This exhibition offers a glimpse into the life of Madame Déficit through the lens of how she chose to look. Peter Kelleher, courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
I was in Paris during the Louvre heist, and though my alibi is firm, I never would have predicted the extent to which the robbery would capture the imagination of New Yorkers. The robbery inspired countless Halloween costumes and signage at last month’s marathon. I think people like to imagine an Ernst Blofeld-type figure, awaiting delivery of the gem so that he can admire them in a secret vault or put them on his cat or something. It’s since become clear that this was never about anything more than the skyrocketing price of gold. Still, you can’t blame people for craving a villain who puts style above all else.
Marie Antoinette was certainly one of those, and whether you love her or love to hate her, the recently opened exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, “Marie Antoinette Style,” is a must-see. It’s a fashion exhibition—not a historical show with a vast number of objects actually owned by her—but it recreates her world well. A facsimile of a necklace from the “affair of the diamond necklace,” for example, sits near other glittering jewelry that did belong to her.
It’s a glimpse into her life through the lens of how she chose to look. Her shoes were so delicate, you can tell she didn’t do much walking. She had so many dominoes that you find yourself wondering how there could possibly be a need for so many. My favorite objects in the exhibition were the gilded satin gardening tools from Petit Trianon, her make-believe Disney village at Versailles.
This is one of those “One Fine Shows” I had the pleasure of seeing in person, and I’m glad I did because there’s no way to convey the innovative exhibition design from a checklist. They don’t shy away from anything, which is first hinted at by a series of plastic busts that invite you to smell Marie Antoinette’s world through a series of holes at the base of the neck. The perfumes that flowed through her court were as bespoke and pleasing as the rest of her existence, but then the last one in the row is intensely foul. Is the machine broken? No, it’s simulating an 18th-century dungeon. This was near a room of pornographic cartoons about her from the time when it all started to go wrong, and it really snuck up on me. Next comes a red room and the last thing she ever wore: a thin prison smock.
So as not to end on a down note, the exhibition finishes with a host of haute couture inspired by her, from Manolo Blahnik, Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior, with costumes by Sofia Coppola from Marie Antoinette. One risks a tummy ache with all that candy, but it does make you think about the power of a cohesive look. Our wealthiest today pride themselves on how they dress, but so many of them look like absolute shit. Marie Antoinette wasn’t much more villainous than her aristocratic contemporaries and managed to build a vibe that endured across the centuries. It’s hard to imagine many Instagram feeds ending up at the V&A.
If Sofia Coppola made a film about her life in 2025, she might title it Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Twenty-five years after making her directorial debut with TheVirgin Suicides, the filmmaker has premiered her first documentary, Marc by Sofia about her longtime friend Marc Jacobs; kicked off her monthly screening series at the newly-reopened West Village hub the Cherry Lane Theatre; launched a book tour for her late mother Eleanor Coppola’s posthumous memoir, Two of Me: Notes on Living and Leaving; and was thanked in the credits for both Celine Song and Kristen Stewart’s latest films. Coppola had an opportunity to take a victory lap at this year’s Museum of Modern Art’s 17th annual Film Benefit, presented by Chanel, where she was selected as this year’s honoree—putting Coppola in the company of past recipients and fellow auteurs Baz Luhrmann, Tim Burton, Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, and Guillermo del Toro. “I can’t believe it when they asked,” Coppola told Vanity Fair shortly before the event on Wednesday. “It’s nice to pause and be like, ‘Oh wow, I have a body of work.’”
And what a body of work it is: Coppola won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with Lost in Translation and landed famed costume designer Milena Canonero an Oscar for her now-cult classic Marie Antoinette. Coppola even vowed to change the perception of how female filmmakers are supposed to look: “The women directors who I was growing up with were like Penny Marshall – who is cool and great – but they always dressed kind of like guys,” Coppola said. “They weren’t feminine. I always made a point [to show that] I like clothes. You don’t have to all be in polo sleeves to be a director and work a camera, but also you do have to be practical on set.”
During the Film Benefit ceremony, held November 12 at the museum, Coppola’s Somewhere and The Beguiled star Elle Fanning ably summarized her legacy: Coppola has forever changed how “girlhood” is depicted in film. She spoke movingly about watching Coppola’s third feature, Marie Antoinette, in theaters: “Living in that cinema – in Sofia’s world – for a few hours, it would change my girlhood forever,” the actor and Coppola muse said. “It was a place I felt safe and seen, and I wanted to live in it 100 times over. I never knew that something could look so beautiful.”
Marc by Sofia lead producer Jane Cha Cutler echoed to Vanity Fair that Coppola was a revolutionary due to her keen eye. “She’s very tapped into that inner teenage girl in many of us — that in-betweenness of innocence and knowingness, the insecurity, the tenuousness, the excitement at becoming or experimenting at who you’re going to be,” Cutler said. “There’s a reason so many young people line up for Sofia’s book signings and love her films so much — they feel fresh and new, never stodgy or didactic.”
“I’ve seen museum exhibits and catalogs, but I thought it would be fun to look at how couture is made and not be academic about it,” she says.
In a toast, Coppola recounted being an awkward 15-year-old with braces when she arrived in Paris for her internship with Chanel. What began as an intimidating but thrilling experience for Coppola has blossomed into a now decades-long collaborative relationship. From being photographed as a teenager by Lagerfeld—a striking portrait of the young artist featured in the book—to working with Chanel to design Priscilla Presley’s iconic wedding dress in her most recent film, Priscilla, the brand has played an instrumental role in her career.
“My mom’s friend Jeanette in San Francisco used to let me come into her closet, and she would give me her Chanel ballet flats when they were worn out,” Coppola says. “I would get hand-me-downs and I was so thrilled.”
Now, experiencing a full-circle moment at Wednesday’s dinner, she completed her remarks by calling their latest collaboration “a dream come true.”
Sunday Rose and Romy MarsPhotograph by Myles Hendrik. Courtesy of Chanel.
Coppola was also joined by her husband, Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars and their teenage daughters, singer-songwriter (and budding TikTok auteur) Romy Mars, and Cosima Mars, who spotted Thomas from across the room in a sea of models and actors (“Hi, Dad! Miss you!”), making the star-studded affair feel more like a quaint family dinner. Both daughters, Coppola says, often borrow her collection of Chanel shoes and bags, which she subsequently has to track down. “Sometimes [my Chanel] migrates into my daughter’s room,” Coppola says with a laugh.
