Francis Ford Coppola’s Warning to Sofia Coppola When Shooting Her First Film

Inside: a useful warning for first-time filmmakers from Francis Ford Coppola

In the Guardian’s new podcast, The Start, American filmmaker Sofia Coppola looked back at the project that launched her filmmaking career: The Virgin Suicide.

Coppola fell in love with the book written by Jeffrey Eugenides, so much so that she decided she had to make it into a film, even though it was a career she had never considered seriously until that point.

There are two points that particularly caught my attention during the episode, the first one:

Francis Ford Coppola’s Warning

I remember my dad telling me that “Your movie is never as good as your dailies and never as terrible as your first rough cut”. I remember a pretty devastating moment of seeing the first rough cut (of The Virgin Suicides) and thinking “Oh no this is terrible what have I done, I’ve talked to all this people into letting me make a movie and now it’s terrible.” and then little by little we pieced it together and made it into a film.

It’s hard to imagine how far from the final film and from the screenplay a rough cut can be. I love F. F. Coppola‘s warning because it also points out to the excitement that often comes with watching your first dailies.

The other element that was worth nothing was:

Her First Film Became Her Showreel

In France The Virgin Suicides was a hit, at least buzz-wise. I remember watching it when it came out and everybody talking about it. That might be because the film got selected at Cannes because apparently, in America, the film left the theatres as quickly as it came.

Even though Coppola was selected at big festivals, wasn’t a box office success and Coppola’s career was anything but obvious. So Coppola used her first feature as a showreel, to prove she could direct and get financing for the second one:

It was well-received in Cannes but then nobody saw it in America, it got a very dismal release. A few people saw it and then it was gone, it didn’t really have much of a life in the U.S. so it wasn’t really a big launching moment, but it gave me something to show for when I wanted to make my second film, I had something to show in my portfolio. And then couple of years ago, a bunch of teenage girls and younger women told me how much they loved Virgin Suicides and I thought “How do they even know about it, they were not even born then” and through the Internet it sort of had a second life. It’s nice to know that it still speaks to some young women.

And of course, my favorite part of every good story is when a story survives time and finds its audience years or decades later, through the magic of the Internet. What Coppola’s experienced with her first feature is everybody’s dream. Seeing past works resurface and finding a new appreciation.

Margaret Atwood, George R.R. Martin or Alison Bechdel are recent happy exemples that come to mind.

Characteristics of a Film by Sofia Coppola

Since this first advice, Sofia Coppola has directed five more features, established her style and voice, and became last year the first American Female Director to win Best Director at Cannes. (And the second woman in total…) For a reminder on what a film by Sofia Coppola means, check this well-made video by BFI: