written by STEFF YOTKA
photography DICK PAGE & JAMES GIBBS
styling SPENCER SINGER
Before Sofia Coppola, movies were about men. If it wasn’t men it was boys, and if it wasn’t boys it was women directed by men in tragedy or hot pursuit. Few movies were made about girls. “I remember someone telling me, ‘Oh, you can’t make movies without the male. The main character has to be a guy. Girls will go to stories about boys, but boys won’t go to stories about girls,” Coppola tells me from her warm New York City home. “There wasn’t this idea that an audience of girls matters.” She was the daughter of the director who invented the modern male psyche (one of Sofia’s earliest acts on earth was appearing as a newborn baby in The Godfather), the only sister in a house of brothers, what else was she to do but to become the world’s preeminent filmmaker for girls?
Her first act as a filmmaker was to save girlhood from the male gaze with 2000’s The Virgin Suicides. In the mid-’90s, Jeffrey Eugenides novel had been optioned by a male director and was in development. “You know that feeling of when you love a book and you hear they’re making a movie, you don’t want them to mess up the book you love?” Coppola remembers. “I heard a guy was making it, and they were making it really dark, and I was just like,” she winces a little recalling the idea of a dark and vengeful tale.
“I had an idea from reading the book of the feeling of it and that moment. So I started adapting it just to try to learn how you adapt the book into a screenplay,” she continues. She did not have the rights to the book and she had not made a feature film or written a screenplay—but she soldiered on, eventually convincing the studio to give her the rights and let her tackle the novel’s translation to screen. She was just 28 years old when she wrote the screenplay and 29 when she stepped on set to direct her first feature.
“I really feel like that book [The Virgin Suicides] made me into a filmmaker,” she says. “I really wasn’t planning on doing that—I had made a short film and been around sets, but I always wanted to do something different than my family.”
But how lucky are we that she met and loved the Lisbon sisters? Five girls, just teenagers, wound together in mind and heart. They brush their hair. They share their prairie dresses. They swoon over Trip Fontaine. They are bound together in a unbreakable chain that has defined girlhood since the film’s premiere in 1999. The Virgin Suicides has become such a cultural touchstone for what it means to be a girl, it’s almost impossible to imagine Lana Del Rey or Rookie magazine or the balmy rose set of Euphoria without Coppola’s film.
It’s no wonder that 25 years after its wide release, Coppola is reviving the tale of the sisters with a new book, The Virgin Suicides, published under her new imprint Important Flowers with MACK. The small, cloth-bound tome unearths never-before-seen Corinne Day’s photographs from the movie’s set. The British photographer was invited to Toronto in the summer of 1998 to capture Kirstin Dunst and the gang in bed, in gress, in the pool—girls just being girls. “I felt we would do takes with the girls laying around the bedroom for hours and playing music just to get into that world,” Coppola remembers of the set. The images became the primary source for girlhood, shaping a generation’s understanding of the mysterious togetherness and lethally pretty spirit of being a young woman
Here, Coppola discusses her new book, her legendary debut film, and how she stays in touch with her inner teen.
Steff Yotka: Was there a moment in the process of adapting The Virgin Suicides when you had to come out to your family as a writer-director?
Sofia Coppola: My dad always talked to me as if, of course I was going to be a writer—he just talked to my brother and I like that all the time. He loves to share his interests and what he’s learned. I don’t think it was a surprise, but I definitely was trying to do other things.
My family was really supportive and my brother came and helped me. My cousin Chris was the acting coach and came up to work on it. It was a really nice community feeling. We shot in summertime in Toronto and all the kids were so sweet and into it. They were all really that age, so it was a fun atmosphere. It just felt it was very homemade and low budget and a lot of love went into it. I was a fan of Corinne Day, so it was really exciting for her to come. I always wanted to do something more with her photos, so to be able to have them all together was something that I was really happy to see.
The original books of Corinne’s pictures are modern grails. But you’ve found never-before-seen pictures in this new book, right?
Yeah, we just found a box of them when we were working on my book [Sofia Coppola: Archive]. I was so excited because I didn’t know where they were—I am not that organized—and I was so happy when we found them. There were a few images that we’ve seen a lot, but then to look through all the contact sheets and just remember that time—just her eye for detail that was particular to her in that time. It reminds me of being there.
Can you describe the atmosphere on the set?
I remember we were shooting on film and the producer would be like, “Why is the camera rolling of the girls just lying around? You have to stop shooting so much film.” And I was like, “No.” It was just that—hours of just the girls lying around, so it felt like they’d been in there forever.
It felt like summer camp—we were all just kind of figuring out how to do it. It was my first time directing, everyone was really eager to help and sweet, and I remember those kids being really, really great. Meeting Kirsten, she was 16 and it was the beginning of our friendship. I remember when Josh Harnett would show up on set as Trip Fontaine, and we would all swoon. Ed Lachman, the cinematographer, was great in helping me figure out how I wanted to shoot it. I mean, there were days that it was stressful because it was low budget and we didn’t have a lot of time. We were always scrambling, but there was definitely a good will on set.
What was your biggest learning from making the film?
