Sofia Coppola on ‘Somewhere’
Somewhere is your most pared-down, restrained film yet: the camera’s often held at a distance and there’s not much dialogue. How did you arrive at that approach?
After Marie Antoinette, I was thinking about approaching a film in a totally different way, to try to make something really minimal. It was also to do with meeting Harris Savides, the cinematographer – we shot a commercial together and talked about how simply you could make a film, how simply you could tell a story. So I thought about that kind of approach when I was writing the script.
The father/daughter relationship in particular is very minimal and unsentimental.
I wanted to have a sweet father/daughter relationship without being too sappy. I remember writing some things – like when they’re in the pool underwater having the tea party and I thought, ‘Oh no, that’s too corny.’ But then I thought, ‘Oh no, let’s try it,’ and it ended up being a moment that I liked. I guess sometimes you have to risk being corny, but I did try to keep it in check. I wanted the whole thing to be understated and subtle – I like that, it seems more like life to me. I feel like in movies they have to make things more dramatic than in reality, but this one I wanted to be more naturalistic and to see how little details can express emotions – more like in life.
After deciding on this approach, how did you go about writing the script?
I like finding visual ways to tell a story. I started with the image of him [Johnny, played by Stephen Dorff] in the Ferrari on the track. I wanted to think of visuals to explain the character and the state he’s in. At the time I was living in Paris, taking some time off after Marie Antoinette, and had had a child. I was so far away from California that I was thinking about it and, every once in a while, a friend would come to town and bring a weekly tabloid from America – they looked so exotic in Paris. So I was thinking about Los Angeles and the pop culture, I was thinking about movies like Shampoo and American Gigolo that really captured the city at that time, and I wanted to do something that showed contemporary LA and my view of it.
Landscape plays a major role in your films – Tokyo in Lost in Translation , Versailles in Marie Antoinette .
I wanted to film LA as it looks and feels. The light is very specific there. And I wanted to capture a certain side of its pop and celebrity culture – the pole-dancing twins [in the film], for example, they were from the Playboy Mansion.
In Lost in Translation there are lots of shots over the city. In Somewhere there’s only one towards the end.
When I visited Tokyo I was a foreigner discovering this whole other planet, so I wanted to show that. Here, Johnny’s really stuck in a world he’s less excited about – it’s more mundane. It’s [set] within his world, so it’s less expansive.
Do you think of all your films as being connected in a visual way?
Whenever I start a film, I always have visual references in mind, mainly from photography. For Somewhere, it was Helmut Newton’s photographs that he did around the Chateau Marmont, and then other photographers in LA, like my old photography teacher Paul Jasmin, and Bruce Weber, who did some of Matt Dillon – I looked at them for the style of this young movie star. I feel like each of my films has their visual style, but I think there’s a connection between them because they come from my own aesthetic. But in this one, because I wanted it to be so minimal and naturalistic, I didn’t want you to notice the camera, so the camera doesn’t move a lot. It’s shot in a very simple way so you’re just alone with this character.
William Eggleston’s photographs often spring to mind when I watch your films.
Yeah, I really admire his work. I didn’t look at his photos specifically for this film, but both Harris and I really like his work. The lenses we shot Somewhere on were the ones my dad used for Rumble Fish [1983]. My brother had saved them and Harris wanted to use them – they’re old beautiful lenses, so they have a different look, less sharp and with a kind of softer feeling. But it’s also nostalgic, because I loved the way Rumble Fish looked.
You’ve said before that when you start thinking about a film you often have an atmosphere in mind. Was that the case here?
With Lost in Translation I started with the idea of Tokyo and how to show that. And here I started with the character of this guy and by thinking about what kind of state he was in. I listen to music when I’m writing, and there’s a certain atmosphere that comes from that. I like trying to create a mood, so you’re in a different world for the time you’re watching the movie.
This is your first film from a male perspective.
As Marie Antoinette was so girly and feminine, I was in the mood to do something different. There were some news articles about young successful actors in crisis, so I was thinking about that. And then there was the challenge about having to write from a different point of view.
Johnny’s world is one you’re very familiar with. Were there a lot of autobiographical elements in the film?
I am familiar with that world, so there are some aspects that come from things I’ve seen and stories I’ve heard. Or things I’ve made up from what could have been. It’s not so autobiographical, but it is informed by familiarity The little girl is based on a friend of mine whose parents are in Hollywood, since I didn’t grow up there, but then I tried to put in memories from my own childhood to make it personal.
Interview by Isabel Stevens, Sight and Sound, January 2011
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