Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” hits theaters today amid a great deal of buzz, partially thanks to star Cailee Spaeny winning the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for her title role. But not everyone was thrilled Coppolla announced plans to adapt Priscilla Presley‘s 1985 “Elvis And Me” for the big screen last year. That would be the late Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla’s daughter, who passed away this past January.
IndieWire reports (via Variety) that Lisa Marie disapproved of the new film, going as far as to email Coppola twice and chastise her for the film script’s “contemptuous perspective” of her father, Elvis Presley. But Coppola reassured Lisa Marie in a follow-up email that her final product wouldn’t ignoble Lisa Marie’s father, The King of Rock and Roll. “I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently,” Coppola responded to Lisa Marie last September, “and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.”
“Priscilla” began production in October 2022 after the email exchange, followed by Lisa Marie’s passing in January. Coppola’s film has left the Presley estate at odds over the film. Priscilla herself praised the film upon its premiere, calling it “masterful,” and even serves as an executive producer on the movie. But the Presley estate denied Coppola the use of Elvis’ music in her film after reports that Presley Enterprises was unaware the director was even shooting “Priscilla.” Furthermore, TMZ reports that the Presley estate has derided Coppola’s vision of Graceland in her film after images from it hit the press, going as far as to say it looked “like a college movie.”
Based on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, “Priscilla” chronicles the real-life romance and marriage of Priscilla Wagner and Elvis Presley that began when she was just 14 and Elvis was 24. Days before the film’s premiere on the Lido, Coppola commented to THR that she was “struck by how much I connected with it emotionally” when it came to Priscilla’s life story. And while “Priscilla” fared well with critics at Venice, Lisa Marie still couldn’t affirm Coppola’s treatment of her parent’s relationship in the script. In her emails from September 202, Lisa Misa even threatened Coppola that she’d “go against” the director and her own mother “publicly” if Coppola made the film.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” Lisa Marie wrote to Coppola. “As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why? I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother, and this film publicly.”
“I am worried that my mother isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out,” Lisa Marie continued. “I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy. I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have. I would think of all people that you would understand how this would feel. Why are you coming for my Dad and my family?”
Lisa Marie also told Coppola over email that her film came in the aftermath of further tragedy for the Presley family: the death of Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin Keough in 2020. “I had to explain that we are going to have to endure another hit in our lives,” Lisa Marie went on. “That there is going to be a movie about her grandfather [actress Riley Keough] that is going to try to make him look really, really bad but it’s not true. I had to explain that her beloved grandmother is supporting it. These two little girls have been through so much in the past seven years, enduring my divorce and horrific custody battle and then losing their brother. We’ve all been drowning.”
Lisa Marie juxtaposed Coppola’s project with Baz Luhrmann‘s “Elvis” from last year as “a break from suffering and a ray of light that hit us last year.” “It made them feel blessed for a moment and less cursed in life. It made us all so proud because it was a true depiction of who he really was,” Lisa Marie said of Luhrmann’s biopic. Furthermore, Lisa Marie criticized why Coppola felt a “need to attempt to take my father down on the heels of such an incredible film using the excuse that you are trying to tell my mother’s story, but from your very dark and jaded reality.”
Of course, Luhrmann’s “Elvis” and Coppola’s “Priscilla” are very different films, but both of them hit close to home for Lisa Marie and the rest of the Presley family. But were Lisa Marie’s criticisms of Coppola’s film justified? It’s the audience’s turn to decide with “Priscilla” in theaters today.