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    The Best Dressed People in Hollywood Are Not the Actors

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    Cinephiles can’t seem to help obsessing over their favorite filmmakers’ personal style.Last month, while perusing a copy of the book “How Directors Dress” — a collection newly published by the entertainment company A24 — I came across a striking full-page photograph of the filmmaker David Cronenberg. It was taken at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where Cronenberg accented an otherwise-formal outfit with a pair of oversize wraparound sunglasses designed for mountaineering. These white-framed, gogglelike shades have since become a signature accessory for the director, who has worn them at Cannes so often that audiences there sometimes applaud when he puts them on. In late May, one video making the rounds on social media captured the moment when a standing ovation for Cronenberg’s latest film was briefly hijacked by cheers for the sunglasses.There are a few different ways to explain people’s fascination with Cronenberg’s choice. There is its sheer incongruence as a red-carpet look. There is the fact that Cronenberg, who does few interviews, has never explained it. And there is the fantastically meme-ready manner in which he puts the shades on: He tends to look as if he’s about to retreat in satisfaction from an argument he has handily won.The deeper appeal of the look, though, should be obvious to anyone familiar with the way online cinephiles post about famous directors and their clothes: David Lynch’s obsession with “a good pair of pants,” or Francis Ford Coppola’s “insane drip” in photographs taken during the filming of “Apocalypse Now,” or the charm of Wes Anderson’s enduring commitment to corduroy suits. That the people behind the camera needn’t be costumed, and aren’t meant to be seen, makes their self-presentation all the more interesting — and, we might suspect, more revealing. Our interest in Cronenberg’s shades is about identity as much as auteurism. It’s about the way dedication to a highly personal aesthetic — in fashion as in filmmaking — hints at an all-consuming vision that transcends both.The director David Cronenberg in his signature white sunglasses at the Cannes Film Festival in May.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesOne of the earliest filmmakers to adopt this kind of sartorial persona was Alfred Hitchcock, whose fine suits amounted to a uniform — one that helped make him as recognizable to the public as his superstar actors and actresses were. “How Directors Dress” is replete with other examples. John Ford favored billowy slacks, open-collared dress shirts and neckerchiefs in place of neckties. (This last touch — shared by, among others, Peter Bogdanovich — now rivals the beret and Cecil B. DeMille’s jodhpurs as a deep-rooted cliché of how directors dress.) Jean-Luc Godard wore his suits like rumpled leisurewear, sometimes without a tie and often with dark sunglasses. As men’s wear grew less formal, Woody Allen would stake a claim on baggy khaki and corduroy as the uniform of a tweedy, tightly wound New Yorker. Spike Lee would craft a larger-than-life persona around Nike sneakers, basketball jerseys and baseball caps. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who directed more than 40 films before dying of a drug overdose at 37, cultivated a look as chaotic as his short, astonishingly busy life, dressing himself in everything from running shorts to leather jackets to leopard-print suits on his sets.Other directors adopt a uniform so utilitarian — picture Steven Spielberg’s bluejeans, trucker caps and many-pocketed camera vests — that they transcend practicality to the point of self-parody: The filmmaker winds up somewhere between a hiker and a safari guide, intrepid, ready for the challenges of any location, any set. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Quentin Tarantino, who tends to dress on theme, in everything from jeans and tropical shirts to track suits and Kangol hats. But however clichéd or iconoclastic the look may be, the fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto suggests in an afterword for “How Directors Dress” that filmmakers are never more attuned to their own sense of fashion than they are on a movie set, in the clothes they’ve chosen for the specific purpose of doing their work. “Each director has their own reason to wear something,” he writes. “While they’re making a film, they are in their natural setting: Their styling is natural.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fred Roos, Casting Director and Coppola Collaborator, Dies at 89

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      Widely considered to have the best eye for talent in Hollywood, he shared the best-picture Oscar with Francis Ford Coppola for “The Godfather Part II.”Fred Roos, a casting director and producer who championed the early careers of A-list actors like Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Carrie Fisher, and whose long collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola and his family, stretching from “The Godfather” (1972) to this year’s “Megalopolis,” earned him an Oscar and an Emmy, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 89.His death was announced by his family in a statement.Many in Hollywood said that Mr. Roos had the best eye for talent in the business. He championed the young, relatively unknown Mr. Pacino for the role of Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” when the studio executives at Paramount wanted a better-known actor, like Robert Redford or Warren Beatty. And when his friend George Lucas was leaning toward Amy Irving for the role of Princess Leia in “Star Wars” (1977), Mr. Roos suggested he cast Carrie Fisher instead.Mr. Lucas listened — after all, it was Mr. Roos who had assembled the cast for his breakout film, “American Graffiti,” in 1973, including then-unknown actors like Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss and Mackenzie Phillips. He later did something similar for Mr. Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of the novel “The Outsiders,” bringing together the future stars Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze.Al Pacino as Michael Corleone and Talia Shire as his sister, Connie, in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II.” Mr. Roos was a producer of the film, which won the best-picture Oscar in 1975.John Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty ImagesHarrison Ford and Linda Christensen in George Lucas’s “American Graffiti,” for which Mr. Roos assembled the cast.Screen Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Roos was particularly taken with Mr. Ford, whom he met while the young actor was doing carpentry work on his home. After getting him the uncredited role of Bob Falfa, a wisecracking drag racer, in “American Graffiti,” he cast him in small roles in Mr. Coppola’s films “The Conversation” (1974) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979).But when he suggested Mr. Ford for the role of Han Solo in “Star Wars,” Mr. Lucas balked. He said he only wanted to cast actors he had never worked with.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sofia Coppola’s Latest Release? A Lip Balm With Augustinus Bader.