Fellow mother-daughter duo, Karen Elson and Scarlett White, were also in attendance, chatting with Kirsten Dunst by the bar as Jon Hamm and his wife, Anna Osceola, sipped cocktails and chatted with Lynn Hirschberg nearby. Eventually, all of the young It girls, like Gracie Abrams, Sunday Rose Urban,Chase Sui Wonders, and Havana Rose Liu were joined by Coppola’s daughters, holding hands and catching up, in a scene that could have been an outtake from one of Coppola’s films.
“I had met many great designers before, but he was different: he wore worn Stan Smiths, spoke naturally, loved the same bands and artists I did, and shared my same appreciation and sense of humor about the idea of being ‘feminine,’” Sofia Coppola writes of Marc Jacobs in the introduction to the 2019 book Marc Jacobs Illustrated.
You can tell: it was love at first sight between Coppola and the New York designer, an immediate connection. One of those bonds so instant and true that it seems almost the residue of another life; so predisposed, spontaneous, easy. Their friendship was so monumental to both of them that it inspired Coppola to direct a documentary about him, giving the world a glimpse at their megawatt friendship.
Sofia Coppola and Marc Jacobs backstage at the Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2014 fashion show.
Rindoff/Dufour/Getty Images
As previously announced, Marc by Sofia—that’s the film’s title, winking at the Marc By Marc Jacobs fashion line—will be presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival 2025 Tuesday. Rather than a classic celebratory biography detailing the designer’s (staggering) life and achievements, the film is presented as an intimate portrait of an unpretentious, straightforward friendship, which extended to an artistic and professional partnership. With Coppola behind the camera, audiences will be treated to a cinematic portrait created by someone who has known Jacobs since he was just a 29-year-old with a great passion for grunge.
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Marc Jacobs burst onto the scene on November 3, 1992, when he was creative director of Perry Ellis—a brand carved out of practical American elegance—and decided to pay homage to Seattle’s vibrant grunge scene. He incorporated flannel shirts, plaid skirts, Dr. Martens, worn-out T-shirts, deliberately offbeat patterns, and wild hair into his designs. It was an aesthetic cataclysm that short-circuited the entire fashion establishment—and riled the likes of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, who reportedly burned samples out of disdain. Jacobs was fired on the spot. While the press railed against him, with fashion journalist Suzy Menkes at the forefront, high-profile fans began to emerge in support of Jacobs and his shocking presentation. For Gianni Versace, the collection “is fresh, very New York, and besides, he’s a very nice guy.” For Sofia Coppola, it is “an epiphany.”
From its star-studded residents to its rich history, Los Angeles is a city of icons. The glitz and glamour of Old Hollywood never loses its charm, and several restaurants, hotels and bars have made it their mission to maintain that sense of timeless class and elegance. From restaurants with vintage-inspired decor and black-and-white photos to dim-lit bars that have been serving stiff drinks since the 1950s, L.A. is home to several historic hot spots that have long attracted loyal locals and first-time visitors alike.
Many of L.A.’s most legendary eateries have welcomed icons such as Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Elizabeth Taylor, giving patrons the chance to enjoy a piece of the past as they indulge in comforting cuisine and fine wines. Several of these spots still attract modern-day celebs, so don’t be surprised if you catch a glimpse of your favorite actor or musician while sipping on a glass of red at Dan Tana’s or enjoying breakfast at Chateau Marmont. Whether you’re in the mood for the city’s best dirty martini or want to dine like Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin with a hearty plate of pasta or freshly shucked oysters, these are the most iconic Old Hollywood restaurants in L.A.
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Sofia Coppola is getting candid about making films on low budgets because, as a female director, she doesn’t tend to get the massive budgets her male counterparts do.
In a conversation with BBC News, the Priscilladirector opened up about how she had to get creative with the Priscilla Presley biopic, based on the biography Elvis and Me, because of its relatively low budget of $20 million.
“I just see all these men getting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then I’m fighting for a tiny fraction of that,” she said. “I think it’s just left over from the way the culture of that business is. It’s frustrating, but I’m always fighting to get it, and I’m just happy to get to make my movies independently and find people that believe in them.”
Despite how frustrating it can be, the filmmaker admitted it does have an upside: She doesn’t have to deal with a lot of feedback from higher-ups because they don’t have as much invested in her projects.
“There’s a challenge and a freedom in making things small because if you have a big budget, you have a lot of input from studio executives, and I would never be able to make a movie like that,” she continued. “So, I have that freedom, and then you have to be really crafty, and it was really hard, but I had the best team.”
She and her team reused a lot of sets and were able to make many costumes, which Coppola attributes to her creative department heads who took what they could get and ran with it. Due its financial constraints, Priscillawas shot in 30 days and on digital, instead of film like the helmer wanted, because they had to move so fast.
Another issue they faced was being unable to use Elvis Presley’s music in the project. The Marie Antoinette director originally wanted to have three of the King of Rock and Roll’s songs, but she knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to get the rights. So, she turned to another legendary musician’s tune instead.
“To me, it is really important to have Dolly Parton at the end, to have a woman’s voice at the end,” Coppola explained of the film playing out to Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”
Of all the numerous and controversial French political figures, it is Napoleon Bonaparte who remains foremost in the minds of the French and non-French alike. A(Bona)part(e) from Marie Antoinette, there is no other icon in French history who still continues to fascinate so enduringly on a “pop” level. To that end, the opening to Ridley Scott’s latest historical drama (spoiler alert: The Last Duel was much better), Napoleon, fittingly combines the two polarizing leaders in a scene that overtly foreshadows what will become of Monsieur Bonaparte after his own ascent.
