got to work doubly 
hard
to carve a niche for yourself. That is exactly the case with Sofia Coppola,
daughter of the legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Her debut film,
The Virgin Suicides, about the disillusionment of five teenage sisters
in 1970s suburbia, opened in U.S. theatres last Friday, and Sofia knows
that audiences will think her first break into the movies came only because
of her dad. Or they may think her husband, Spike Jonze, whose Being John
Malkovich earned him the Oscar nod this year, pulled some studio executive’s
strings on behalf of his wife.
Sofia is smart enough to realise that expectations for her film may be
too high because of her family ties, and savvy enough to understand why
some people in Hollywood might enjoy seeing ...Suicides flop. “I’m
sure there are skeptics, but I hope people will go to the movie and look
at it for what it is, and forget about my family and all that other stuff,”
she said in an interview.
The audience may decide to go because of complimentary advance reviews.
But it is hard not to consider family ties when watching the film, which
charts the unpredictable course of the Lisbon family, and even harder
not to think about Sofia’s connections when “written by”
and “directed by” appear in front of her name during the credits.
Sofia, nearing 30, did not start out to direct movies, and she did never
intended to adapt the novel The Virgin Suicides into a film. In fact,
when she started working on the screenplay, she did not even own the rights
to it. Until then, making movies had not been on her agenda. Photography,
publishing and fashion design consumed her early and mid-20s, and she
did not want to be like her father. In short, she had a good old-fashioned
case of teen rebellion. “It’s because of my dad that kept me
from saying, ‘I want to be a director’,” she said, “I
really didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I tried a lot of different
things.”
But she was never far away from the movies, with acting roles in Peggy
Sue Got Married and The Godfather, Part III, and costume designing for
the Life With Zoe segment of New York Stories, and the 1989 film The Spirit
of ’76. Sofia opined, “Anything creative is related to many
creative things.” It is little wonder she finally got around to directing
a short film, Lick The Star, about the lives of teenage girls and the
secrets they share.
Movie buffs who have watched Lick The Star, can see why she chose it for
her first film project, before she even secured the rights to make ...Suicides.
“I liked the way ...Suicides (the book) was about being that age,
in a way that was just so clean and attractive and funny...It wasn’t
condescending to kids,” Sofia said, “In the early-to-mid 1970s,
most girls wore bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes, polyester shirts
and halter tops, long hair and feathered bangs — most, that is.”
The five Lisbon sisters of ...Suicides, each a beautiful young woman,
wear ankle-length dresses, and live under the constant supervision of
an over-protective mom (Kathleen Turner) and a hen-pecked dad (James Woods).
Their cloistered lives give them an air of mystery for the neighbourhood
boys, who know about them through cracked window blinds, binoculars and
boyhood rumours. To the guys, they represent all that was unknown and
hopeful about romance, love and the future.
It is only after one Lisbon girl dies, and another, Lux (Kirsten Dunst),
becomes romantically involved with high-school stud Trip Fontaine (Josh
Hartnet), that the boys finally meet the Lisbons first hand.
Despite its title, ...Suicides, the film is less about death than it is
about the loss of youthful innocence, but the problem for any Hollywood
movie studio is that a film with ...Suicide’ in the title might spell
death at the box-office.
So there is a catch to Sofia’s story — her father did help get
the film made. He wanted his company, American Zoetrope, to return to
independent filmmaking and ...Suicides was an effort in that direction.
But to make the film, Sofia wrote her script first, then obtained rights
to the novel. The “couple of million” dollars it cost to make
...Suicides came from pre-selling overseas distribution, a common practice
in the indie world.
On its own, ...Suicides shows a sense of style and craft that comes only
through talent and work. Sofia Coppola is not her father or her husband,
and she does not need to be. “You know certain people from having
your family in the business, and it’s helpful,” she said, “It
opens doors, but then you really have to come through.
Just as she spent her early and mid-20s distancing herself from her dad,
she now tries to dispel notions that she is a snob” or lazy or that
“you have things handed to you.” Her thoughts turn to competition,
because sitting around the family dinner table with the talent in the
Coppola family can be intimidating. Her cousin, Oscar-winning actor Nicholas
Cage, changed his name from Coppola to stake out his own identity. But
“it’s healthy, Sofia said with a smile, There’s a healthy
amount of competition.
She snickers the second time she says “healthy, adding that she thinks
she will be directing films for a while. She kicked other endeavours around,
and now she feels she is launching into a career she can call her own,
even if she does have to share the name.