Gia Coppola's debut feature PALO ALTO, adapted from teen-angst stories by James Franco

...and starring Emma Roberts and Val Kilmer's son Jack. And apparently well liked by critics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTqMUu1iTIo

it is mathematically impossible that this is good

with JF as student-chasing soccer coach? cmon.

Who the fuck is Gia Coppola? One of his fucking rogue sperm that got an agent?

lol

She is the daughter of the son of Francis who was killed in a boating accident at 22. She was born a few months after her dad's death.

there is another...coppola

I'm sure this film was made on the body of work of this young upstart, not nepotism. that would be a shame.

Gee, a Coppola

Gia’s film career began when she directed a short film for her friend's fashion label. Soon enough, Gia was hired to make short films for Opening Ceremony which starred Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, Zac Posen (who said that "she’s going to be the next Coppola force to be reckoned with”), Diane Von Furstenberg, Rodarte, and Elle China.

After befriending James Franco, Gia was asked to adapt and direct his short story [sic], Palo Alto. She said she agreed to do the project because of how well she connected with the source material.

well we have political dynasties and corporate dynasties why not artistic dynasties

"Soon enough"

"She said she agreed to do the project because of how well she was connected with the source material."

fixed

eventually we will reach a golden paradise where we are ruled by a single family that runs every government owns every company and produces every form of entertainment for us lowly proles

xp

when Chelsea and George P Bush marry George Clooney

Almost want to give it a shot because there aren't a lot of movies like this getting made anymore, even in the indie world? (legit teen-angst coming of age stuff) but FROM THE MIND OF JAMES FRANCO, nope

Still love The Virgin Suicides even if everything Sofia has done since has been terrible.

this 'nepotism' thing is getting tedious. ppl are still throwing it at sofia coppola, and she's about to do her sixth film.

yeah and they're all fucking garbage

she's prob directed more good movies than her dad at this point.

that's ridiculous

I think this came up in the Girls thread but "nepotism" isn't really the right term, it's more like "access" or "privilege."

i'd not be surprised if this is better than Sofia's last two or three

xpost: ok ok, i'll amend to 'than her dad has directed in the last 30 years.'

nepotism of the already rich and famous

actually I loved The Bling Ring and Marie Antoinette.

Bling ring was cool

this 'nepotism' thing is getting tedious. ppl are still throwing it at sofia coppola, and she's about to do her sixth film.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, May 8, 2014 7:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^

if american film was otherwise some thrilling & vibrant hotbed of talent it would maybe feel more pressing to interrogate the funding status of some newcomer's film & the ills of nepotism. as it is i think we can just see whether the film is okay; if she makes something as connective to the various cultural feels of 2014 as the virgin suicides was to whatever year it comes out it would be really nice. sofia has made some good films, gia's photography was always really nice. i am more concerned in this transcending the trappings of the tasteful & plush minimalism pronounced in her crew's output than i am fascinated by her provenance.

white people

I just don't find the ennui of beautifully waifish teenagers to be a very promising subject, although one thing I will say is that this is a rare film that has a great chance of being better than the book it is based on

beauty and waifishness are universal traits

jesus christ this has val kilmer and his son in it
why is anybody complaining at all

doesn't seem surprising that people would follow their parents/grandparents/siblings into a business/vocation

i mean when the son of the guy who runs the body shop down the street ends up opening his own body shop after having worked in and around his dad's business for a while, you wouldn't express resentment, right?

i say we judge the films on their own merits. ironically the reviews suggest this is kind of derivative of her aunt's films.

i don't think sofia's movies suck. i thought marie antoinette was both not-very-good and pretty-interesting for about the same reasons. in general the more recent ones have just been a case of an affected minimalism translating to less-is-less rather than less-is-more.

x-x-x-x-xpost

movies about teenagers can be cool
i liked the spectacular now
seventeen by jeff kreines & joel demott is the best movie ever
#holla at absent ilxor tape store
i really like miranda july's line about movies, like should i make a gritty movie about prison

amateurist otm!

re: in general the more recent ones have just been a case of an affected minimalism translating to less-is-less rather than less-is-more.

yeah this is v accurate - like she's just kind of slightly mishandled a couple of the currents & trends that have been successful in recent cinema. i'd be interested in a coppola-wave film that could effectively play with some of the same mood & aesthetic, like a kind of glossy naturalism.

She solved this less-is-less problem by reducing TBR to 90 minutes.

to me the shallower her subjects the more sensitive the rendering.

