The Big Picture - The Sofia Coppola Rankings and 'On the Rocks'

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

With Sofia Coppola's new film 'On the Rocks' arriving this weekend on Apple TV+, Sean and Amanda are convening to discuss her work as one of the greatest filmmakers of her generation. They discuss her career, her family's creative history, and what makes her the embodiment of cinematic cool. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, it's Amanda. A quick note before we start, my podcast recorder stopped working during this podcast. I'm very sorry. We really don't know what happened. Luckily, we have a backup recording. That's what you're going to be listening to on this podcast. That's why it sounds a little different. Thank you to Bobby Wagner for saving the day and stay tuned for the big picture on Sofia Coppola starting now. Ten decisions shape your life. You'll be aware of five about. I'm Amanda Dobbins. I'm Sean Fennessy. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Sofia Coppola.

This week marks the release of Coppola's seventh feature film, On the Rocks, starring Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, and Marlon Wayans. It's a bittersweet screwball comedy about parents, marriage, creative frustration, and realizing that you're just not that cool anymore, which is something that everyone on this podcast can relate to. 2020 also happens to be the 20th anniversary of the release of Coppola's first feature, The Virgin Suicides. So please join us now for a Sofia Coppola spectacular coming up on The Big Picture. Sean, it's my most anticipated podcast of 2020. I'm so happy for you. The month of Amanda is just going along swimmingly, isn't it?

It's really exciting. It's a lot of other things going on in the world that I don't endorse. And the month of Amanda, I want to be very clear that it's just specific to the filmmakers releasing films that we've outlined on this podcast. But yeah, I am a lifelong Sofia Coppola fan. And I have been looking forward to this film for a very long time. And I have been looking forward to talking with you and with everyone else about my beloved Sofia for a very long time. Do you want to talk about your relationship to Sofia before I just take over the whole podcast? Yeah, I'll talk about it briefly.

It's interesting this must be how you feel frequently on this show where you admire and to some extent even love a filmmaker's work but you know that your co-host has a a psychological and almost unhealthy commitment to their work a devotion to what they put in the world. And so, you know, I'll just say generally speaking, I think Sofia Coppola is one of the signature filmmakers of the last 25 years. I think she is a person who has an enormous grasp of beauty

and the fragility of beauty, but that she too frequently is criticized for only being able to capture that and that there is an enormous amount of depth in the work that she does. And I'm excited to kind of unpack how it manifests in all of her films, because I think there are some major themes that recur, but then individually, each movie seems to be after something slightly different every time. So I think she's just a fascinating figure in recent movie history. And I guess I've heard you talk about her before, but I don't know if I've heard your mission statement for why she matters to you. So what is it? I've been practicing this all week

in my home. I just like walk around and I think about all the things that I want to say about Sophia. And, you know, like in a Sophia Coppola movie, I'm sure I'll bungle the moment because it's not about words. It's about the music that is playing and the mood that we have. And also trying to be slightly cooler than I am in this moment. You said that I had a psychological and unhealthy relationship to these movies, which I think is definitely true, though. I'm under no illusion that I'm as cool as Sofia Coppola or anyone in her movies. It's just like not happening for me and it will never happen for me.

And that's okay. We all need something to aspire to or admire or, you know, just some escapism, which her movies definitely provide. But I just want to be clear. I don't really think I'm that cool. I do suspect that this is often how you feel doing the show, though maybe not that frequently

because part of the appeal to Sophia, to me, is how tailor-made she seems to be to my particular interests. And I think that there is a specificity and a really personal nature to her work that also really aligns with the specificity of my interests and existence as like a slightly neurotic privileged white woman who loves her dad very much uh and who is just like working through some things and like trying to connect with people um you know she makes things which like here i am you know yeah know thelf. I just, we're all doing our best. But some of the appeal of Sophia is like very obvious.

Number one, she's a tremendously talented filmmaker. I mean, her films are like beautiful. They create worlds, the photography, the music, the style, the fashion, the performances, everything. She's just like, she just makes good stuff. And I think whether you're interested in everything, she has to say that like the craft is pretty objectively accomplished.

