Sofia Coppola: The Bling Ring Release

In celebration of today's wider release of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, I have extracted a few of my favorite tidbits from the deluge of interviews with Sofia about her new film. If you have seen The Bling Ring, I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Special thanks to editor-at-large Dara Block for alerting me to a marvelous interview with Sofia Coppola by Elvis Mitchell for his program "The Treatment" on NPR. Listen to their thirty-minute conversation on KCRW.

"Sofia Coppola"
Interview Magazine, June 2013
By Richard Prince
Stylist: Karl Templer; Photographer: Craig McDean

Prince: … The sound is married so incredibly well to the images in the movie. I know you are married to a musician, but were you aware from the start of all the different music you were going to add to the film?

Coppola: No, I got help with that. [both laugh] There are songs that I was into, but for instance there's the blond girl driving her Lexus, playing Rick Ross, that kind of gangster rap. My friend's 12-year-old son is really into Rick Ross, and I was like, "What's the most thug song that would be the most poseur-ish for this blond girl to be playing?" My music supervisor is my friend Brian [Reitzell]; he played me a bunch of hip-hop, which was fun because it's not my usual genre. And some of it was improvised. Like, Emma Watson liked this one song that plays in the club called "212" [by Azealia Banks]—it was a hit in London that she liked.

…

Coppola: I wanted it to feel like you were with them in the closets and rooms. That was really Paris Hilton's place. She let us come into her house.

Prince: She really has all those images of herself up on her walls?

Coppola: Yes, on every wall. And she really has a nightclub in her house.

…

Prince: … It's like what you were saying about the nature of the subject being tacky, but you took something tacky and made it elegant.

Coppola: Oh, thank you! That's good! It becomes something pretty.

Prince: It's like taking something elegant and making it tacky. I like that idea too. I mean, personally, Paris Hilton is not my taste. I just don't get it. But I love that I don't.

Coppola: Yeah, I thought it was fun because, in a way, it's exotic. You want to see a different world.

"Girls on Film"
By Lynn Hirschberg
W Magazine, June/July 2013
Stylist: Edward Enninful; Photographer: Michael Thompson

“I think the way I dress is pretty boring,” Coppola said as she wrapped a black and white scarf around her neck and got ready to leave for lunch at Buvette, a small bistro in the neighborhood. “It’s flattering that people like the way I dress, but it’s funny to hear that I’m on best-dressed lists. I like fashion. I’m into it. But I don’t think of myself as a fashion role model.” As we left the house and headed up Seventh Avenue, I asked Coppola if she ever went online to read about herself. The Bling Ring is forgiving of the gang’s behavior, but it casts a harsh judgment on the Internet. “I don’t go online. I don’t want to see what people are writing about me,” Coppola said flatly. “I feel a little cut off from the modern world, and I like that. I don’t want to get too self-conscious—and how can you not become self-conscious if you’re seeing and hearing things about yourself?”

She paused to look in the window of Marc Jacobs’s bookstore on Bleecker Street. Coppola, who is the leader of her daughter Romy’s Girl Scout troop, was planning to have the girls sell cookies in front of the shop. She went inside and asked the store manager if she had received the necessary clearances for the sale, and once Coppola was sure that the corner had been secured, she continued with her thought: “I look at the Internet from a parent’s point of view. With The Bling Ring, I tried to make the characters’ lives fun and exciting, but the idea of social media—having an audience and taking pictures for people to see—that’s a scary thing. When I was young, things were simpler.”

Interview Magazine Russia
By Naomi Campbell

Campbell: What would the 16 year old Sofia say about the woman sitting here today?

Coppola: I don’t know, that’s a funny question, I think I always wanted to do things and be independent. I think I’d be happy! It’s funny, I always wanted to be a magazine editor.

….

Campbell: Do you like François Truffaut? 

Coppola: Yes, Truffaut and Godard.

Campbell: It seems you have the feminine version of that.

Coppola: I love French cinematography and the atmosphere so that was definitely something, and seeing Breathless as a kid had a big impact on me. 

Campbell: Which part of directing do you like the most? The writing, filming, or the editing? 

Coppola: I think the writing for me is the hardest part, I like being on set, on my own set probably my favorite is editing as you don’t have the stress of time frame, you can just sit back and play with things.

"On Protecting Privacy"
By Lee Radziwill
The New York Times T Magazine, 30 May 2013
Photographer: Jason Schmidt

Coppola: When I read the Vanity Fair article about these kids, it summed up everything that I think is declining in our culture. And it just doesn’t feel like anyone is talking about it. Kids are inundated with reality TV and tabloid culture so much that this just seems normal. When I go to a concert, everyone is filming and photographing themselves and then posting the pictures right away. It is almost as if your experiences don’t count unless you have an audience watching them. There are even videos of kids having their sweet-16 birthdays and they want a red-carpet V.I.P. theme. This movie was about an extreme version of this.

Radziwill: Does that fascinate you or frighten you or bewilder you?

Coppola: It frightens me, and it just seems like this trash culture is becoming acceptable as mainstream culture.

Radziwill: I find it sad that that’s the way culture is going.

Coppola: Yeah, I guess I was hoping to have some kind of discussion about it in the hopes that we can try to improve things. I wanted at the beginning of the film for it to look as enticing as possible, so you could sort of understand why these kids were obsessed with that world and go along with the ride, so we’re not just looking from a distance. I wanted you to try to experience it through their eyes. But I also wanted to kind of catch up with them, and then for people to start to have other feelings about it.

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Sofia Coppola photographs courtesy of Interview Magazine, W Magazine, and The New York Times.

Comments

[mike]

Great interviews and can't wait to see Bling Ring!

[dara]

kellina, this is such a great montage of sofia interviews. personally, I love that naomi campbell with sofia interview. I would never imagine those two together as they seem like such opposites, but I like the conversation they had about godard and breathless....its always interesting too hear what inspires her!

[kellina]

Thanks, Michael!!! Equally excited to see TBR...

[kellina]

dara, so happy to have your stamp of approval, thank you! i absolutely agree, i thought naomi paid sofia the ultimate compliment in comparing her to godard. ;-) it is fascinating that sofia was inspired by breathless at such a young age. and i love that you can tell naomi is really curious about sofia's life and work. it is so fun to listen in on these conversations. also, thanks again for mentioning the elvis interview, it is a pleasure to listen to him and sofia talk.

[Kristin]

Love her commentary on the saturation of social media and how it contributes to anomie. I've had friends sit right across from me and fail to communicate with me, the real person they are with, because they are commenting with friends on FB, having not very meaningful conversations. I've yet to see TBR, but I can't wait!