And yet, watching Antoinette’s head get decapitated in front of a salivating mob doesn’t appear to be enough of an indelible image to quell Napoleon’s (played impressionistically by Joaquin Phoenix) ever-mounting hubris. Indeed, one might say that the only “message” ever established in Napoleon shines through in this lone (and entirely fabricated) scene foretelling of how powerful people are always taken down by this quintessential deadly sin. Napoleon, of course, assumes he is nothing like the monarchs guillotined as the pièce de résistance of the French Revolution. For a start, he’s a Corsican, which automatically makes him a “mutt brute” in the eyes of “real” French people/nobility. After all, it was only one year after Napoleon’s birth that the Republic of Genoa ceded the island to France, with the latter conquering it the year Napoleon was born, 1769. Which made his commitment to France later on so ironic. For he was fundamentally Italian. After all, not only was Corsica originally “possessed” by Italy before France, but any “blue blood” he had stemmed from being descended from Italian nobility (hence, his true last name: Buonaparte). Ergo, another fallacy of Scott’s film via making the tagline so posturing and oversimplifying as to be: “He came from nothing. He conquered everything.”
In any event, perhaps this perception of himself as a “royal” is why he saw his “ownership” of France as some kind of “divine right,” in the end. For even despite “supporting the ideals” of the French Revolution that led to the abolition of the monarchy, Napoleon still couldn’t resist the temptation and seduction of “ultimate power.” No more than he could resist the charms of Joséphine de Beauharnais (played here by Vanessa Kirby, though the role was originally intended for Jodie Comer, who also starred in The Last Duel). A woman who many a man (both then and now) would readily call a “slut.” Indeed, that’s the word used by Napoleon in the film after he’s confronted by The Directory over his “desertion” during the Battle of Egypt upon hearing news of Joséphine’s affair with Hippolyte Charles (Jannis Niewöhner). At which time, he gives them a long spiel about how, if anything, they’re the ones who have deserted France, while Napoleon has returned to restore it to its natural state of glory. This includes, naturally, another coup, with Napoleon and his coterie of co-conspirators, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (Paul Rhys), Joseph Fouché (John Hodgkinson), Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (Julian Rhind-Tutt) and Roger Ducos (Benedict Martin), taking over by force when their “whim to rule” isn’t met with unanimous acceptance. So it is that Napoleon repeats the same cycle of oppression that the French revolutionaries vowed never to tolerate again after toppling the monarchy.
Turns out, Napoleon seemed to think the word “emperor” instead of “king” somehow made his imposed rule more “palatable,” even going so far as to impudently crown himself at the coronation. An emperor willing to “get his hands dirty,” as it were. Of course, this is just one of the many “flourishes” (picked up from a legend surrounding the coronation) that Scott has added to the tale of Napoleon as told through a “Hollywood lens,” one that has been deemed as patently anti-French and pro-British. Scott did little to quash that assessment when he said, in response to negative French reviews of the film, “The French don’t even like themselves.” However, if Napoleon was any indication to be held up as a benchmark, that’s simply not true at all. And it’s perhaps because they hold themselves and their history in such high regard that this film is particularly offensive, namely as Americans speak in attempts at a French accent. This, in turn, also adding to the overall absurdity of the storytelling (also present in House of Gucci when Americans were speaking with “Italian” accents, Lady Gaga being among the worst of the offenders).
Scott stated at the outset of his announcement to direct a film about the emperor, “He came out of nowhere to rule everything—but all the while he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife Joséphine. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process.” Absolutely none of that comes across in the choppy, disjointedness of Napoleon, which wants so badly to cover such a multitude of themes and grounds that it ends up saying little at all. It is merely a “retelling.” And one with many historical inaccuracies at that (this being another primary complaint about the movie). Not least of which, of course, is the fact that Napoleon wasn’t present at Antoinette’s beheading.
Written by David Scarpa (who also penned the script for Scott’s All the Money in the World and his upcoming sequel to Gladiator), the lack of focus on any one aspect of the vast entity that is Napoleon often causes issues in terms of structure and “meaning.” More often than not, it feels as though things are “just happening” without any buildup to it, let alone a sense of cause and effect.
Funnily enough, Scott’s first feature film, The Duellists (released in 1977), is centered around the Napoleonic Wars and homes in on two rival French officers named Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel), a devoted Bonapartist, and Armand d’Hubert (Keith Carradine), an aristocrat. Spanning twenty years, the film manages to come in well under two hours and covers far more ground than Napoleon can seem to. For it suffers from the same problem as its eponymous dictator: it’s too ambitious and, ultimately, can’t make its mind up about what it wants to achieve. This is likely a result of the script not being based on any specific source material. Whereas Scott seems to be at his best when he works with a script that’s based on an adapted screenplay. This, it should go without saying, does not apply to the odious House of Gucci. In fact, the latter movie and Napoleon suffer from many of the same issues, including, but not limited to: 1) things “just happen” for no reason, thereby making plot and character development all but nil and 2) Scott has become somewhat notorious for letting other cultures tell stories that don’t belong to them. Because, obviously, if any culture should get to tell the story of Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani or Napoleon and Joséphine, it should goddamn well be the Italians and the French, respectively. To that end, the real Napoleon biopic to see is 1927’s Napoléon. Not so coincidentally, the film was slated for another restoration and rerelease this year—as though the French wanted to remind a Brit like Scott that it’s absolutely galling to presume to tell the story of their emperor.
As for someone like Marie Antoinette, who has been fixated upon in cinema repeatedly by all manner of nationalities, it was Sofia Coppola (via Kirsten Dunst) who claimed the most memorable ownership over her in recent years. This achieved by fully “pop-ifying” both her personage and the script and soundtrack. Opting to contain the narrative with far more dexterity than Scott is able to with Napoleon. In point of fact, one wonders if this film might not have been better off if Scott and Scarpa had chosen to go full-tilt camp with it (alas, that’s not really something two straight men are capable of, which means casting Peter Dinklage in the lead role would have been out of the question). For there are slight “glimmers” of such campiness in Napoleon’s lecherous exchanges with Joséphine (e.g., Jo opening her legs in front of “Boney” and saying, “If you look down here you’ll see a present, and once you see it you’ll always want it” or Napoleon making animalistic noises at her after she’s just had her hair “set,” finally prompting her to give in to his sexual desires). In truth, the entire movie should have simply had one focus: Napoleon and Joséphine (likely earning it the same straightforward title). That way, there would have been a firmer anchor to the film as opposed to this sense of being “all over the place” (though it is literally that as well, with Scott showing us the far-reaching backdrops of Napoleon’s various famed battles). And, again, with no real “lead up” to anything. Case in point, the sudden decision to include Tsar Alexander’s (Édouard Philipponnat) romantic overtures to Joséphine after her divorce from Napoleon. Overtures that were more likely politically motivated than genuinely romantic.