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      The tinted balm was inspired by products that the filmmaker confected as a girl to achieve the “berry-stained lips” of a character in a Roman Polanski movie.As a girl, Sofia Coppola liked to melt down her lipsticks, mixing colors and consistencies to make a tint that conformed to her aesthetic ideal.She was after the look of Tess, the titular character in Roman Polanski’s 1979 film adaptation of the novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” portrayed by Nastassja Kinski. In one scene, Ms. Coppola recalled, the character was nibbling on strawberries “that left her with perfectly berry-stained lips.”That tint, it turns out, is the cosmetic expression of a subtlety that has long been Ms. Coppola’s hallmark as a filmmaker, writer and director. From an early age, she brought her coolly observant, hyper-feminine sensibility to movies like “The Virgin Suicides,” her first film, released in 1999, “Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette” and, most recently, “Priscilla,” Ms. Coppola’s adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir, “Elvis and Me.”The style of her work is all of a piece, Ms. Coppola, 52, said on Monday in a phone interview; her taste, for the most part, is genteelly uncompromising. “I’m making a world,” she stressed, “that I want to look at and share.”With each of her projects, Ms. Coppola, the daughter of the Hollywood titan Francis Ford Coppola and the late artist and filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, aims to create a sense of intimacy. Her low key, insistently gauzy aesthetic can be seen in her films’ costumes and interiors — and now, of all things, in a series of tinted lip balms.The balm is offered in three tints — pink, coral and berry — that Ms. Coppola said suit her complexion.Melodie McDanielMs. Coppola produced the new line in collaboration with Augustinus Bader, a popular skin care brand that she uses. Some months ago, she approached its eponymous founder — a German doctor and professor whose clinic in Leipzig caters to wealthy clients seeking to delay the effects of aging — asking if he would introduce a bit of color to his lip balm. To her surprise, he agreed.The Augustinus Bader x Sofia Coppola lip balm that they developed, priced at $43, is offered in pink, coral and an earthy shade of plum: tints akin to those Ms. Coppola confected in her childhood bedroom.Those colors suit Ms. Coppola’s complexion, she said, explaining that she prefers using subtle makeup to enhance her full lips and aquiline features. She likes the way she looks even more, she added, “when the lighting is right.”Ms. Coppola’s passions for beauty and fashion run deep, and have been informed by her stint as an intern at Chanel in Paris in the 1980s, as well as by her presence in the front rows at fashion shows of New York designers like Anna Sui and her friend Marc Jacobs in the ’90s and early 2000s.She also founded a clothing brand, Milk Fed, in the mid ’90s, that was known for kiddie-proportioned, slogan-bearing T- shirts, jackets and dresses. Today, the label is produced and sold in Japan, but vintage original items, coveted by a new generation of Ms. Coppola’s acolytes, can go for hundreds of dollars on eBay.No stranger to collaboration, Ms. Coppola directed a commercial promoting Mr. Jacobs’s Daisy Dream fragrance in 2014, and last year she teamed with Barrie, a Scottish knitwear label owned by Chanel, on a collection of cashmere sweaters, jumpsuits, pants and blazers.She feels no need to justify such projects. “They are an extension of what I do in films,” she said.“I love collaboration,” Ms. Coppola added with conviction. “But in the end, you get what you want.” More

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      Eleanor Coppola, Who Chronicled Her Family’s Filmmaking, Dies at 87

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      She made documentaries of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and her daughter Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” and recalled their lives in books.Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and artist who called herself “an observer at heart,” a description borne out through works chronicling the cinematic triumphs and ordeals of her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and their daughter, Sofia Coppola, died on Friday at her home in Rutherford, Calif. She was 87.Her family announced her death in a statement, which did not state a cause.Ms. Coppola’s career as a documentarian began when her husband asked her to record the production of “Apocalypse Now,” his 1979 exegesis of the Vietnam War that took so long to make, some began calling it “Apocalypse Never.” By then Mr. Coppola was Hollywood royalty on the strength of his first two “Godfather” movies. But with “Apocalypse Now,” he stumbled.He came close to going broke as the movie, its roots in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” ran way over budget and over schedule. Filming was slowed by steady rains on location in the Philippines, which served as a stand-in for Vietnam. A typhoon destroyed movie sets. Major parts of the script were written on the fly. Marlon Brando was overweight and underprepared for his role as a deranged Green Berets colonel. To top it all off, the film’s principal actor, Martin Sheen, had a heart attack during the shooting.As for the Coppolas, they careened toward divorce, a marital collapse set in motion largely by his sexual infidelities and frequent tantrums on and off the movie set. “My greatest fear,” his wife captured him on tape as saying, “is to make a really pompous film on an important subject, and I am making it.”Ms. Coppola had her own lapses. “If I tell the truth, we both strayed from our marriage, probably equally, each in our way,” she wrote in “Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 account of that period. “Francis has gone to the extremes in the physical world, women, food, possessions, in an effort to feel complete. I have looked for that feeling of completeness in the non‐physical world. Zen, est, Esalen, meditation.”Ms. Coppola with her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, in 2022. They had a trying marriage but remained together. Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sex and Silence: What This Awards Season Tells Us About Hollywood

