With her new film “Priscilla,” it’s been five features for Sofia Coppola since 2006’s “Marie Antoinette.” And those movies almost never happened, as after that film’s grueling shoot, Coppola nearly stepped away from filmmaking altogether.
IndieWire reports (via Rolling Stone) that while Coppola loved shooting “Marie Antoinette,” the scale of production left her exhausted. Coupled with the film’s poor showing theatrically, the director almost decided to call it quits. “I had a great time with Kirsten [Dunst] and Jason [Schwartzman], being in Versailles and in Paris at that time. But it was a lot to manage so many people,” Coppola told RS. “I was just worn out, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore.’”
Add in Coppola giving birth to her daughter, and she thought “Marie Antoinette” may be her final film. “ It was just a hard shoot, and then I was just over it for a minute,” she continued. “My daughter was born, and I was trying to take a pause. But there’s something kind of addictive about making movies. You get an idea, and it bugs you until you do it.”
The next idea to bug Coppola was “Somewhere,” her 2010 film, which she schemed up with cinematographer Harris Savides. “And then, when I met Harris Savides and we talked about minimal filmmaking, I got inspired to try to make “Somewhere” and go back to two people in a hotel room and focus on the action and the story.” After that film, Coppola made “The Bling Ring,” “The Beguiled,” and “On The Rocks,” with “Priscilla,” her latest, hitting limited theaters this weekend.
But the thoughts of walking away from filmmaking continue after each film Coppola completes. “If I didn’t make anything else, I would feel like I made enough stuff,” she continued. “When I was finishing “Priscilla,” I said to my husband, ‘I don’t want to do this again.’ And he said, ‘You say that every time.’”
While “Marie Antoinette” only made $60 million at the box office off a $40 million budget, it did win an Oscar for Best Costume Design. But even then, Coppola considers the movie a “flop.” “I’m always happy that I get to make what I want to make,” Coppola told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “I was happy we got to make that movie, but nobody saw it. It was a flop. So the fact that it’s lived on and people talk about it has been really satisfying because so much work went into it. It makes me happy that now it’s kind of found its way and people enjoy it.”
Will “Priscilla” take home any Oscars this awards season? Coppola’s latest has scored well with critics out of the Fall festival circuit, so there’s a good chance it could grab something.