But such is to be expected from a film fraught with embellishments. Including the much-praised battle scenes themselves, accused by Foreign Policy’s Franz-Stefan Gady of being nothing more than “a Hollywood mishmash of medieval melees, meaningless cannonades, and World War I-style infantry advances.” Adding, “For all of Scott’s fixation on Napoleon’s battles, he seems curiously disinterested in how the real Napoleon fought them.”
Nonetheless, to any condemnation of his seemingly flagrant disregard for accuracy, Scott snapped (in an article for The New Yorker), “Get a life.” For some, though, Napoleon/Napoleonic history is their life. While, for others, quality cinema is. On both counts, Napoleon cannot quite deliver. Falling shorter than the man it pays homage to.
Sofia Coppola has a way of masterfully portraying isolation that you can almost feel off the screen. Joining her catalogue of lonely female characters from The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette is Priscilla. Based on the late singer Elvis Presley’s ex-wife, the film starring Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny, follows the life and times of Priscilla Presley and her extraordinary relationship with the King of Rock n’ Roll. On a roundtable interview attended by Filmfare, Sofia Coppola opened up about Priscilla, working with Elordi and Spaeny and more.
Opening up about the art of bringing loneliness to the big screen, Sofia Coppola revealed that she could relate to Priscilla. She said, “That period in her life felt so isolating. She seemed to be living this fairytale life. She had this beautiful life with Elvis Presley. It all seemed like a dream but the reality was that she was left at home. He didn’t take her with him and she wasn’t allowed to have friends or work. She struggled with that and it’s very understandable how that must feel. I can imagine and relate to how that might be. I tried to show that in the quiet moments of her alone.”
Talking about the juxtaposition of the character’s scenes alone and the scenes with Elvis, Coppola added, “I also tried to show the contrast there. When Elvis is home his house is full of energy and excitement. When he’s gone, she is alone and is expected to be fulfilled by that. She feels she can’t complain or tell anybody because he wants everyone around to be positive. So I could really feel her struggle from what she wrote in her book and I tried to find a way to bring that out with the actress. The editing and the sound are a big part of that. You feel the energy change when she’s alone and when she’s with him. You can tell.”
The director revealed that she was clear about the kind of representation she wanted for both Elvis and Priscilla. Offering a peek into her conversations with Elordi and Spaeney, she said, “They both did a lot of research. Caliee met with Priscilla and spoke with her. She got a lot of her voice quality from those conversations. For me, it was more important for them to have the essence of the character. I didn’t want it to be an impersonation, especially with Elvis. I made it clear with Jacob and we worked on his voice and movements. I didn’t want it to feel like a caricature. It helped that they learnt a lot about them but put that aside and focused on their human aspect and saw them as a couple in a relationship and not think too much about how the world saw them. I think they did a good job of making them human and turning them into multidimensional characters. It is definitely challenging. They needed to feel real instead of just public figures.”
The film which arrives a year after Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis starring Austin Butler, aims to uncover an untapped side of Elvis’ love story with Priscilla who was only 14 when she first met the music icon at a party. They tied the knot in 1967 and separated in 1973.
Priscilla is set to release in theatres on December 15, 2023.
Nicolas Cage and Sofia Coppola surprisingly found themselves making movies in Toronto at the same time.
The Oscar-winning actor told Entertainment Tonight, in an interview published online Friday, that while he was shooting the Kristoffer Borgli-directed comedy Dream Scenario, which hits theaters nationwide on Nov. 22, his filmmaker cousin Coppola was filming Priscilla, which is currently playing in theaters.
“I think it’s lovely. I think it’s wonderful. She’s so gifted, so talented,” Cage said of Coppola helming the Priscilla Presley biopic that stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi.
But Cage and Coppola weren’t the only members of the family booked and busy, working on their own projects at the time. The Renfield actor made sure to point out to Coppola how wild it was that her father (and his uncle), filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, was also shooting Megalopolis during that time.
“It was interesting because we were both in Toronto at the same time filming and she was filming her picture and I was filming mine, and I did text her and said, ‘You know, it’s kind of incredible that your dad is over there making a movie in Atlanta at the same time you’re making a movie and I’m making a movie in Toronto. This is great. This has got to be good luck for all of us,’” he recalled.
Cage’s movie Dream Scenario follows a hapless family man who finds his life turned upside down when strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But it takes a turn when those dreams turn into nightmares.
As for Megalopolis, it is described as a film about an architect who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster. The movie is set to hit the big screen in 2024.
Practically since the “dawn of Lana Del Rey,” a.k.a. the Tumblr era, there’s been that image circulating around that features her head Photoshopped (this was before AI manipulation as we currently know it, after all) over Priscilla Preseley’s. Specifically, the image of her wedding photo with Elvis. Where they’re sitting down and he’s holding her hand. The aesthetic connection between Del Rey and Beaulieu (lest anyone forget that was her maiden name) is not a coincidence. Like most of the iconography Del Rey has pulled from, it’s very calculated. Plus, it’s no secret that Del Rey is an Elvis stan, even writing a song called “Elvis” at one point that eventually served as part of the soundtrack for 2017’s The King. Then, of course, there was her 2012 declaration on “Body Electric” announcing, “Elvis is my daddy.” Lisa Marie would beg to differ.
In fact, Lisa Marie would beg to differ with a lot of things about the “Priscilla project” in general. Maybe not least of which is a soundtrack that doesn’t offer a contribution from Del Rey (or even her father, for that matter, as Sofia Coppola wasn’t able to buy the rights). But, more than that, she was vexed with Coppola (per some recently released emails) for “making” her father “seem” like a predator when it came to his pursuit of an extremely underaged Priscilla. Except, obviously, it goes without saying that Elvis was a predator; Coppola doesn’t need to do much work to make that translate on screen. Especially since she’s using Priscilla’s own 1985 biography, Elvis and Me, as the source material. Material that covers everything from being raped by Elvis (a scene that also shows up in the 1988 TV movie adaptation) while they were married to his rampant affairs, most famously with Ann-Margaret. The book conveyed such a toxic master-slave “bond” that it inspired Depeche Mode to write the beloved single, “Personal Jesus,” a song about “how Elvis was [Priscila’s] man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships. How everybody’s heart is like a god in some way.”