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      Whether it’s the return of steamy scenes or the lack of political speeches, the road to the Oscars holds a lot of clues about the state of the industry.We’re heading into the final stretch of this awards season, but you needn’t wait until the Oscars on March 10 to begin drawing conclusions about what’s transpired.To me, awards season has always offered a useful opportunity to take the film industry’s temperature. What can be gleaned about Hollywood’s current state from the movies and moments that have factored into this year’s race? Here are a few of the telling trends I’ve noticed so far.Prestige cinema has become less chaste.Paul Mescal, left, and Andrew Scott in “All of Us Strangers.”Searchlight PicturesOne of the first films I watched last year was “Passages,” a bisexual love-triangle drama that features one of the most bracing sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. That encounter between two men (played by Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski) is revealing not simply because the actors strip down to so little, but because over the course of this surprisingly lengthy and explicit scene, we come to know so much more about the characters from the power dynamics they negotiate while making love.Though I assumed “Passages” would be an anomaly, 2023 proved to be a sexually forthright movie year, producing a crop of awards contenders more interested in the joys of sex than any recent season I can remember. Emma Stone spent much of “Poor Things” on an uninhibited journey of desire, convening with a series of men in a way that surely tested the boundaries of the movie’s R rating. In “All of Us Strangers,” the sexual chemistry between Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal was so potent that I felt myself blushing. Even the director Christopher Nolan broke with convention, filming the first sex scenes of his career for “Oppenheimer.”If there had been a chill in the air while Hollywood learned how to navigate the new inclusion of intimacy coordinators on set, that’s gone now: Movie stars and prestige filmmakers are once again game for the sort of sex scenes that had lately been consigned to premium television. When I spoke with the “Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos in November, he sounded hopeful that attitudes had changed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): ‘Priscilla’ and ‘The Golden Bachelor’ Plumb Heartbreak

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Sofia Coppola’s new film “Priscilla,” a biopic of Priscilla Presley based on Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N’ Roll.” An impressionistic take on the behind-the-scenes relationship of Elvis and Priscilla, it stands in contrast to the ornate extravaganza “Elvis,” directed by Baz Luhrmann, which was released last year.The hit reality show “The Golden Bachelor,” which follows 72-year-old widower Gerry Turner in his search for new love, and in so doing, inverts and maybe rescues the tired format of reality-television dating shows.New songs from Brent Faiyaz featuring Tommy Richman & FELIX! and Cody JohnsonSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Sofia Coppola’s Best Needle Drops

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      Hear songs that memorably accompanied scenes in “The Virgin Suicides,” “Lost in Translation,” “Priscilla” and more.Finely chosen songs are the lifeblood in almost all of Sofia Coppola’s films, including “The Virgin Suicides.”Paramount ClassicsDear listeners,Few working filmmakers curate soundtracks with as much flair, style and intentionality as Sofia Coppola: Consider the melancholy dream-pop smeared through “Lost in Translation,” the new-wave tunes that give “Marie Antoinette” a playful modernity, or the eerie, weightless Air score that haunts the sleepy suburbs of “The Virgin Suicides.”Coppola’s latest film, “Priscilla” — based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis & Me” — comes out today, and it features some of her boldest and most unconventional musical choices yet. That’s apparent right from the movie’s opening scene, in which the celestial sounds of Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” fade unexpectedly into the Ramones’ 1980 cover of a Ronettes ballad, “Baby, I Love You.”These aren’t obvious choices when it comes to soundtracking a movie about Elvis, but since Presley’s estate did not grant Coppola permission to use his music in the film, the obvious choices were off the table. No matter. Coppola — along with the music supervisor Randall Poster and the band Phoenix, whose frontman, Thomas Mars, is Coppola’s husband — used those limitations to create something more distinctive and personal than a standard biopic carpeted wall-to-wall with Presley tunes. (Plus, you know, one of those already came out last year.) They have instead crafted a movie that re-centers a woman too often pushed to the side in her own life story, and found the music — some historically accurate, some imaginatively not — that reflects her own increasingly disillusioned perspective.