I liked some aspects of Somewhere. I thought there was something interesting about detached fathers' impact on their daughters in there, but at the same time the lead character seemed unreal and forgettable.

i think somewhere makes that hard to press, though; it felt somewhat by-the-numbers, to kinda fixate on the shallow apparatus surrounding a shallow guy in her kinda deadpan way. similarly with the bling ring, which i thought was pretty okay; it also had those kind of cartoon renderings of homeschooling parents of valley teens, it's sorta one note enough to minimise our connection i think.

movies about teenagers can be cool

I agree, but imo movies about teenagers that aren't at least a little bit funny are kind of dire (unless they are about a teenager in a legitimately severe situation like war or extreme poverty).

"doesn't seem surprising that people would follow their parents/grandparents/siblings into a business/vocation"

That literally makes me vomit, it isn't like they are running the family grocery store after their parents die. Absolute fucking nonsense.

- funny teens
- war teens
- hungry teens

schlump: yeah, i tend to think of sofia coppola as a decent but strictly 2nd-order filmmaker, in that her films seem like mood pieces largely derivative of other filmmakers like wong kar-wai, antonioni, etc. i think there is room for that kind of thing -- i like his films (well, some of them) a lot but i tend to think of hal hartley as a kind of popularizer of certain aspects of mid-late godard films. and there's value in taking some of these narrative and stylistic tropes and seeing what happens when you apply them to an american milieu.

marie antoinette seems a little different to me, it seemed so indifferent to narrative development or interest that i felt like i was watching an oddly decorous avant-garde film, or maybe just a fashion spread come to life.

"doesn't seem surprising that people would follow their parents/grandparents/siblings into a business/vocation"

That literally makes me vomit, it isn't like they are running the family grocery store after their parents die. Absolute fucking nonsense.

― under the cobblestones, le dogshit (xelab), Thursday, May 8, 2014 5:26 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sheesh. i just mean, if you grow up around people involved in filmmaking there's a strong chance you're going to end up doing something related to filmmaking. we are OK w/ this in pretty much all other contexts but somehow b/c the coppolas are rich it's not cool?

what would you have them do? studiously avoid working in a vocation remotely similar to that of their relatives'?

also i hope you had a trashbag close to hand if that literally made you vomit. i didn't know my words had such power.

There is obviously something to that -- e.g. an athlete's child inherits not only genes but has a parent who will know how to nurture their talents. If there's any "genetic" talent for filmmaking IDK, but obviously growing up with a filmmaker parent is, in some cases, going to nurture a love for film and an understanding of the mechanics and business of it, and we can't expect that not to play a role. But at the same time growing up in that kind of milieu means that it's pretty easy for your so-so concept to get top-notch production and access to the people at Opening Ceremony (who are probably your "friends" or their relatives). Like I said in the Girls thread, it's not like Lena Dunham isn't good enough to be writing her own HBO show, it's just that very few people on the planet who are "good enough" to write an HBO show at her age can get anywhere near a Judd Apatow-level figure who can shepherd the project, so most of them either scrap it out for years before they get their first shot, or just give up before they get there.

Don't know how many have seen Roman Coppola's CQ. It was sort of okay. I checked to see what he's been up to--he had a feature with a long title two years ago that I missed. His video for Green Day's "Walking Contradiction" is one of my favorites.

S. Coppola as a second tier filmmaker creating oddly decorous avant-garde films strike me as okay things. There's a rush to canonicity, right? Good filmmakers needn't be great ones.

I'd accept that.

yeah, absolutely. & that's a really useful lens through which to see it; i thought she actually did the historical part of that film very well, in just quickly muscling through whatever narrative was required relating to schwartzman's character (uhh /louis xvi),the advancing hordes, &c, wrapping all of this into a few brief scenes so as to be able to dedicate the rest of it to revelry. i think otoh it maybe exposed some of the deficits of c. 2006 american filmmaking, though - liberally covered in pop music (which she was better than most at but which was still a little narrowing, for me), & so on. she kinda moved beyond this w/somewhere but it was ineffective in other ways.

& yeah that's really true of both her & hartley's kinda distillation. i'm not great w/antonioni but never really sensed him in coppola's stuff - i feel like her synthesis was actually quite interesting in combing in pretty varied influences, tv & william eggleston & mellow synth music at a point at which those things weren't the most popular salad dressings available.

i think we can all agree the children of rich creatives should be stripped of at least one of the senses at birth to level the playing field

I mean ultimately I think we're all a little resentful when we talk about this stuff, right? "She was born with that access, I wasn't, who knows what I could have done..." is kind of an underlying feeling for a lot of people I'd guess.

