Sofia Coppola reveals she almost quit directing after ‘Marie Antoinette’
Ahead of the release of her new movie Priscilla on November 3rd, Sofia Coppola has revealed that she nearly quit filmmaking after the release of her 2006 picture Marie Antoinette.
While she is the daughter of cinema legend Francis Ford Coppola, the director has carved out her own distinct and beloved style, leaning heavily into aesthetics in movies such as Lost In Translation and her breakout hit The Virgin Suicides.
Upon its release, Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst, only made $60million at the box office against a $40m budget. Despite the initial box office flop, in the years since its release, Marie Antoinette has become a cult classic.
However, the film could have been the last we saw from Coppola as the director revealed to Rolling Stone that she almost quit after its release, stating: “I was just worn out, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore’.”
Despite that, Coppola believes the issues had nothing to do with the experience, noting her “great time with Kirsten [Dunst] and Jason [Schwartzman], being in Versailles and in Paris at that time” but the high-budget movie was simply “a lot to manage so many people”.
The mixed public reaction to the film also didn’t help as Coppola revealed she was a “little disappointed”, especially for Dunst, explaining, “I thought she did a great job, and we were so proud of the movie”.
After the film’s release, Coppola wanted a break, recalling: “[Marie Antoinette] was just a hard shoot, and then I was just over it for a minute. My daughter was born, and I was trying to take a pause.” However, for a while, she wasn’t sure whether it was a hiatus or a retirement.
With some uncertainty regarding her future, it was revealed that cinematographer Harris Savides aided Coppola’s return: “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.”
It seems Coppola won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, being unable to shake the urge to create, adding: “There’s something kind of addictive about making movies. You get an idea, and it bugs you until you do it.”
However, the urgency and pressure to create doesn’t get to her anymore, as she notes: “I don’t feel in a hurry to make more stuff. If I didn’t make anything else, I would feel like I made enough stuff.”
In a four-star review of Priscilla, Far Out wrote: “Priscilla once again puts forth the idea that wealth and aspiration will always play second fiddle to what human beings genuinely want (regardless of their levels of affluence). All Priscilla wanted was to be loved and cared for, to live her own life in partnership with her husband, and what she got was a drug-addicted, self-obsessed, cultural phenomenon – a phenomenon that she would never entirely be able to remove herself from.”
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