She also, you know, she makes movies about women and particularly young white women, an interest of mine. And she also makes movies about celebrity and fame and Hollywood and like royalty, which is another version of fame and the kind of the experience of being a young woman and expectations, but also the experience of being a famous person or someone who is being observed and looks looked at and what that's like from the inside and as someone who has been obsessed with celebrities her whole life um and obsessed with the concept of fame it's a fascinating window into something that I don't have access to so you know subject matter style and then I think another thing that I really admire about her um and that to me makes her a

really unique filmmaker is kind of the level of observation um and the watchfulness of her films I think Sofia Coppola would be a great journalist except happily she doesn't have to be because she's in a more lucrative and successful business. Believe it or not, indie films are more successful than journalism, right? I don't really know what to say about that. Different podcast. But you really get a sense of what she sees in any given situation. And the attention to detail always really pops out at me, whether it's like a sprinkler going off at the wrong time, or a set set of shoes or someone making a joke or something that is funny that's not supposed to be funny there's just you have a real sense of the world as she particularly sees it and she's able to communicate that without words um so

clearly and i think i'm just envious of that ability. I think it's really singular as a person who talks way too much. So that there ends my soliloquy, at least part one. You know, she obviously also has just been very successful from the span of, I think 1999, 2000 is word of suicides. And I was a teenager. So a cool person, like 10 years older than me defining what it is to be cool and successful in an industry that um is usually not does not have that many women being cool and successful in it i think that's all very well said someone smarter than me once observed that her first movie is about is seen through the eyes of characters from the outside looking in. And then every movie she's made since

is about characters inside looking out, being observed all the time and reflecting on that, which is something that you're getting at as well. And a lot of the people that she tells stories about and tell stories through the eyes of are people that I think are kind of frequently dismissed or overlooked or are thought to be vapid. And she imbues them with a kind of humanity and sensitivity and sense of humor that I think is pretty uncommon in movies. And it's pretty easy to criticize Sofia Coppola as the product of privilege and as having advantages that other

people don't have. But it's very rare for any filmmaker, man or woman, privileged or not, to have not just the ear, but the eye that she has and vice versa. Like the combination of her sense of being able to build that world. And she has the same level of detail in the insert shot, for example, that Fincher does or the same level of world building that Tarantino does, but she's just doing it at a slightly different pace, at a slightly different tempo, with slightly different colors. And I think it's actually very similar to the Nancy Myers conversation we were having a couple of weeks ago. It's like, this is a person who has

a total command of the world that they want to make. And you may not feel comfortable in that world. You may feel more comfortable in another person's world, but it's pretty staggering when you watch the movies back to back to back, how consistent she is, how unwavering she is in her approach and building out these kind of little micro universes of character. Yes. I would also say the world themselves and the themes that she explores are often things that are not taken seriously or viewed in different ways.

We will talk about Marie Antoinette and Versailles and that version of French history. But, you know, teenage girls, somewhere it's Hollywood, the bling ring, which is a bunch of, you know, young kids who break into Paris Hilton and another and Audrina Patrick's home. Fashion, visuals. These are things that are often ascribed to, you know, their quote, female interests or they're frivolous or they're just kind of like in another bucket.

Sean, you have never had the privilege of working at a women's magazine or women's journalism, but I have. And there's a thing that gets said a lot, not just in women's journalism, really like in anything where you're like marketing to women, where it's like women are capable of knowing about world events

and like the new badass lipstick and we serve it both. Right. And, um, you can tell by how I delivered that, what I think of that mode, it makes me want to peel my fingernails off one by one. Um, because it implies that the, the lipstick or the other interests that aren't world events, um, aren't serious serious until or aren't worthy until random advertiser X is telling you so. And there's always this, this schism between like the things I like, because I'm like a serious person, and the things I like, because, you know, I'm a human, and I have interests, and some of them are fun. And I never feel that schism in a Sophia Coppola movie, she's

interested in the things because she's interested in them. There is a lot of crisis, and she is exploring what those things mean and what society thinks about her characters and the interests. But they're coming from a very personal place. She's not divided in it. And I find that, again, we just, there aren't as many female filmmakers. And Sophia is only speaking to one very specific experience of being a female, by the way.

And I don't think that if you're a woman listening that you need to feel like Sophia is speaking to you at all. But to me, it is still so rare to be like, oh, okay. So that's how you see the world. Me too. Yeah. I think that's just one of the burdens of being one of the few women to have directed a movie that made a hundred million dollars in the last 20 years. There's very few people. And so you invariably are asked to represent every person's perspective, which is unfair to Sofia Coppola. It's unfair to her movies more specifically, I think, because I think her interests and what you're describing

is very clear. She's not interested in pretense. She's not interested in telling you that life is about the collision of God and commerce and how we can't unpack these things. She's not aspiring to be that kind of a filmmaker. I like filmmakers who do that sort of a thing, but her, her specific interests are not necessarily smaller, but they're a little bit more grounded. They're a little bit more about what do teenage girls think and how do they see the world? How is history seen through the eyes of women as opposed to through the eyes of the men who write history? How is celebrity culture refracted by people who are too young to realize that celebrity is very dangerous?

