As Sofia Coppola prepares for her film’s debut in Venice. She talks at length with MTV’s Josh Horowitz and reveals that Papa Coppola didn’t help her at all with Somewhere:
Coppola: I always am glad to have my dad when I need advice or mentoring. Sometimes I’ll show him [something] earlier on, but this one I had a more specific idea of how I wanted it to be and then I showed him when I was done. And my brother is the producer and he helped me a lot in the preproduction phase.
More Sofia after the cut.
Coppola: I’m not sure if it was the character or the setting for this one, but I think it started with wanting to write about Los Angeles, and I was living in Paris at the time. So thinking about Los Angeles, this character came into mind, that Stephen Dorff plays, and then I wanted to do a portrait of this guy and it took its shape from there. And then the character of his daughter came after, and that evolved into kind of the father/daughter part of the story.
MTV: What were you trying to capture about Los Angeles that may or may not have been captured in film before? Do you feel L.A. is ever captured well on film?
Coppola: I like “Shampoo” and “American Gigolo,” and I feel there hasn’t been a portrait of modern-day L.A. And I was just looking at how tabloid culture was while I was living in France. You know, there’s always stuff about the Chateau Marmont. I remember going there when I was in college, and now it’s so different with our reality TV shows and paparazzi around there. There wasn’t Us Weekly when I lived there. It was a different world and I started with wanting to do something set in that world.
MTV: Have you watched some of the reality shows that the people who sign my paycheck created?
Coppola: I haven’t watched tons of it, kind of a little here and there, but it just seems when you look at these tabloids, they’re all reality TV stars and definitely a focus on celebrity culture more than ever. But I’ve seen a few. The twins in my movie are from “The Girls Next Door.” So we do have some reality TV stars in it.
The Venice Film Fest begins on Tuesday. All eyes on Black Swan, Somewhere, The Town, The Tempest.