If there’s one chanteuse who’s an expert in creating that effect (apart from Taylor Swift), it’s Lana Del Rey. Or at least it was…when we were in the era of Ultraviolence Lana Del Rey. This being the album wherein she freely filched the controversial Crystals’ line by annoucning, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss.” Priscilla knew that feeling too. But perhaps not as well as Elvis’ final “lady friend,” Ginger Alden, who wrote her own memoir detailing the propensity Elvis had for casual gunplay as a psychological mindfuck. Indeed, everything about Elvis screams “cult leader,” of the sort Del Rey was talking about on “Ultraviolence” when she sings, “‘Cause I’m your jazz singer and you’re my cult leader/I love you forever, I love you forever.” These lyrics are just as easily envisioned coming out of the mouth of Priscilla as she roams the empty halls of Graceland in the midst of yet another one of Elvis’ extended absences. In fact, it would be completely on-brand for Sofia Coppola to feature a scene just like this using that song (see also: her implementation of The Strokes’ “What Ever Happened?” in Marie Antoinette). But, for “whatever reason,” Del Rey’s inclusion on the Priscilla Soundtrack is nonexistent. Though it wasn’t for a lack of trying on the director’s part, who reached out at least twice to try to make something happen.
As Coppola told E! News, “We were hoping she could do a song for it, but it didn’t work out with the timing.” This, to be sure, is always a bullshit excuse for being able to get out of something you’re not all that passionate about. Nor was Del Rey all that passionate about attending the premiere of the film, which Coppola also invited her to. Even if she was rather late to the party on apprehending the internet’s long-standing connection between Lana and Priscilla. For, as Coppola admitted, “I’m learning that people really connect Lana Del Rey and Priscilla and I didn’t realize that, but I got a lot of requests with, ‘How is she gonna be a part of the movie?’” The answer, clearly, is that she’s not. And maybe part of her overt snubbing under the guise of “schedule conflicts” has something to do with her own vague awareness of the ick factor that comes with being associated with a narrative like this in 2023. Even if Del Rey isn’t exactly known for being anything other than tone deaf about what she calls “the culture.”
Nonetheless, something about her willfully missing the opportunity to be part of a pop culture moment so tailor-made for her “brand” appears to indicate that maybe she’s attempting, in her own small way, to move on from the “toxic romance” label that has followed her from the outset of her career. Just as it did Amy Winehouse. The singer who more truly embodies the “Priscilla spirit” not just in her beehive coif and constant application of heavy, garish eyeliner, but in her assessments of love. One such example being, when she said of The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss),” “There’s only a certain percentage of people that would understand what that’s about. Most people would be like, ‘How dare you promote domestic violence?’ But to me, I’m like, ‘I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.’” So did Priscilla, and so, as she herself claims, does Lana. Yet copping to that understanding has become increasingly problematic (especially in the years that have gone by since Winehouse ruled the charts, and could more effortlessly bill this rhetoric as something like “beautiful and tragic”). Even for somebody who has typically been rather blasé about her largely anti-feminist body of work. Try as many might to position her “world-building” as an “authentic” exploration of what it is to be simply: a woman in a relationship. And a “fragile” one, at that.
But fragility has never stopped a man from roughing a “dame” up, as Priscilla found out. Incidentally, “Ultraviolence,” the song from Del Rey’s canon that most reminds one of the Priscilla and Elvis dynamic (particularly as LDR dons a wedding dress in the accompanying video), is something she’s become more averse to in recent years, telling Pitchfork in 2017, “I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing ‘Ultraviolence,’ but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was one hundred percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end.” Though a lot of internalized misogyny still does seem to come from (and out of) Del Rey’s end. However, this “schedule conflict” of hers with regard to participating in Priscilla might mean there’s hope for her “re-pivoting” away from such “predilections” in the future. Even if Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd isn’t necessarily a harbinger of that.
Lisa Marie Presley apparently died hating the way Sofia Coppola’s new film, Priscilla, portrays her parents’ relationship. Variety obtained email correspondence between Presley and Coppola where Presley expressed concern over how her father was portrayed and what that would mean not only for his legacy, but for the relationship dynamics within the family and the continued scrutiny of the family by the public.
Priscilla tells the story of how a young Priscilla Beaulieu, only 14, met 24-year-old music superstar Elvis Presley in Germany in 1954 while Presley was stationed there with the U.S. Army. They begin a courtship in spite of her parents’ concerns over their age difference, though once Presley’s service is up, he goes back to the U.S. and they are separated.
They are reunited in 1963, when Elvis reaches out and asks her parents to allow her to move in with him at Graceland in Memphis and complete her senior year of high school there. This leads to their eventual marriage in 1967, after four years of Priscilla being maintained at Graceland while Elvis spends a majority of his time traveling to Los Angeles shooting films and engaging in alleged infidelity. Priscilla files for divorce in 1973.
The film is an adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir, Elvis and Me, and the timeline described above features the simple facts of their relationship as given in Priscilla’s own account of those events. On their own, these details might already cause concern for a modern audience, even as the age difference between Priscilla and Elvis already caused concern back then.
Nevertheless, before her death by cardiac arrest in January of this year, Priscilla and Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie, was hugely concerned that these details were relayed in a script that was “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous” of her father. She sent two emails to Coppola in September of last year, before production had even begun on Priscilla. In one of her emails, she wrote:
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative. As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”
Is there a way to portray a 24-year-old dating a 14-year-old in a way that doesn’t make the older person look bad? Perhaps there is, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a responsible, or even honest script. Presley went on to write that she would “be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly.”
So, she didn’t “see [her] mother’s perspective of [her] father,” and yet she felt the need to “go against” her mother in speaking out against the film based on her mother’s version of events?
Coppola shared her responses to Presley with Variety. She wrote:
“I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently, and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.”