Those are very worthy and powerful ideas. They're just not always given the same kind of cultural import as some of her male counterparts. So I think when you take the idea that she is more serious than the subject matter that she covers in some ways like that is considered the way it's at least the way it's considered you know like celebrity culture is considered frivolous working working with you knowing you as I do I know that you're able to communicate that there's more power to it that there's more meaning behind it and by the way we're all living in the consequence of it every single day that's exactly right.

And it's one more reason why I like to just take these movies as seriously. I don't and I don't think, frankly, Sofia Coppola has a very hard time getting her movies taken seriously. She is one of the few people who through the last two decades, I think, has pretty convincingly been able to make her movies little mini events. And that's another reason why she's a great subject for a conversation like this, because each movie is kind of worthy of being unpacked. Each movie is part of this, this daisy chain of creativity that we love to look at with all filmmakers. Yes. Should we do, we're at some point going to do a ranking of all of her films, which we actually, you and I have not pre-discussed a lot of this, which is going to be fascinating.

It's all going to happen here on air and it could get really messy. So I think that you, Sean, kind of, you know where the true dangerous spots are. And I hope you'll be smart enough to avoid them. I make no promises. I make no promises. I have an enormous amount of respect for you and the films of Sofia Coppola, but I make no promises. Okay. First, we can do the

big picture big picture wow it's not even oscar season but i still have it yeah who is she where she come from you know who is sophia coppola so she is the daughter of a um a man named francis ford coppola don't know if you've ever heard of him filmmaker and also eleanor coppola also a filmmaker that's right um yeah she i mean she just grew up on the sets of francis foranor Coppola, also a filmmaker. That's right. Um, yeah, she, I mean, she just grew up on the sets of Francis Ford Coppola movies. She is the baby and the, um, christening scene and the end of the godfather. And she was in, um, as an actor, as an actress, she was in several other films, including the godfather three, which we're not going to talk about. Um, I it's, you know, she has said that acting was not her passion and the thing she didn't want to

pursue and i trust sophia in that and we will continue on to the 90s phase which is before she becomes a filmmaker she has a decade as just a really cool person and i don't mean that in the like in the gone girl like cool girl way I just mean that as a person who somewhat because of who she is somewhat because of who she is and who her parents are and access she has just winds up in music videos and starting a fashion line and has a weird talk show on Comedy Central, which you can watch videos of on YouTube with Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of. And she is dating and eventually marries Spike Jonze

when Spike Jonze is, I mean, Spike Jonze is still cool. Everybody is still cooler than we are, but there's a 90s Spike Jonze moment. And it's, I don't know. When I think of like the 90eties and when I think of what I would have liked my life to be, it's probably this, this seems really rad to me. Yeah. I want to, I want to unpack what cool means because that word has been used a lot already

in this conversation. And I think that, you know, she's not the worlds that she creates and her persona as a filmmaker and as a famous person is not necessarily the James Dean upturned collar version of cool, for example. You know, and it's also not like the it's not the Jay-Z version of cool, you know, or you're sort of implacable and untouchable and accomplished. And, you know, maybe there's something damaged underneath, but you've weathered it and now you are in charge. Her version of it and Spike Jonze's version of it and a number of other people who are becoming successful filmmakers

or figures in the music industry or fashion at this time all embody this, I think this kind of affect that is a more untouchable for you and I because of our age and you know who who else fits into you know back for to me as an example is back in the 90s or um i say just an incredible sean moment where you're like back in the 90s but you're right but just what a what a reference yeah but i mean that was but that was a time where like figures like bjork beastie boys other artists whose names start with the letter B, they embodied a kind of oddball beauty and curiosity that felt very, I would not say cutting edge specifically, because it was still very much filtered through the system of MTV, but like a post-grunge MTV universe of music, culture, and fashion

that was just very influential on me. And I think it was kind of why I fell in love with Spin Magazine, which then became very influential on my life and career and the people that I met, because all of those people were comfortable there. They fit in that space. They were neither Michael Jackson, nor were they Black Flag. They were somewhere in between those polarities. And I feel like Sofia Coppola is as much a product of that in the same way that some other people that we like on this show. Steven Soderbergh was like this. Quentin Tarantino was like this. That 90s generation of filmmakers all slotted in here yeah and there is a real collectiveness to it that added to the appeal like you did get the sense and i think it was true that