Scrutinizing with her playful curiosity the lives of people whose values get shaped by magazines and family prejudices is a virtue I don't see often in movies.

S. Coppola as a second tier filmmaker creating oddly decorous avant-garde films strike me as okay things. There's a rush to canonicity, right? Good filmmakers needn't be great ones.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 8, 2014 5:33 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that's basically what i said. i think there's plenty of room for what she does!

There is a scene in Somewhere that I think is very beautiful and still haunts me a lot -- the one of the dad watching his daughter at figure skating practice.

we are OK w/ this in pretty much all other contexts

I don't think this happens in many other contexts tbh. I can't think of anyone I know personally who does what their parents did.

i wear my dad's clothes & spend a lot of time just staring at what's in the fridge

it really only comes into play if your parents OWN shit and who doesn't resent families that own shit, they are called capitalists

xp

Gia Coppola literally grew up in a vineyard, and her stepdad was a Getty

francis ford coppola makes straight to ondemand movies w low-rent digital equipment in his back yard, now, he is an example of a man rejecting his privilege

do you folks who resent sofia & gia coppola also resent jacques tourneur, sergio leone, dave fleischer, john ford, etc.?

yes, re: skating scene in 'somewhere.' it's the only thing i really remember vividly from that film.

jacques tourneur, sergio leone, dave fleischer, john ford, etc.?

good work can transcend privelege. shitty work only makes it seem unjustifiable.

xp

hey btw amateurist do u remember me from that other thread what's up

i thought this trailer looked kinda good

privilege is privilege. good work is good work.

hi, shakey!

John Ford's brother directed movies... when no one knew what a director was.

back on topic, Manohla Dargis says:

"What tethers the movie and especially April and Teddy is how [Gia] Coppola captures that exquisitely tender, moving moment between fragile, self-interested youth and tentatively more outwardly aware adulthood, a coming into consciousness that she expresses through their broken sentences, diverted glances and abrupt turns."

Supposedly there's a TON of teen smoking in this, cuz why wouldn't you want to have the offspring of Eric Roberts and Val Kilmer suck in those genetically gifted cheeks.

doesn't seem surprising that people would follow their parents/grandparents/siblings into a business/vocation

i mean when the son of the guy who runs the body shop down the street ends up opening his own body shop after having worked in and around his dad's business for a while, you wouldn't express resentment, right?

The people who are really into brakes aren't going to see the kid as having paid his dues to open the shop.

The nepotism angle on Sofia and Gia easily gets spun into sexism, but there are people really into car racing who whine about nepotism in NASCAR and coaches' sons in other sports.

i don't think my analogy is that bad but

I think the counter would be that it's more like the son of the founder of Just Brakes opening up a brake shop using his father's connections and financing opportunities that the average brake guy couldn't have possibly had.

who really cares, though? it's not necessarily the coppolas' accumulated wealth that allowed gia to make this movie, it's the connections in the industry. i don't see any problem with that, in fact it's the natural order of things really. if her movies suck really bad and don't find an audience then she won't be a director anymore.

You know Americans: suspicious of gentry.

^^Yeah, this dude's career was stricken by it:

http://bioproj.sabr.org/bp_ftp/images4/GentryGary.jpg

we are OK w/ this in pretty much all other contexts

I don't think this happens in many other contexts tbh. I can't think of anyone I know personally who does what their parents did.

― stadow shevens (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 8, 2014 6:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

U clearly do not know any soldiers or cops or firefighters or politicians or lawyers.

Actually thats true the only two dudes I know in the military are father and son.

I dont think we should have a military tho fwiw

my dad runs a business that his father partially owned, but that way of business is kind of disappearing

soldiers or cops or firefighters or politicians or lawyers.

feel like I should also point out that 4 out these 5 are public service positions and not capitalist enterprises per se

curious if anyone here has read this book, let me know when we're done working through our feelings about the sudden realisation that Hollywood families are a thing

I tried to read some of it and found it awful. The trailer at least looks better than the writing.

It is available for purchase at a nearby 2nd hand bookshop for £3, has been for ages. I assumed it was a different James Franco actually.

"awful" is probably a little unfair, but it's not great and not something that would receive any attention but for the author

franco's stories are completely the type of mediocre writing that a good film can transcend.

Artists' kids growing up to be artists (even mediocred ones) seems OK to me. Jakob Dylan hasn't done any damage to the world, really. And every once in a while you get Jean Renoir.