Priscilla Presley herself supported the film, whereas Lisa Marie was responding to a script that hadn’t yet been finalized or filmed. What’s more, her relationship with her mother was already strained for reasons unrelated to the film. And yet, in her emails to Coppola, she claimed a need to be protective of her mother, too. She wrote:
“I am worried that my mother isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out. I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy. I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have. I would think of all people that you would understand how this would feel. Why are you coming for my Dad and my family?”
She expresses a lot of concern about how Elvis will be perceived, but less concern about Priscilla’s own account of events. Variety reports that Presley copied her mother as well as her daughter, actress Riley Keough, on the emails sent to Coppola, but did she even talk to her mother about what she thought about the script’s accuracy before going right to the film’s director?
Presley talked about her 78-year-old mother (who’s lived almost her entire life in the public eye) as if she’s a child who couldn’t possibly understand the potential effect of a film’s narrative on public opinion. As if Priscilla’s relationship with Elvis didn’t already raise concerns at the time, both for the age difference between them, and for Elvis’ treatment of Priscilla when she was at Graceland. At best, there are conflicting narratives of their relationship from those adults who were there, sharing their lives.
(Penguin Publishing Group)
Priscilla herself has stated in interviews and in her memoir that she and Elvis were not sexually intimate before they were married. On page 130 of Elvis and Me, Presley writes that it was Elvis who said they should wait until they were married before having sexual intercourse. However, she writes that he said, “I’m not saying we can’t do other things. It’s just the actual encounter. I want to save it.”
Never mind that “other things” can be sexual in nature, that this is a heteronormative view of “virginity,” and that virginity as a concept is ludicrous anyway—sexual grooming doesn’t require sexual activity. Grooming in a sexual context simply means intending to prepare the way for future sexual activity by first gaining a young person’s trust, and sometimes the trust of their family. It seems that in this case, Elvis gained both Priscilla’s and her parents’ trust by reassuring them that everything that was happening was “above-board” simply because “no sex” was involved.
Even if Priscilla herself had conflicting feelings about what she experienced with Elvis, the details she revealed in her memoir already paint an unflattering picture of him on their own, even without deeper context, explanations, or disclaimers. Whether Priscilla identifies what happened in their relationship as grooming, it was. It’s textbook grooming. Just because it happened at a time and in a place where there wasn’t a name for it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at it through that lens now. It isn’t just that “times were different then” either. Flags were being raised then, too.
Priscilla Presley is an adult woman who wrote a memoir detailing her life with her famous ex-husband. Lisa Marie Presley was an adult woman who loved her family, and seemingly wanted to keep her famous father’s legacy as pristine as possible, despite contradictions from the woman who knew him better. Sofia Coppola is an adult woman who wanted to tell another woman’s story in a medium that could illuminate some of the larger issues encapsulated within one famous relationship, allowing for conversations that stretch beyond celebrity gossip.
That’s what art is for. We don’t watch biopics for mere facts. If we wanted nothing but facts, we’d read books (or at least a Wikipedia page) and leave it at that. We turn to art to process those facts. We watch biopics to either to be inspired by someone’s life, or to re-contextualize someone’s life as our culture shifts. Because hearing stories helps us navigate the world.
Understandably, Lisa Marie was uncomfortable with the portrayal of her father in Priscilla. It can’t be easy hearing unpleasant things about your parent. But being The King’s daughter didn’t make her the authority on how to interpret his life, or the relationship he had with her mother. Certainly not while her mother is still alive and has written about it herself.
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Universal and Blumhouse’s horror hit Five Nights at Freddy’s led a frightfully slow frame at the domestic box office amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
Originally, Denis Villeneuve’s high-profile tentpole Dune: Part Two was set to open this weekend, but the movie fled to 2024 because of the prohibition on stars doing any promotion. Legendary Pictures, home of the Dune franchise, believes the sequel’s cast — including Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet — is integral to the movie’s success.
Domestic ticket sales for all films are expected to come in at around $64 million for the weekend, one of the lowest showings of the year so far.
Five Nights at Freddy’s remains a star in its own right. The pic earned $19.4 million from 3,789 theaters in its sophomore outing as it jumped the $100 million mark domestically in less than 10 days. It’s no surprise that the pic tumbled a steep 76 percent, considering it’s also available on Peacock.
Overseas — where it is only available in theaters — Freddy’s pulled in an impressive $35.6 million for foreign tally of $103.5 million and global haul of $217.1 million against a modest $20 million budget (it is only the second horror title of 2023 to cross $200 million after New Line’s The Nun II, which has dazzled with $265.9 million).
Taylor Swift‘s and AMC Theatres’ Taylor Swift: Eras Tour continued to impress, grossing another $12 million to $13 million from 3,604 cinemas to hold at No. 2. The record-breaking concert pic has now cleared the $165 million domestically, according to rival estimates.
Martin Scorsese’s Oscar contender Killers of the Flower Moon, from Apple Original Films, came in third with an estimated $7 million from 3,706 locations for a domestic total of $52.3 million through its third weekend. Paramount is distributing Killers on behalf of Apple, which fully financed and marketed the $200 million epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.
Sofia Coppola‘s awards contender Priscilla also made a major play this weekend as A24 expanded the movie nationwide after a promising start at the specialty box office. The movie, starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley, chronicles the years Presley spent with Elvis Presley, who is played by Jacob Elordi.
Thanks in large part to younger females, Priscilla came in ahead of industry expectations with an estimated $5.1 million from 1,344 theaters, good enough to come in No. 4. Female moviegoers made up 65 percent of the audience, while 75 percent of all ticket buyers were under 35.
Mexican comedy-drama Radical, starring and produced by Eugenio Derbez, rounded out the top five in North America with an estimated opening of $2.4 million from only 419 theaters. The new film features Derbez in his first dramatic starring role, and is from Pantelion Films, Participant and production outfit 3Pas Studios.
Radical is already a box office hit in Mexico, where it is one of the most successful films of the post-pandemic era.
More to come.
Nov. 5, 7:30 a.m.: Updated with revised weekend estimates.
This story was originally published Nov. 4 at 9:57 a.m.
In a recent interview with E! News, the filmmaker said, “We were hoping she could do a song for it, but it didn’t work out with the timing.”