they knew each other and they were hanging out and they were collaborating and you could follow like this music video and then this person did this for this movie and then there was this fashion whatever and it was this like intellectual still extremely aesthetically pleasing like full of beautiful people um with a lot of success and a lot of money world that you know like of course I wanted to be a part of that I could imagine that they were all there together like having a great time and it was not as um you know in the same way that you have this or that I as a young person who didn't know anything had this romantic idea of Hollywood in the you know 40s and 50s and we know now what we know about Hollywood in their 40s and 50s and

nothing is as rosy as it looks but just wanting to be in the room with these people there they just had a very magnetic appeal. And it felt like it's where everything was happening all at once. I agree. And it felt like people were kind of crossing over into each other's worlds at all times. You know, music video directors wanted to be filmmakers. They were friends with musicians. Those, some of those musicians were friends with fashion designers. Those fashion designers were friends with magazine editors. That's where kind of like some of our interests also enter. Like, I think I genuinely thought I'll never be a musician. I'll never be in fashion. I'll never be a filmmaker. But if I can

get in the media, maybe I can imagine myself participating in a culture that has this much taste and is able to communicate about what I'm feeling about the world and why that matters. And like, that's very powerful. And it felt much more grounded, even though some of these people were beautiful or unusual or came from these unusual backgrounds. And she slots in. She seems simultaneously super grounded, but also like the person who has more access to cool things than anybody on earth.

Yes. And then in typical 90s cool person fashion, she sells out. But she doesn't really sell out. She at least she becomes. But there was like a world doing this for fun. And I think in Sofia Coppola's case, and I only remember that because it becomes the theme in a later movie, she's like photography classes for a while and did try all the the fashion and directed or was in music videos first and would eventually direct them but was kind of like searching around for a sense of purpose and sort of resisted early on becoming a filmmaker because obviously um there's a long shadow in her family of filmmakers but she read the virgin suicide this the story goes that she read the virgin suicide and was like i have to to make this movie and wrote this script without having the rights the rights were not even available i believe there's a great uh behind the scenes documentary of the virgin suicides uh it's available on Criterion. And Francis Ford Coppola is just on set,

like being proud dad. And just like he's just sitting there watching and making like, not particularly helpful, but extremely supportive comments and wearing an incredible Hawaiian shirt. Great for him. I just like in terms of figuring out how to enjoy your life, shout out Francis Ford Coppola um but he does say at one point that she asked him to try to help her secure the rights and they weren't able to and so he was like don't write the script don't um you know it'll break your heart if you don't have the rights but she wrote it anyway they did get in touch with the people um who owned the rights and they were like cool make this movie and so she makes Virgin Suicides. It is very well received.

Then she makes Lost in Translation. That wins her an Oscar for best screenplay. She's also nominated for best director. Lost in Translation is nominated for best picture. And that is in two movies, the kind of Sofia Coppola coronation. And from there, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, The Bling Ring, A Very Merry Christmas, The Beguiled, and On the Rocks. Yeah, she was 33 years old when she won her Oscar for best original screenplay. Must be nice.

Not bad. Must be nice. When I say Sofia Coppola movie, what do you think of? How do you know? I don't want to get this question wrong. I'm just trying to ask you to say some of the things on the outline. It's fine. This is a safe space. I would say

knowing glances is one of the first things I think about. I think the power of the unspoken is a really signature of hers. And that doesn't mean that she's not a great writer of dialogue. I think she is a great writer of dialogue in most of the films, not everything necessarily. But she's an image maker, and she's great with faces. And she's got her little, her coterie, her cohort, her troop of actors that she returns to over and over again.

And, you know, she's, she's gotten the best work out of Kirsten Dunst. She's gotten the best work out of Bill Murray. She's gotten the best work out of, um, Scarlett Johansson. I mean, she just, to me, those are the best performances that those actors have given are in her movies. And they're not motor-mouthed, 100 words a minute kinds of performances. I haven't actually seen a physical copy of one of her screenplays. But I mean, how many words could be in the Somewhere screenplay? Less than 10,000.

Yeah. I have such a vivid memory of seeing Marie Antoinette at the Cabo Hill Theater with my friend Maya, who herself is also softer spoken than me, certainly, which that's no feat at all. And the credits roll and Maya just turns to me and goes, she doesn't really like words in her movie, huh? And that's true I was remarking to you uh before we started that it was maybe not in the spirit of things to just like gab about uh Sofia Coppola as someone who is so reliant on images and on music and on feelings I when you say Sofia Coppola to me I mean my heart just swells because I you know feel understood but also I do think it's more like a feeling that is of like kind of longing and like slight loneliness which is true of the characters in every single one of her movies

and then i hear the um the julian casablanca's demo that you posted on twitter recently but that plays in a crucial scene and somewhere and it it was also in the trailer. And I would say that wrecked my life for like a year. I'll try anything once. One of the great songs of the 2000s. I just like walked around New York listening to that song on repeat and was just like, I guess I'm having my own Sofia Coppola movie. I don't know. Being 25 is really weird. Okay. I mean, that's what a lot of Sofia Coppola movie. I don't know. Being 25 is really weird. Okay. I mean, that's what a lot of Sofia Coppola movies are about. It's true.