This issue came up this morning in an e-mail to baseball writer Dave Fleming:

Hey Dave: Do sons of former players get a better shot in the big leagues? Do they have extra longevity because of their name?
Asked by: 3for3
Answered: 5/10/2014

There's two ways of interpreting this question: 1) do sons of former players have more advantages to make the majors than average sons, or 2) will the sons of players, assuming they have the same skills as other players with non-pro fathers, get more breaks to reach/stick in the majors? The answer to the first one is quite obviously yes: having a dad in the majors would significantly improve the likelihood of the son playing the majors. He'd be immersed in baseball to an extent that other kids just wouldn't be. He'd also be rich. For #2, I'd say this would be a solid 'yes' as well....if a team has two young players who have the same batting line, but one of them has half of Tony Gwynn's DNA (and all of Tony Gwynn's name), they're playing the half-Gwynn.

Part three would be, once they have made it, do they get to hang around longer than normal because of their their name, or does it create unreasonable expectations and hasten their departure if they don't live up to them?

I'm sure you could study that. Skip over Barry Bonds, Moises Alou, and the like, and look at players like Eduardo Perez and Josh Barfield.

I missed "reach/stick" in Fleming's original answer. So he did address the third point--I see it as three separate questions.

Getting back to Gia and Sofia, it's a) they had huge advantages on the first question, and undoubtedly advantages on the second. With the third, Sofia Coppola is now five films into her career. Would someone without her name still find financing for her films? I would think so--the first two were, by general consensus, unqualified successes, and while the next three met with middling reception, they all have admirers (cf. this thread). I can think of far more dubious filmmakers who went well past a fifth film.

oliver stone is still making movies, somehow

Oscar winner

and emma is more than talented enough to justify her career imo

I think of Gia Coppola as Gia from Veronica Mars whose dad owned the baseball team, is that OK?

Also, have we done a TS on Ethan Hawke's fiction vs James Franco's fiction?

oliver stone is still making movies, somehow

― espring (amateurist), Saturday, May 10, 2014 1:55 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oscar winner

― Οὖτις, Saturday, May 10, 2014 3:42 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so was jack palance, and now he's dead. so much for your theory.

Palance was a director?

i rest my case.

If I were gia coppola I would release a statement to the press saying "I don't want to be perceived as trading on the coppola name, henceforth I shall be known as 'Nicholas Cage'"

I don't really care if it's easier for a coppola to get a film made than someone else because of their name, frankly. I'm more offended by the Franco-ness of this, just because I'm really sick of him at this point. However, this might still be good, and then I'll eat my words.

I like pretty much all of Sofia Coppola's films.

Also, have we done a TS on Ethan Hawke's fiction vs James Franco's fiction?

TS: Franco's fiction vs Hawke's fiction vs. the Bacon Brothers' music

this is p good, part of the end is def a misstep imo but its def francos failing in how (i assume) he felt he needed 2 'raise the stakes' in 1 of the short stories; its really exquisitely cast and acted

Wish I liked this more than I did--I was all set to wildly overrate it (it's the kind of movie I almost always overrate). There was a nice Gus Van Sant dreaminess to the first half--which owes even more to Paranoid Park and Elephant than to The Virgin Suicides--but it didn't go anywhere after that. I thought Franco's character was a real drag on the film; putting aside the fact of what he was doing, it was his seemingly complete obliviousness to the possibility that going forward might present problems that made him so creepy. (Don't you see that I love you? Oh, okay, you love me--great, everything'll be fine then.) Movie teenagers are forever becoming more and more detached and cavalier about sex, or maybe not; I'm not sure there's anything here more eye-opening than Phoebe Cates schooling Jennifer Jason Leigh in the cafeteria in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In a way, they just become more self-congratulatory about their detachment. One thing I liked more than a local reviewer was Nat Wolff: "He's such a caricature--and Wolff throws himself into the part with such enthusiasm--that every time he pops up, he turns Palo Alto into a very different and much less substantial movie." He's got the Johnny Boy role for sure, and often that's just empty flash, but I thought he was pretty compelling.

Lol man this sucked what a shitty story

At least the cast was good

Also v porny

if she makes something as connective to the various cultural feels of 2014 as the virgin suicides was to whatever year it comes out it would be really nice.

she did imo

gia's photography was always really nice.

in the making-of, gia sez franco p much handpicked her to direct this (and she agreed, "responded to the material, etc") based on her prior photography; the making-of also has an interview w/ franco by eleanor coppola

i really responded to the editing of this when i just rewatched it, and surprised to now look up it's a dude who worked on several harmony korine projects

On second viewing, I'd just shorten what I wrote above: wish the James Franco subplot were completely ditched, otherwise there are moments of beauty (especially the ending).