Coppola went on to share that she first learned about fans’ correlation between Del Rey and the King of Rock and Roll while filming Priscilla. She said, “I’m learning that people really connect Lana Del Rey and Priscilla and I didn’t realize that, but I got a lot of requests with, ‘How is she gonna be a part of the movie?’”
Del Rey has been known to be a longtime fan of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, and even embodied Priscilla throughout her music career, often sporting big hair and overexaggerated eyeliner, which was popular in the ’60s.
The “Young and Beautiful” singer has also referenced the music legend in some of her lyrics, including the line “Elvis is my daddy” in her song “Body Electric.” Her 2008 demo called “Elvis” was also featured in Eugene Jarecki’s Elvis documentary, The King, which was released in 2017.
Coppola added that she invited the Grammy-nominated singer to the premiere of Priscilla and though she couldn’t attend, the director is “excited for her to see it.”
The film, based on Priscilla’s memoir Elvis and Me, follows the love story between Elvis and Priscilla, told from her perspective, from when they first met in 1959 to their later marriage. But the movie doesn’t include music from the rock ‘n’ roll icon because his estate didn’t accept Coppola’s offer for the rights to the music.
“They don’t like projects that they haven’t originated, and they’re protective of their brand,” Coppola told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “But that made us be more creative.”
Priscilla, starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, is currently playing in theaters.
Apparently, not every Presley was a fan of Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla script. According to e-mails obtained by Variety, the late Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis Presley’s only daughter, found Coppola’s portrayal of her father to be “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous” and reached out to Coppola just months before her death, asking her to reconsider.
Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023, after suffering cardiac arrest that was caused by a small bowel obstruction. Four months before her death, Presley reached out to Coppola regarding the filmmaker’s then-upcoming biopic Priscilla—about her mother, Priscilla Presley, and her relationship with Elvis, which began when the musician was 24 and his future wife was just 14 years old. Per Variety, Presley sent two emails to Coppola asking the Oscar winner to reconsider the portrayal of her father in her film.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” read Presley’s e-mail. “As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?” Per Variety, Presley’s e-mails referenced her “fragile relationship” with her mother, Priscilla, as well as the renewed attention her grandchildren— Finley Lockwood, Harper Lockwood, and actress Riley Keough— would receive due to the film as they were still in the midst of mourning Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020.
According to Variety, the two e-mails were sent four hours apart on September 2, 2022, weeks before Priscilla was set to begin shooting on October 24, 2022. Presley’s distaste for Coppola’s script was such that she was prepared to publicly denounce Coppola, the film, and her own mother, who served as an executive producer on Priscilla. “I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly,” she wrote.
Priscilla Presley has been wholly supportive of the film, which is based on her own memoir, and has participated in a slew of press surrounding Priscilla for A24, the film’s distributor. She has appeared in-person at multiple events with the film’s stars: Jacob Elordi, who plays Elvis, and Cailee Spaeny, who portrays Priscilla. Recently, Presley said that Elordi’s Elvis voice “stunned” her with its accuracy.
Presley was worried that her mother would not recognize the way in which the public perception of Elvis might change due to the film. “I am worried that my mother isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out,” Lisa Marie wrote in her emails. “I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy. I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have.” Some of the public discourse about the film has focused on Elvis and Priscilla’s decade-wide age gap, and Priscilla’s status as a minor when they first met. However, Priscilla has maintained in interviews that she and Elvis did not have sexual relationship when she 14.
“I would think of all people that you would understand how this would feel,” wrote Presley, referring to Coppola‘s status as the daughter of a famous father—in her case, The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. “Why are you coming for my Dad and my family?”
Coppola reunited with stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi for Vanity Fair’s Notes on a Scene, where they dissect a pivotal private moment between Priscilla and Elvis. In the scene, Elvis listens to subpar demo records in his home office before asking Priscilla her opinion. When she expresses doubts about the songs, Elvis hurls a chair in Priscilla’s direction, which hits the wall mere inches from her face.
Although Priscilla writes of this incident in her book, Coppola says she was insistent that Elvis “didn’t ever throw a chair at me. It was at the wall next to me.” The musician didn’t actually try to hurt his wife, Coppola emphasizes—“but he lost his temper.” Seeing the character lose his cool was key in exploring Elvis and Priscilla’s sometimes fraught relationship. “A lot of the movie you’re in his more gentle, more vulnerable side,” Coppola explains. “We want it to feel like you’re always in Priscilla’s point of view, and it to be shocking when someone’s mood shifts like that.”
Speany says she got valuable insight into Priscilla’s headspace by speaking to the woman herself prior to production. “I had lots of different conversations with her before I started filming, how she was toeing that line between being supportive, but also speaking her mind,” the actor says. “And I think this scene is her sort of taking those first steps of having an opinion and voicing it.”
To inhabit the so-called King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elordi, who didn’t know much about Elvis until he watched Disney’s Lilo & Stitch as a kid, devoted a lot of time to emulating Presley’s famous voice. “I’m pretty lucky to kind of be in his register anyway,” says Elordi. “But I think, for me, it was trying to invent what he would sound like behind closed doors, because everyone has a performing voice and a speaking voice.”
And while Austin Butler seemingly kept using his Elvis accent long after filming wrapped on Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Elordi was able to impress the real Priscilla without going quite as far. “When we watched the film with Priscilla the first time, what struck her the most was how much his voice sounded like Elvis, so that was a big thrill,” Coppola says. Adds Elordi, “It was a great relief.” Watch the full video above.
Universal and Blumhouse‘s Five Nights at Freddy’s is off to a historic start at the domestic box office, helping drive overall revenue
The latest horror offering from Universal and Blumhouse opened to a record-smashing $78 million, despite debuting simultaneously on sister streaming service Peacock. It started off with a monstrous Friday haul of $39.5 million, including $10.3 million in Thursday previews.
The pic — which came in notably ahead of industry expectations — scared up the third-biggest horror opening of all time behind New Line’s two It movies, as well as the best showing ever for Halloween weekend. It’s also the biggest horror opening of 2023 to date, besting Scream VI ($44.4 million), and the second-biggest opening of all time for a video-game adaptation behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.3 million), not adjusted for inflation.