“Priscilla” may be the Coppola movie most explicitly about music, but finely chosen songs are the lifeblood of almost all of her films. Coppola characters often use music as a tool of communication, to sing or suggest things they can’t say aloud. Think of the unforgettable karaoke scene in “Lost in Translation,” or the way the imprisoned Lisbon sisters in “The Virgin Suicides” use their record player to communicate with the forbidden boys of the outside world.Today’s playlist is a collection of some of the greatest needle drops in Sofia Coppola’s filmography. Pour yourself a glass of Suntory, gaze dreamily out a window and press play.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Jesus and Mary Chain: “Just Like Honey”Only I know what Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett Johansson at the end of “Lost in Translation”: “The Jesus and Mary Chain. ‘Psychocandy.’ It’ll change your life! (Don’t expect quite as much from the rest of the discography, though.)” (Listen on YouTube)2. Gang of Four: “Natural’s Not in It”This spiky, 1979 post-punk song that opens Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” immediately signals that this isn’t going to be an ordinary biopic — it’s going to be one with a deliciously anachronistic soundtrack. There’s a sly irony to the way Coppola uses it here, too, since the politics that Gang of Four espouses on “Entertainment!” aren’t exactly simpatico with the excesses of Versailles. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Ramones: “Baby, I Love You”Ever aware of the importance of plunging the audience directly into a film’s atmosphere, Coppola sets the tone of “Priscilla” by running this swooning 1980 Ramones cover of the Ronettes over the opening credits. (Listen on YouTube)4. Heart: “Magic Man”The seductive, bowl-cutted Trip Fontaine (played by Josh Hartnett) blows into “The Virgin Suicides” to the tune of this period-specific Heart classic, indicating to the Lisbon family that he and his aviator shades are a very particular kind of trouble. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gwen Stefani: “Cool”From the 2010 film “Somewhere” — in my opinion, Coppola’s most underrated, and one of her best — this Gwen Stefani ode to getting along with your ex soundtracks a memorable scene between an absent, movie-star father (Stephen Dorff) and his preteen daughter (Elle Fanning). The girl practices an ice-skating routine while her father watches from the bleachers. That she’s framed in a wide shot, and in long, unbroken takes, emphasizes both the distance between them and the affection of her father’s gaze. “Cool” is a perfect accompaniment for such a bittersweet moment. (Listen on YouTube)6. Air: “Playground Love”The French electronic duo Air composed the gauzy, atmospheric score for Coppola’s 1999 debut, “The Virgin Suicides.” Variations on the lead melody of “Playground Love” wind through the film like a recurring theme, before the haunting song — featuring vocals from Coppola’s future husband, Mars — plays over the closing credits. (Listen on YouTube)7. Bow Wow Wow: “I Want Candy”One of the great montages in the S.C.C.U. (Sofia Coppola Cinematic Universe) is the pastel-hued, shamelessly indulgent shopping spree scene that comes midway through “Marie Antoinette,” to the tune of this early ’80s bop. Let them eat candy! (Listen on YouTube)8. Sleigh Bells: “Crown on the Ground”This blown-out, sky-scraping song from Sleigh Bells’ singular 2010 album “Treats” — an underappreciated founding document of hyperpop — opens Coppola’s 2013 film “The Bling Ring” with a time-stamped jolt. (Listen on YouTube)9. The Cure: “Plainsong”If you’re going to use the Cure’s achingly gorgeous “Plainsong” in a movie, the scene had better be epic. Coppola understood this, and made it the sumptuous soundtrack to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s coronation. (Listen on YouTube)10. My Bloody Valentine: “Sometimes”Kevin Shields, the famously slow-working singer and guitarist of the shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine, wrote four original songs for the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack — some of the first music he’d released since his group’s landmark 1991 album, “Loveless.” But it’s My Bloody Valentine’s dream-pop classic “Sometimes” that underscores one of the movie’s most beloved scenes, as Johansson gazes out of a taxi window in the middle of the night, the passing neon of Tokyo rendered a romantic blur. (Listen on YouTube)11. Tommy James & the Shondells: “Crimson and Clover”In “Priscilla,” Elvis and Priscilla share their first kiss in the late ’50s to the tune of this woozy classic — which, in reality, came out in 1968. I like the way the critic Stephanie Zacharek describes this anachronism in her review of the film: “After Elvis bestows his first, gentle kiss on Priscilla’s lips, she enters a fugue state, having shifted to a new plane of existence. At that point, it’s Tommy James & the Shondells’ ‘Crimson and Clover’ that cocoons around her like a whisper, a song from the future, a haunting in advance.