An interview with Sofia Coppola, director of Somewhere

I remember the late great wit Quentin Crisp once telling me that whenever he saw Andy Warhol at social events in New York he would always try to “stampede” the taciturn pop artist “into conversation”. Sofia Coppola brings out the same impatience in me; 40 next month and with four increasingly opaque movies to her credit, Coppola is an incredibly gifted director and a somewhat frustrating interviewee. Though she doesn't ever say “Gee”, her handling of PR duties can certainly be described as Warholian, delivering answers by the sentence and only occasionally allowing the process to drift into anything even remotely resembling a normal conversation.

This interview took place at the Venice Film Festival in September 2010, a couple of days after the world premiere of Somewhere, in which Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a Hollywood star who is on the border of a midlife crisis when Cleo (Elle Fanning), his 11-year-old daughter, comes to stay. With its hotel backdrop (LA's iconic Chateau Marmont), deadpan humour and rhythms of rhyming guitars (some provided by her partner's band Phoenix), Somewhere unwinds like a more austere sister piece to Coppola's breakout movie Lost In Translation, testing at times but often quite beautiful in its melancholy.

There are clearly echoes of Lost In Translation in this movie. Were you conscious of that?
You know, I didn't think about that at all when I was writing. I see it now. But when I was writing... I guess it's just my taste. There are similar themes, but to me it has a really different feeling. And I'm at a different point in my life, so it feels like it's about something else to me. But I can see how they're connected.

Why are you so interested in stories about lonely people in hotels?
I just like stories about characters that are going through a transition, so I guess it comes off that they're disconnected. But I'm not only interested in lonely people; there's other kind of territory I'm interested in.

When you started writing Somewhere, did you always know that your main character was going to be a movie star?
Yeah. I felt like it started from him at the beginning. I was writing something else, and it kept being about this Hollywood movie star guy. And also in the news at the the time there were a bunch of these guys who were having crises and problems. They all seemed like party guys, they had lots of girls and were really successful. So I started thinking, 'What's going on there, and what are their lives really like?'

So did you find your emotional footing in the character of his daughter?
No, I think I started with Stephen's character. I relate to his character also, and I wanted to write something emotional but from the guy's point of view. But I also relate to the girl.

But it could have been an actress that you focused on...
I think it would have been different. I wanted to try to write a guy's character, just to try to write something emotional from that. It never occurred to me to make it an actress.

The relationship between the father and the daughter is very touching. Did you draw from your own experience?
Yeah, definitely. The starting point was my friend's daughter; her parents are both in Hollywood, and she's like the adult in the situation. Now, my family and my dad are very different. But when I was thinking about her spending time with her father, I remembered, at that age, going on trips with my dad and what a big impression it had on me to go with him to places where you don't always bring kids. I remember him teaching me how to play craps in a casino. In high school he took me to Cuba and we met Fidel Castro... Things that aren't quite normal teenage experiences.

Did that affect how you saw the world?
At the time, it was all I knew. But I also went to a normal school in a small town, so I had a normal life too. But I don't think you really think about [those things] until maybe when you're older.

Why did you cast Stephen Dorff?
Well, I knew him a little bit through friends, and he suddenly came to mind. I always thought he was a really good actor and I knew he was a nice guy – the character's so unlikeable that I though we needed someone that's sweet and genuine in order to want to watch him for the length of a movie.

Did you grill him for information about his experiences as a young actor once you'd cast him?
I wrote the script and then I showed it to him, but when we were shooting I felt like I had to consult him – like, 'Would this happen?' I felt like I had a consultant.

Do women really flash their breasts at him?
You'd have to ask him! But whenever I've been around a known actor, you always see women throwing themselves at him. I think he enjoyed that!

How did you decide on his look?
I took a lot of pictures from books and magazines and worked with the costume designer. A lot of the photographs by Bruce Weber from the 90s. I always had the idea of this all-American model.

Johnny Marco doesn't seem to have a drug problem – is that something you discounted?
Well, he's taking pills a lot. I decided he was a pill-popper. And he drinks a lot. I figured he's a little out of it. But I didn't want it to be about a drug addict.

He's also not a trained actor...
I wanted him to be well-known, but not for work he was really proud of. So he doesn't feel good about himself. I think if he felt really artistically fulfilled, then he'd be in a different state.

There are no big dramatic scenes in the movie – was that deliberate?
It doesn't feel like a movie where a big dramatic external thing has to change you. And I feel like, in life sometimes, very small, uneventful things may have an impact on you. So I wanted to try to make it more naturalistic, and avoid having some big, dramatic, external earthquake.

Did you improvise a lot on set?
I like to improvise. I think you can see that especially in the scenes when Stephen and Elle and the buddy are hanging out in the hotel room. Chris Pontius is really good at telling stories. I had an idea of what I wanted it to be, then I put them together and let them come up with stuff.

Some of the scenes are very long...
I wanted to shoot it as simply as we could, but then also stay in the scene really a lot longer than you normally would, to feel like you're alone with this guy. And also to get into his boredom and his having to be alone with himself, which is a little uncomfortable. And also I didn't want you to be too aware of the camera, so it doesn't move very much.

Do you have a particular soft spot for the Chateau Marmont?
I've stayed there a little off and on, but I've always liked going there and watching the people and hearing the stories. It's such a legendary place in LA.

Did you do any research there, just for this movie?
(Shakes her head) I think from having gone there and watched people there, I had an idea of some of the people you see there.

The guy in the movie who plays the guitar and sings Teddy Bear – is he really one of the people who work there?
Yea, he really works there, and he comes out out and sings for people. To me, that's so unique, so I asked him to be in the movie.