To trust my intuition. I learned a lot from still photography that helped me when I was making the film. If you don’t like something in the frame to change it, then if not later you’ll go, “Why didn’t I change the hair?” So just to really listen to your instincts and your impulses and to make what you like and what you want, not to listen to other opinions too much, and to really trust if you’re into something that someone else will be.
Do you feel like there’s a throughline across all of the female protagonists in your films?
I feel like there’s some connection. There’s probably that kind of daydreamy, introspective feeling. I feel like in each story there’s always that moment where they’re going through some transition and trying to understand themselves. There’s a little bit of introspection. They all have some kind of romantic spirit and struggle—it’s definitely some side of femininity that connects them.
Has a fan or someone come up to you and said something that’s really left a mark about your work or the meaning that it’s had on them?
I was working on a project with Leslie Mann and she said “My daughter loves your movie The Virgin Suicides.” This was maybe 12 years ago. I was like, “How does she even know about that? She wasn’t even born then.” It was long before TikTok. I was just really surprised, and it made me so happy. Nobody saw it when it came out, but now there is a generation of girls that rediscovered it. I am very moved that girls today still connect to it. I never thought that it would mean so much and be something that so many people connected to.
Do you feel like the internet has changed people’s accessibility or reception to your work? So many more kids are introduced to you via Tumblr, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram.
It’s fun to be part of that. There’s this aesthetic that’s being appreciated and shared. I mean, I feel a little cliche, but I guess that’s anything that has style, that has certain signature elements. To me it’s fun that my daughters’ generation have some connection and that there’s this core feeling of girlhood that still connects.
How would you define that feeling at the center of girlhood?
There’s a depth of being really in touch with your feelings and noticing details that I think adults are too busy to notice. I feel this is a superpower that teenage girls have. I also think teenage girls are more aware than anyone else and they don’t tolerate any bullshit. I feel really complimented if a teenage girl accepts something I do because that’s the hardest critic.
I also think there’s something about being in a period of becoming that’s so important to girlhood. You’re not there yet, so you get to be in the middle. You’re both a kid and an adult, in-between, figuring it out.
I think it’s intense, but there is something powerful in it. Teenage girls are really opinionated at that moment too, because you’re trying to decide what you like and what you don’t like. I have a lot of respect for teenage girls.
How do you tap into your teenage girl brain nowadays?
I feel like I have to go back to that stage of when I was a teenager in my room and I have that freedom to be creative. As a creative person, you have to take the pressure off and be able to be free, to be in touch with some inner voice. I always want to get back to that state. You kind of have to charge your battery with beauty and culture, but I also have to filter out a lot, which I feel a little irresponsible about. I can’t look at the news all the time. I can’t be in a state of worry. I have to be a little bit sheltered and in a little bit of a bubble to be able to be creative.
What else are you working on now?
It’s been really fun to do this book imprint. This is our first book. Next, we’re doing a book that comes out in the fall about the history of Chanel couture. I really enjoy working on these. They’re inspiring, but it’s also an escape from reality. So, there’s a few other book projects coming out next year, and then I’m writing a little bit and trying to get back to another film one of these days.
How are you going to spend your summer?
I’m excited to go to Paris and spend some time in France. My older daughter Romy is graduating high school, so that’s going to be a big deal. I’m being a little bit of stage mother to Romy’s music career and getting her up and out there.
Do you feel like your relationship to girlhood has evolved now that you have two teenage girls in your life and in your house?
It’s very weird because when I go to where their rooms are, it just looks like my idea of a teenager’s room—just bottles of stuff everywhere. It’s familiar. I remember I had a messy room as a teenager, and then I see all their stuff—it’s funny to be in that. I grew up with all boys, so it’s cute to see sisters and this girly world that I relate to. It’s fun having that world nearby.
There is a Bruce Weber picture of your office that ran in Italian Vogue maybe, or French Vogue—
—oh yes in the ’90s.
That was my eternal reference when my parents would be like, “Why is your room like this?” Even today, my boyfriend is like, “What is the situation with all your stuff?” The picture is a good defense, I’m like, “Well, actually, this is how girls are.”
I like that. That’s so funny because my brain just goes that way. My desk is always messy. Bill Owens had a book on suburbia that was a reference [for The Virgin Suicides], and I have a print of this girl in a really messy bedroom that my mom gave me. She was totally exasperated with my room being messy. So there’s a lineage of messiness.
Mess is integral to girldom.
I never really thought about the mess, but yeah, it’s just a part of being creative and girly.
Do you have any words of advice for young girls today who want to follow in your footsteps?
It’s just so important to do what you’re into and believe in that. Even if no one else gets it—if you like it, somebody else will like it too, probably. I just feel like it’s so important to listen to that voice and make things that feel like what you want to see, things that you don’t feel are already out there. It’s corny, but follow your heart, do what you love and believe in, and don’t try to second guess what other people want to see.
hair ORLANDO PITA AT ORLO SALON NYC
makeup DICK PAGE AT BRYANT ARTISTS
styling assistants ISABELLA MANNING, DARLENE PARK, & NICHOLAS TROTTA
post production CAMERIN STOLDT