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Roxy Music: “More Than This”A spot-on choice — world-weary, full of ennui, still showing off some taste — of what Murray’s “Lost in Translation” character Bob Harris would sing at karaoke. (Listen on YouTube)13. Dolly Parton: “I Will Always Love You”I don’t want to spoil exactly when this song plays in “Priscilla,” but I do want to give you some context that will make the moment hit even harder. Elvis loved Dolly Parton’s 1974 hit and wanted to record it himself, but his manager, Col. Tom Parker, asked for at least half of Parton’s publishing rights. Though it killed her to turn him down — Elvis! — selling off her publishing was a bridge too far. So she said no. Karma took until 1992 to arrive. “Then when Whitney’s version came out,” Parton said, “I made enough money to buy Graceland.” (Listen on YouTube)Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Sofia Coppola’s Best Needle Drops” track listTrack 1: The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Just Like Honey”Track 2: Gang of Four, “Natural’s Not in It”Track 3: The Ramones, “Baby, I Love You”Track 4: Heart, “Magic Man”Track 5: Gwen Stefani, “Cool”Track 6: Air, “Playground Love”Track 7: Bow Wow Wow, “I Want Candy”Track 8: Sleigh Bells, “Crown on the Ground”Track 9: The Cure, “Plainsong”Track 10: My Bloody Valentine, “Sometimes”Track 11: Tommy James & the Shondells, “Crimson and Clover”Track 12: Roxy Music, “More Than This”Track 13: Dolly Parton, “I Will Always Love You”Bonus TracksOn this week’s new music Playlist, we’ve got fresh tracks from Olivia Rodrigo, Megan Thee Stallion, Torres and more. Listen here.Also, there’s a new Beatles song? Sort of? In a Critic’s Notebook from earlier this week, Jon Pareles considered the wistful, uncanny “Now and Then.”And finally, regretfully, in Tuesday’s newsletter I provided the wrong link to Sam Sodomsky’s wonderful Pitchfork interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. For real this time: Read it here. More

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      Sofia Coppola Makes It Look Easy. It Isn’t.

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      Sofia Coppola is so drawn to the idea of becoming that she sometimes finds it hard to grasp that she became. Over eight feature films — including her latest, “Priscilla,” about the young Priscilla Presley’s tumultuous relationship with Elvis — she has delved deeply into the liminal stage that is a young woman’s coming-of-age. So you can hardly blame Coppola that after staying in that head space for so long, it comes as a surprise that 25 years have passed since filming her debut feature, “The Virgin Suicides.”“It’s weird to reflect back at having a body of work,” she told me. “Like, ‘Oh, you’re a grown-up now and actually established, not just starting off.’”It was a sunny October afternoon in Los Angeles, and we were sitting on a restaurant terrace at the Academy Museum, where the 52-year-old director had come to tout “Priscilla” and autograph copies of “Sofia Coppola Archive,” a new art book assembled from the boxes of letters, photographs and reference images she had collected throughout her career. After the signing, she participated in a conversation moderated by members of the academy’s teen council, who asked Coppola questions about screenwriting and style as a form of self-expression.Teenagers and young women are still her demographic sweet spot, and Coppola, who is now the mother of two teenage daughters, met the young moderators’ queries with encouragement. “These are such good questions from the teen council, right?” she said to the audience. Many of the people attending the panel had come dressed to impress her, though Coppola was simply attired in a navy T-shirt with black trousers and ballet flats, her fingernails painted the same light-pink hue as the cover of her book.The director has released an art book, “Sofia Coppola Archive,” that compiles letters, photos and reference images. She herself has become an inspiration for younger artists.OK McCausland for The New York TimesIn a profession where so many directors are chatty, high-strung neurotics, Coppola is the picture of placidity. But her even keel shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of caring. In a letter to Bill Murray included in “Archive,” Coppola describes a low moment when it seemed Murray couldn’t be reached to star in “Lost in Translation” (2003) and friends coaxed her out to dinner to consider other options. They soon found that her personal investment in Murray’s casting was more fraught than they could have known. “I broke down in tears at the restaurant (something I never do),” Coppola wrote.This is all to say that Coppola is so serene — and her films, at their best, so sublime — that people may assume it all comes easily to her. (That she hails from a filmmaking family led by a titanic father, Francis Ford Coppola, can only further that notion.) But over the course of our lunch, Coppola was candid about the issues she faces this far into her Oscar-winning career. Making movies the way she wants remains so difficult that all the recent genuflection — like the moment early in our lunch when a young fan with a “Virgin Suicides” shoulder bag came over to praise Coppola for being “such a light” — can still catch her off guard.“To be treated with that kind of respect, it’s surreal,” Coppola said. “Maybe that’s why I’m surprised when I’m in this context, because I’m still fighting to get movies made and getting budgets cut. I don’t think I’m professionally treated in the way that I am when I encounter these young people.”Early in her career, she was told that while women would go to a film starring men, the reverse wasn’t true. Though the prevailing attitude in Hollywood has evolved somewhat since then — or at least executives have learned to stop saying the quiet part out loud — Coppola still faces plenty of skepticism when trying to budget any female-fronted project. “The people in charge of giving money are usually straight men, still,” she said. “There’s always people in lower levels who are like myself, but then the bosses have a certain sensibility.”On the press tour for “Priscilla,” young women keep telling Coppola that they plan to be filmmakers, too. Their ambition gives her hope, though it’s tempered by two and a half decades of experience, including the tough battles she fought to save her new movie.