Has he ever sung to you?
Yeah, yeah. I was staying there one time and there was an actor there that always encouraged him to sing. I just liked all these colourful details of the real place, and I wanted to include them.

Were there any problems, shooting inside the hotel?
I guess the main thing is that we were shooting in a real hotel room, so it was really small. When we were shooting the twin strippers we were really all close together, trying to get it all in. But I'm happy, because I feel like it looks like the real place, because we didn't change very much. Harris Savides [cinematographer] didn't do a lot of lighting, so it looks very real.

Is it true that you had to go to Playboy mansion to cast those twins?
Yeah. I was telling a friend that I had to cast twins, and my friend watches this show called The Girls Next Door and she said, 'Oh, you have to meet the twins from the Playboy mansion.' So we met them, and they were perfect. They were rehearsing at the Playboy mansion, so we had to go there to see them rehearse. Hugh Hefner was there and it was all just a funny experience. It felt really LA.

It's the second time you've used pole-dancing...
(Looks bemused) Oh yeah, I did a video!

With Kate Moss, for The White Stripes...
Yeah. You did your research!

What's so fascinating about it?
I think it's just in our pop culture a lot recently – there are exercise classes where girls are doing pole dancing. It's just a thing in our pop culture, and I wanted to embrace that.

Where did you get the travel pole?
Well, we made that one – it's fake. But I remember hearing in a magazine that they do exist. And Stephen told me he went to a bachelor party where the girls brought their own poles, so I guess it's a real thing. I was kinda making it up. I remember hearing about it as more of an exercise thing – Carmen Electra sells her own poles. It was a big thing.

Have you ever had a go yourself?
No, I don't do pole dancing.

You live in Paris now. Did this affect your vision in LA?
I was writing this in Paris, so, definitely, having some distance from California made me interested in writing about that, whereas when I was in LA I was writing about Japan and France.

Do you have any particular favourite LA movies?
Movies in the past? I thought about Shampoo and American Gigolo – I love how they portray LA at that moment. And I felt that, recently, we haven't had one about modern-day LA. So I tried to make a slice of that.

So has living in Paris changed your perspective on America?
I don't know if I would have wanted to write about Los Angeles unless I'd been away and had a distance from it.

Do you think celebrity culture is the same in Europe?
In America, tabloids are everywhere. You go to the supermarket and it's really hard to avoid them. But in France you have to go to a newsstand to get them, so they're not in your face. So I feel like you're not aware of that kind of tabloid culture in France – even though it exists, it's not all over the place. So whenever I'd see one it would have a bigger impact, because you don't see them every day. And that was kind of interesting, because I'd been removed from all that.

Do you speak French?
I can understand it, but I'm not very good. It's harder to speak.

Compared to your last film, Marie Antoinette, a big period film that you shot on location in Paris, Somewhere is a much smaller movie. Was that a conscious plan, to get back to basics?
After Marie Antoinette I really wanted to do something simple, just with one or two characters, an intimate story, and do it as simply as possible. With Marie Antoinette there were so many people involved. I prefer working on a smaller scale.

Is it a matter of control?
It's more that my focus can be on the characters as opposed to a million external details. And also the scale of it: I had a much smaller crew. I didn't have to work with hundreds and hundreds of people. It takes a different kind of energy to wrangle a huge crew as opposed to a small crew.

How do you feel about shooting in other countries?
I always find it interesting to go an work in another culture. Shooting in Japan and Italy was pretty confusing at times but everyone's unified. Even though we don't speak the same language we're all making a movie, and there's a nice camaraderie. So I find it interesting, and challenging. In Japan, for example, they say yes even if they mean no, so that's confusing. In Milan, everything was closed! It was August, so everything was closed.

Do you think that now there are more women directors around there'll be better parts for women?
I think my movie has a feminine point of view to it – a man would make it differently. But there's been a lot more women directors since I started, so there'll be more and more different points of view out there.

What did you think of Kathryn Bigelow winning the Oscar?
I thought that was cool.

Do you feel that you're building up a body of work now?
Now that I have four films, I feel like they're related – or rather than they're made by the same person.

Is photography much of an influence?
I really like photography, and it was fun to work with Harris. It's the first time we did a movie together. We both love photography, and we talked a lot about the look of it.

Do you find it easier or harder to start a new project?
I find it really hard to start. I don't think that gets easier. I try to have a break when I've finished something and just kind of look around. I think it takes a while to see what you're interested in!

Are you taking a break or do you have another project?
No. I wanna start writing again, but I have a few things that I have to figure out.

Would you go back to working on a bigger scale?
I prefer working on a smaller scale. I mean, I dunno. I always just wanna do something different than the thing before.

Would you consider doing adaptations again.
Yeah, yeah. I enjoy adapting. I find original scripts are harder, because you don't have something to turn to.

What inspires you?
Y'know, it could be anything. It could be a magazine article, or a story someone was telling me. A movie I saw... I think it comes from being open to different things.

Your films are very atmospheric. How do you 'write' that in a movie script?
(Shrugs) For me, it's just putting the visuals, the music and the sound together.

How do you decide what music you're going to use?
I like to listen to music while I'm writing, and a lot of times I'll pick the music that relates to the atmosphere I want in the film – and a lot of times that will end up in the movie.

But do you have notebooks, or use picture books?
Oh, I have both. I mean, I write a script, and when I'm writing the script I try to describe it. But it's pretty simple. I have the idea in my mind, and then I also have photo references. I only write dialogue when I feel like I need to have dialogue. I'm not so into dialogue-driven scenes. I feel like in real life, people don't always express everything. In movies they always say what they're feeling. Well, not always. But I feel like in real life, it's not till later that you wish you'd said certain things. People don't always express what they wanna express.