The news is just as good overseas, where Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to an estimated $52.6 million from 60 markets for a global start of $130.6 million against a modest $25 million production budget. It supplants New Line’s The Nun II ($88.1 million) to boast the year’s biggest worldwide start for a horror film.
Freddy’s passed up Halloween, which started off with $76.2 million in 2018, to mark the biggest domestic opening ever for Blumhouse, not adjusted for inflation. It is also Blumhouse’s top global launch. Other honorable mentions: Freddy’s supplants The Mummy Returns ($68.1 million) to rank as the top opening ever for a horror pic rated PG-13, not adjusted for inflation.
While most critics bashed Freddy’s, the audience graced the movie with an A- CinemaScore (it is rare for a horror pic to receive an A or any variation thereof).
Universal insiders say the decision to do a day-and-date release is a win-win for the overall ecosystem (only paid-tier Peacock subscribers have access). Those who want the communal experience of watching a horror movie in a theater can do so, while Peacock can woo much-needed subscribers. Streamers see notable growth in October because of Halloween-themed offerings.
Before the pandemic, most theaters would have outright refused to book a title already available in the home. The COVID-19 crisis changed everything, however, with the traditional 72- to 90-day theatrical window shrinking dramatically to as little as three weeks for films that open to less than $50 million. Day-and-date releases aren’t the norm, but no cinema operator was going to refuse to play Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Directed by Emma Tammi, Freddy‘s stars Josh Hutcherson as a washed-up security guard who has no choice but to take a crappy job safeguarding a long-shuttered family-themed pizza restaurant. The only problem — the pizzeria’s giant animatronic animal characters spring to life and go on murderous rampages. He’s also trying to maintain sole custody of his 10-year-old sister (Piper Rubio) and prevent her from falling into the clutches of their Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).
Things go from bad to worse when a group of local toughs hired by Jane break into Freddy’s while Mike is off-duty to trash the joint so he’ll lose his job. Needless to say, the giant animatronic animals don’t like the intrusion and try to exact their revenge.
Kat Conner Sterling and Matthew Lillard also star. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created the animatronic characters.
Elsewhere, Taylor Swift and AMC Theatres’ Eras Tour achieved another huge milestone in singing past the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office, a first for a concert film. It earned another $14.7 million domestically to finish its third weekend with a North American cume of $149.3 million and $203 million globally (the pic only plays Thursday-Sunday).
Martin Scorsese‘s adult-skewing Killers of the Flower Moon came in third behind Freddy’s and Eras Tour with an estimated $9 million, a sharp decline of 61 percent. Apple Original Films produced and financed the $200 million film, with Paramount handling distribution duties. The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, is counting on being a slow burn as Oscar season unfolds, but the producers had hoped for a smaller drop in the film’s second weekend.
Killers of the Flower Moon earned another $14.1 million from 64 markets oversea for a foreign tally of $44 million and $88.6 million globally.
Angel Studios opened its first release since its indie film Sound of Freedom took the summer box office by storm. Its new faith-based movie, After Death, took in $5 million to come in No. 4.
Blumhouse and Universal’s The Exorcist: The Believer, which is now available on Premium VOD after a disappointing showing at the box office, rounded out the top five in its fourth weekend. The movie grossed $3.1 million for a domestic total of $61 million and $120.4 million globally.
The specialty box office saw two high-profile Oscar hopefuls enter the fray, Focus Features’ The Holdovers and A24’s Priscilla. The two films opened in several locations both in New York and Los Angeles, with each reporting a promising per-location average in the $33,000 range.
The Holdovers grossed $200,000 from six locations for a per-theater average of $33,333. Priscilla, launching in four cinemas, earned $132,139 for a location average of $33,035.
Oct. 29, 8:10 a.m.: Updated with revised weekend estimates.
This story was originally published at 7:55 a.m. Saturday.
“I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird. The baby. Too weird!” – Sofia Coppola on why she turned down directing Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, via Rolling Stone
Appearing on a recent episode of the Tonight Show, via Entertainment Weekly, Elordi admitted he learned who Elvis Presley was because of 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. “The most I knew of Elvis was in Lilo & Stitch,” Elordi said. ”Which is a lot!”
In Lilo & Stitch, Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase) is a diehard Elvis Presley fan who imparts her knowledge of the world-famous musician to her adopted pet alien, Stitch. The movie’s soundtrack also contains several Elvis Presley songs, including Burning Love, Suspicious Minds, Hound Dog, and more.
“Sofia had sent me these sides that said Elvis and I kinda just was like, ‘There’s no chance that this is happening.’ I watched this clip of him when he came back from the Army in Germany and read the lines for like 15 minutes and then shot two takes not thinking it would go anywhere,” Elordi further said of the role.
What is Priscilla about?
“When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a gentle best friend,” reads the synopsis. “Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.”
Based on the 1985 Elvis and Me memoir, Priscilla is written and directed by Coppola. Along with Elordi, the movie stars Cailee Spaeny, Raine Monroe Boland, Emily Mitchell, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Luke Humphrey, and Dan Beirne.
Priscilla is getting a limited theatrical release on October 27, 2023, before it expands wide on November 3, 2023.
“By day, Priscilla went to Catholic school in Memphis for her senior year, and at night she would party with Elvis,” Coppola said. “I found that reality fascinating: She wasn’t allowed to have friends over to Graceland, and she’d hear other girls whispering about her. She was so isolated.
She continued, “It was strangely relatable: In my 20s, I remember having a crush on a guy, and part of it was, if I was with him, then I wouldn’t have to develop an identity of my own: I could just be the girlfriend of this guy, and that would be so much easier. I was devastated when that relation- ship didn’t work out.”
Coppola added, “But it forced me to find my own personality, and that’s a similar story to what happened with Priscilla—she lost herself in Elvis.”
The director also talked about her father, “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, casting her in his own films while she was growing up.
“I had a small part in ‘Rumble Fish’…I played the bratty younger sister. My father cast me because I was around, and he loved to include his family in his work,” she recalls. “Rob Lowe was in ‘The Outsiders’, and he and his girlfriend at the time, Melissa Gilbert, took me out for ice cream to Rumpelmayer’s when we were back in New York.”
