The most important item in Sofia Coppola’s possession
When Sofia Coppola starred in her father’s film, The Godfather Part III, critics quickly tore her acting skills apart. Thus, the first accolades she ever received were two Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Supporting Actress and Worst New Star. Although her career didn’t get off to the best start, Coppola eventually demonstrated her abilities as a filmmaker with her 1999 debut feature, The Virgin Suicides.
Adapted from Jeffrey Eugenide’s novel of the same name, the film has since become a cult favourite. However, her 2003 comedy-drama Lost in Translation earned her greater recognition, and she took home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and three Golden Globes the following year. Since then, Coppola has released five more films, including Marie Antoinette and The Beguiled, and built a dedicated fanbase.
Coppola’s style is heavily influenced by aesthetics, stemming from her background in fashion design and modelling in the early 1990s. However, her work has often been criticised for being shallow and superficial due to her overtly feminine gaze. Of course, this is untrue and demonstrates Hollywood’s sexist biases, shunning anything overtly “girlish”. During an interview with the Guardian, Coppola explained: “I just feel like I have a feminine point of view, and I’m happy to put that out there. We certainly have enough masculine ones.”
She continued: “I mean, in my first movie, I felt like making something for teenage girls. I looked at the movies they made for teenage girls and thought: why can’t they have beautiful photography? Why shouldn’t we treat that audience with respect? That was something I missed when I was that age: I wished the movies weren’t so condescending. So I guess I’ve always just made the films that I’d have wanted to see.”
Despite the criticisms Coppola has received over the years from (predominantly male) critics, she has continued to make the films she is interested in creating. Thus, when asked in an episode of Five Things with Lynn Hirschberg to describe an essential item in her possession, Coppola picked a telegram written by Big Edie, which reads: “Don’t look at the reviews. Just keep going.”
Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, otherwise known as Big Edie, was the subject of the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens, alongside her daughter, Little Edie. Big Edie, the aunt of Jackie Onassis and Lee Radziwill, penned the telegram to the latter after she starred in The Philadelphia Story in 1967. Coppola was gifted the item by her friend, Hamilton, after Radziwill passed away in 2019. She explained: “I got to know Lee a little, I met her through Marc Jacobs, and she was in Paris when I was living there when Romy [Coppola’s daughter] was a baby, and we’d make Thanksgiving with whatever Americans were around. It was fun to get to know her over the last few years.”
She described Radziwell as “such a unique person” and the “last connection” to a bygone era. Coppola also stated that she greatly admired Radziwell’s style and “how she did things.” The filmmaker continued: “She would never do anything she didn’t want to do. She said no easily.”
Listen to the full podcast episode below.