“If it’s so hard for me to get financing as an established person, I worry about younger women starting out,” she said. “It’s surprising that it’s still a struggle.”Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley. The movie’s budget was cut at the last minute and Coppola had to adjust.Sabrina Lantos/A24COPPOLA FIRST THUMBED through Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis and Me,” as a vacation read years ago. Expecting little more than a fun page-turner, she found herself unexpectedly riveted by Priscilla’s predicament: Like the title character of Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” she was a teenager who married into royalty, then found herself trapped in a palace that offered everything and nothing. To Coppola, who was just 18 when she gave a harshly criticized performance in her father’s film “The Godfather Part III,” Priscilla’s feeling of being scrutinized by an entire country at such a formative age was all too relatable.Still, it took some time for the story to click into place. Coppola had gone into 2020 readying her biggest project ever, an adaptation of “The Custom of the Country,” Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel, as a five-hour limited series for Apple TV+. But though the streamer has a reputation for spending big on prestige projects, Coppola said executives there weren’t keen on the lead character, the ambitious social climber Undine Spragg, and began to tighten their purse strings accordingly. (Apple did not respond to requests for comment.)“The idea of an unlikable woman wasn’t their thing,” Coppola noted. “But that’s what I’m saying about who’s in charge.”A friend prodded her to find something new to direct, and while laid up in bed for a week with Covid, Coppola took another look at “Elvis and Me” and suddenly saw with crystal clarity how it could work as a film. Even though Baz Luhrmann had just gone into production on the glitzy biopic “Elvis,” Coppola was undaunted: She figured if his version became a hit — and it did, grossing $288 million worldwide and earning eight Oscar nominations — then it would only juice interest in Priscilla’s side of the story.Coppola called up Presley, who had been a fan of hers since “Lost in Translation,” and after careful wooing, the 78-year-old came aboard the project as an executive producer. On the advice of her frequent collaborator Kirsten Dunst, Coppola hired Cailee Spaeny, best known for “Mare of Easttown” and “Pacific Rim: Uprising,” to play Priscilla from ages 14 to 28. Casting Elvis was harder: The real-life icon left impossibly big shoes to fill, and Luhrmann’s leading man, Austin Butler, was about to be Oscar-nominated for his robust spin on the role. Coppola wanted her film to show Elvis’s darker, domestic side, and to play him, she selected the fast-rising Australian actor Jacob Elordi from the HBO series “Euphoria.”“A lot of those movies didn’t get seen,” Coppola said, referring to her earlier work, “and that they are so watched now by a young generation, it’s cool that they speak to them.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesThe project was coming together quickly, but on a tight budget that allowed little room for error. Luhrmann had made “Elvis” for $85 million and Coppola had less than a quarter of that to spend on a lavish period piece that would span a decade and a half and recreate 1960s Memphis in wintry Toronto. Then, just before the film’s start date last October, a key piece of financing fell through. To save “Priscilla,” which was now $2 million short of its budget, Coppola and the producer Youree Henley were faced with an impossible task: An entire week would have to be cut from the film’s already slim shoot. With so little to work with, would “Priscilla” fall apart just as Coppola’s Apple series had?“We were like, ‘If we hold hands and jump out of the plane together, we’ll just figure it out as we’re descending,’” said Henley, who huddled with Coppola to slash 10 pages from the script.“It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do,” Coppola said about the mad scramble to make “Priscilla” work in just 30 days. Though the completed film feels refined and delicate, the shoot was anything but, since key locations were only briefly available and hairstyles, clothing and character ages changed radically between scenes. On the first day of shooting, Spaeny played Priscilla as a teenager graduating from high school; on the second, she shot the final scene as a single mother in her late 20s emerging from the gates of Graceland.It’s a wonder any of it tracks, except that Coppola’s sensibility is so specific, and her actors so eager to please her, that each scene feels distinctly of a piece. At its Venice Film Festival premiere in early September, the film received strong reviews and secured Spaeny the Volpi Cup for best actress, while an emotional Priscilla Presley told Coppola, “You did your homework.”“I still can’t believe our movie came together,” Coppola said now. And though mounting it was difficult, she recalled that while on set, she was in her element like never before.“In the beginning, I was just kind of figuring it out,” she admitted, speaking of her career. “And now, making this film ‘Priscilla,’ I felt like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this.’ All the years of experience start to gel.”LATER IN THE LUNCH, we were interrupted by a 25-year-old who hoped that Coppola would sign her book. She had on the sort of frilly dress that Marie Antoinette would have gone gaga for, with a constellation of arm tattoos that snaked out from underneath her lace sleeves.“My name is Sofia,” the fan said shyly. “I’m named after you.”With a quavering voice, the young woman explained that when her parents immigrated from Panama, Coppola’s movies were among the first they watched. That’s how she got her name and accrued, over time, the desire to follow her idol into filmmaking. “You have no idea the impact you’ve had on my life,” the second Sofia said, a tear running down her cheek.Coppola, who said she lived and worked in a “little bubble,” is always surprised when she meets people who connect this strongly to her work. “A lot of those movies didn’t get seen, and that they are so watched now by a young generation, it’s cool that they speak to them,” she told me.She remembered that Paramount Classics was cautious about releasing “The Virgin Suicides” in the spring of 2000 — “They thought girls were going to kill themselves if they saw it” — and that for a while after it came out, she watched her male contemporaries (including her then-husband, Spike Jonze) book plenty of jobs she wasn’t getting.“I’m still fighting to get movies made and getting budgets cut,” Coppola said.OK McCausland for The New York TimesMaybe it took the world some time to catch up. Though “Archive” is full of photos that Coppola has used for inspiration, Coppola’s own work now seems like the mood board for any number of artists, from the photographer Petra Collins to the singer Lana Del Rey. On television, you can detect the influence of her anachronistic take on “Marie Antoinette” in high-spirited historical remixes like “Bridgerton” and “The Great,” while Coppola often trends on TikTok, much to the annoyance of her daughters, Romy and Cosima, the only teenage girls who aren’t especially impressed by her oeuvre. “They think I’m lame,” Coppola said, though when 16-year-old Romy posted a clever viral TikTok this year, many wondered if she might follow in her mother’s footsteps as a filmmaker.A line can also be drawn from Coppola’s early work to the films of Greta Gerwig. They are two of only seven women to be nominated for the best director Oscar, and both got those nods early in their careers: Coppola was nominated at 32 for “Lost in Translation,” which won her the Oscar for original screenplay, while Gerwig got her directing nomination at 34 for “Lady Bird” (2017). Does Coppola think the blockbuster success of Gerwig’s “Barbie” could help more female-fronted projects find financing?“I’m sure it’ll make things easier, but that’s a very specific kind of filmmaking with, I would imagine, a lot of executives involved,” she said. “So that’s a different thing.”Coppola isn’t especially interested in directing blockbusters, though she once tried to mount a big-screen take on “The Little Mermaid” for Universal and was briefly courted for the final “Twilight” film. “I’ve never expected to be mainstream,” she said. “The culture that I always liked growing up was the side culture.” All she really wants is the ability to tell her stories with the budgets that befit them, and with people around who support her sensibility.But in the era of the comic-book tentpole, even that modest ask can be rejected as too much. Coppola meets frequently with the director Tamara Jenkins — she calls their friendship a “two-person ‘women in film’ coffee group” — to compare the battle scars they’ve earned from trying to get movies made: “We’re like, ‘It’s so hard. Why do we do this?’”Maybe that’s a question with no answer. Or maybe it’s an answer Coppola just has to keep relearning.“When you finish a project, you’re like, oh,” she said, as a Mona Lisa smile appeared on her face. “You have to do it, because it bugs you until you do.” More

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      Hollywood Gala Will Welcome Striking Stars, but Not Studio Bosses

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      How will the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures put on its star-studded fund-raiser this year, amid the polarizing strike? Very carefully.Meryl Streep, who was chosen to be honored at the gala next month for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, was initially under the impression that the Hollywood actors’ strike would prevent her from attending.The strike, after all, had already forced the Academy to delay one gala in November, where Angela Bassett and Mel Brooks were to receive honorary Oscars. In the case of the fund-raising event planned for Oct. 14, it was unclear at first if SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and movie actors, would allow striking members to attend, and, if it did, whether any would want to go.Would it be OK to appear at such a celebratory event while the industry is on the ropes? Should actors sit at tables (costing $250,000 to $500,000) that in some cases are paid for by the studios they are striking against? And what about the potential for vitriol and tension, or at least deep social awkwardness?But after negotiations and quiet diplomacy that determined who could attend and what kinds of work could be honored, the gala — which typically attracts Hollywood’s A-listers and moguls and raises more than $10 million for the popular museum — will proceed. The biggest change: Executives from the studios being struck, some of which are among the museum’s biggest sponsors, will not be there.Streep will be, though, since she has approval