{"id":859,"date":"2011-04-19T09:59:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2011\/04\/sofia-coppolas-somewhere-on-dvd.html"},"modified":"2011-04-19T09:59:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:59:00","slug":"sofia-coppolas-somewhere-on-dvd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2011\/04\/sofia-coppolas-somewhere-on-dvd.html","title":{"rendered":"Sofia Coppola’s "Somewhere" on DVD"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

EVERYTHING was nicely lined up — and then the sky started falling.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cThe week before the filming was about to start,\u201d Sofia Coppola recounts, \u201cthe studio changed the deal, and it fell through. And my dad came to the rescue; our French distributor got involved\u2026 But it was really nerve-wracking. It\u2019s stressful enough, already, making your first film.\u201d Who needs a funding disaster on top of it?<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/span>Luckily, the nightmare that preceded Coppola\u2019s debut, <\/span>The Virgin Suicides<\/span><\/i>, did not repeat itself with, her latest, the ethereal, intimate <\/span>Somewhere, which comes out on DVD today.<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/span>The new film, about a reckless, disoriented actor (Stephen Dorff) who drifts through life at the Chateau Marmont before a restorative visit from his 11-year-old daughter, went much more smoothly.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cIt often requires a star actor,\u201d the film\u2019s producer Roman Coppola (and the director\u2019s brother) says of funding for indies. \u201cBut in Sofia\u2019s case, she has an identity and a fan-base and a cachet. So there\u2019s a core group of people she\u2019s worked with before, and there was a lot of loyalty.\u201d (It didn\u2019t hurt, of course, that Roman and Sofia co-own American Zoetrope, the San Francisco-based studio founded by their father, Francis Ford Coppola.)<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s always a challenge, especially if you don\u2019t have a huge star,\u201d Sofia Coppola says. \u201cBut luckily I have strong relationships with our French distributor and our Japanese distributor.\u201d Foreign presales \u2013 along with initial funding from Zoetrope — gave her money to get the production going, and she\u00a0 later landed Focus, who had distributed <\/span>Lost in Translation<\/span><\/i>.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Securing early financing overseas was a natural strategy for this film: \u201cIt has more of the pacing and feeling of European films,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it made sense that we started with a French distributor because it\u2019s more connected to their film history.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


<\/span><\/div>\n
Says producer G. Mac Brown: \u201cI normally do rather large budget features, filled with complexities, stress and ego. <\/span>Somewhere<\/span><\/i> was the opposite. \u00a0From the beginning, Sofia’s wish was to have the most intimate and pure film making process possible. \u00a0There was no studio, no boss, no distractions.\u00a0It was a dream.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
For all the deserved praise earned by Elle Fanning, who plays the visiting daughter, the heart of the movie is Dorff, a longtime friend of Coppola\u2019s and someone who came to mind very early in the film\u2019s conception. \u201cThe starting point was this portrait of an actor,\u201d named Johnny Marco, who\u2019s had an international hit with a generic action film called <\/span>Berlin Agenda<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a>\u201cI felt like he had been really successful doing some movie he didn\u2019t care about,\u201d she says. \u201cSo he wasn\u2019t feeling that good about himself as an artist. He\u2019d had his success but was indulging \u2013 so his life was out of balance.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Getting a bigger name \u2013 Dorff is probably best known for <\/span>Blade<\/span><\/i>, from 1998 despite a more than respectable career that also includes <\/span>Backbeat<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Public Enemies<\/span><\/i> — would have allowed her to draw a larger budget, but she was dedicated to him playing the lead role.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>After the sumptuousness of <\/span>Marie Antoinette<\/span><\/i>, this one is pretty stripped down: Many of the shots comprise either Dorff alone in the hotel or Dorff with Fanning. \u201cMy starting point is always to try to make it as small and low-budget as possible so we can keep creative freedom — and get it made. Everybody says it\u2019s harder and harder to get unusual movies made.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cSofia\u2019s film is kind of an anomaly,\u201d says Roman Coppola, who points out that it\u2019s taken two decades to get the adaptation of <\/span>On the Road<\/span><\/i>, directed by Walter Salles and produced by Frances Ford Coppola, ready for the camera. \u201cIt\u2019s a very tricky climate,\u201d he says, \u201cand it\u2019s a matter of finding partners who are in sync with you.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s rare \u2013 and I think it shows,\u201d in his sister\u2019s new film, he continues. \u201cThere\u2019s a lightness. The mood in which a film is made imbues itself into the movie. There wasn\u2019t tearing your hair out the night before.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The soul of an artist is rarely entirely smooth, and Coppola says she had moments of doubt. \u201cIt\u2019s always stressful, waiting to hear from financers, or from actors. I\u2019m sure there were things I blocked out, like childbirth. We needed to forge ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Overall she says, \u201cEvery time I start a movie it\u2019s scary because I\u2019m doing something I haven\u2019t done before. But now I have enough experience to know you get through it. It always looks like it won\u2019t come together. But it does.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EVERYTHING was nicely lined up — and then the sky started falling. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe week before the filming was about to start,\u201d Sofia Coppola recounts, \u201cthe studio changed the deal, and it fell through. And my dad came to the rescue; our French distributor got involved\u2026 But it was really nerve-wracking. It\u2019s stressful enough, already, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,67,40,30,177,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-film","7":"category-hollywood-bowl","8":"category-indie","9":"category-los-angeles","10":"category-sofia-coppola","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}