from her union. “I have been assured that SAG-AFTRA has encouraged members to attend the gala — that the museum deeply depends on this event for its educational and community outreach, and that no industry executives from struck companies will be in attendance,” she said in an email. “So I am steaming my dress and heading West.”Meryl Streep, armed with permission from the actors’ union to attend the gala where she is being honored, said, “I am steaming my dress and heading West.” Arturo Holmes/Getty ImagesStreep’s initial confusion is emblematic of the fraught territory that the industry finds itself in as it tries to navigate the dos and don’ts of the strike — from awards shows and fund-raisers to social events, films and television shows.It can be confusing: Some talk show hosts have stumbled in trying to do decide whether to return to the air, and the writers’ union picketed “Dancing With the Stars” although its cast had received a green light from SAG-AFTRA to work. The tentative deal reached Sunday by the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was a hopeful sign, but the actors remain on strike, and securing their union’s blessing was crucial for the Academy gala.“The basic guidance we’ve given people is, so long as it is not focused on a particular project or a particular struck company, it’s OK for our members to participate in those events and to acknowledge someone’s body of work,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator of the actors’ union, said in an interview. “There will be members who choose not to participate in these things who don’t feel it’s the right thing to do at this point, since it is a serious time for people who work in the industry. I imagine our members will make judgments for themselves.”The gala is vital for the nascent museum, in an effort to raise millions of dollars and the institution’s profile. The event’s knack for drawing bold-faced names has led some to think of it as a West Coast Met Gala. The question this year is whether the lack of studio executives, and qualms on the part of striking actors, could make this year’s party less buoyant or its red carpet less buzzy.But assuming the honorees show up as planned, there will be guaranteed star power present: In addition to Streep, the Academy will honor Oprah Winfrey, Michael B. Jordan, and Sofia Coppola. The chairs of the gala, which is raising money for exhibitions, education and public programs, are the director Ava DuVernay, the actor Halle Berry, the producer Ryan Murphy and the producer Dr. Eric Esrailian, a physician and a trustee.Oprah Winfrey is being honored for her “exemplary leadership and support” of the museum. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images“This event is about raising vital funds to ensure that this work will go on in service to the public,” said Jacqueline Stewart, who last year became the museum’s director and president. “The work of the museum is a common ground despite the strikes.”Behind the scenes, union representatives have been in discussions with the museum to set certain ground rules: Individual actors can be honored, but not individual projects, and bodies of work can be highlighted, but not specific films, studios or streaming services. If the gala ventures out of bounds, Crabtree-Ireland said, members will be expected to get up and leave to avoid incurring disciplinary measures.Stewart said that no guests had declined invitations citing the strike as a reason. While some studios have contributed funds to the gala, she said, “given the particular circumstances this year, there will be no executives from struck companies in attendance.” The majority of table and ticket buyers are not from the studios, the museum said, but are a mix of corporate supporters, philanthropists, and museum trustees.Some union members hope that the museum gala can be an opportunity to highlight the labor dispute, which was prompted by concerns about pay, artificial intelligence and working conditions and which has halted virtually all production.“I get that the optics are bad when some of our members are walking the picket line and others are putting on black tie and jewels and walking the red carpet,” said Greg Cope White, who had to pause production on a Netflix adaptation of his memoir — for which he is also a screenwriter — “The Pink Marine,” about a gay 18-year-old who joins the U.S. Marine Corps.“The gala is an opportunity to get some attention to our cause,” White added. “Meryl Streep and Oprah are great speakers. Hopefully they’ll give passionate sound bites that will bring some light to us.”The Academy Museum opened in 2021, and has become a popular attraction. Tanveer Badal for The New York TimesEach honoree will receive a different award — Streep, for her “global cultural impact”; Jordan for “helping to contextualize and challenge dominant narratives around cinema”; Winfrey for her “exemplary leadership and support” of the museum; and Coppola for innovations that “have advanced the art of cinema.”After numerous delays, the Academy Museum finally opened in 2021, a seven-story, $484 million concrete-and-glass spherical building designed by the architect Renzo Piano that was widely welcomed as an example of the city’s cultural fertility. An exhibition dedicated to John Waters, the cult filmmaker who directed “Pink Flamingos,” “Polyester” and “Hairspray,” opened there on Sept. 17.Although the gala is approaching fast, some actors and writers remain hopeful that the strike will be resolved by the time the limousines start to roll down Wilshire Boulevard. “If I could open the envelope at the Oscars,” White said, “It would say, ‘Strike is over.’” More