I'm 25 and I'm alone. I think the thing is obviously the loneliness and isolation and the inability to connect is a major theme in her, all of her films. And it's true of characters of varying degrees of intelligence. I would say across across those films. You know, Johnny in Somewhere is not quite the deep well that Scarlett Johansson's character is in Lost in Translation, for example. And it's weird to be a person that spends a lot of time professionally talking and talking fast and talking with confidence to openly identify but i openly identify with most

of the main characters of her films because and i think that's part of what makes her work so universal i just think like everybody is pretty lost um as william friedkin likes to say we are born alone and we die alone and she seems to have a real sense of that. And it doesn't matter if you have diamonds in your drawers or if you have Prada on your feet. It's like, people are lonely, man.

And like, what better filmmaker for 2020 where we are all trapped in these little boxes, either on our screens or in our homes, in perpetuity

than Sofia Coppola? Yeah. It's also, the loneliness is not limited to the young wistful women in her movies. And I, on rewatch, I was remarking there is a, usually a older male character who might or might not have some father

characteristics and who is often played by Bill Murray. And like Bill Murray is really Sophia Coppola's muse. And I hope to talk more about that when we talk about On the Rocks but like um who who is also working through some things and it's been funny to read some of the reviews of On the Rocks because some people really feel it's a movie about Bill Murray's character and what's working or not working with him and some people feel that it's a movie about rashida jones's character and um i really don't think it has to be gender essentialist which which you relate to um but she she can write those figures for men as well and it's it's funny that that like that particular late in life

like midlife crisis wistfulness also speaks to her. I think, so I had, I, we had friends over a couple of weeks ago, not, not, not you guys. We had other friends over and you can have other friends. I promise you we do. Um, and a big part of the conversation was about what we have inherited from our parents and what are the things that our parents do the physical tics the gestural motions the the habits the psychology like all of this this huge weight that comes from reaching the age that you are when your parents were raising you and realizing that and she seems like a filmmaker in that mold. She seems to be almost actively addressing how she was raised by a filmmaker,

not just her relationship to her father, but also to her mother, and what kind of a person that makes her, and the excitement and opportunity that provided, and also the shame and regret that you have about acting like someone who you more than likely had a complicated relationship to when you were a teenager. And that's so interesting.

There are so few filmmakers that spend a lot of their work doing that and exploring those parental, the parental shadow that kind of looms over most people's lives. Yeah. And I think another cool thing about Sofia Coppola is that she doesn't seem particularly afraid of it like this movie in particular really engages with the francis ford coppola of it all um and then in casting rashida jones as the i don't want to say sophia stand-in because she does write characters and there are different aspects of it but all of her successful films do have a personal element and you can see the similarities. But Rashida Jones is also obviously the daughter of Quincy Jones.

Like it's so, she is engaging with that idea throughout her career in a way that is not really afraid of it, which I feel so many people when they're like dealing with their, their parent issues and really their dad issues, it was just like angsty and full and full of shame. And there is shame of this, but it's also more like,

how can I understand what's going on here? And. The new movie in particular really like explores the con, the difficulties. She doesn't explore the difficulties as much until this movie. And I think that's actually the thing that recommends that we don't have to talk too much about that. But that to me, I thought was the most compelling part of it that's actually the thing that recommends it. We don't have to talk too much about that, but that to me,

I thought was the most compelling part of it was the, the disconnection in adulthood, which is the thing that can happen too. Let me tell you. Yeah. And also this character is a, is a parent as well. And it's kind of reckoning with what that means,

which, you know, her characters, the focus of the movies ages ages as she has which is i mean that's great we all age appropriateness right well you know we support it um is there anything you want to add before we do the rankings did you see that at the last minute i did a music cues rankings in here i'm looking at it right now do you i just put mine in i knew that you were going to be like i hate you and these are wrong and we'd never say okay do you want to do do you i just put mine in i knew that you were going to be like i hate you and these

are wrong and we'd never say amanda do you want to do do you want to do it now do you want to do it later why don't you do yours and i'll work on mine okay these are off the top of my head so if you want to just add a different cue from each of these movies feel free but so and the reason we're doing this is that as mentioned and if you've ever seen a sofia coppola film you know that she uses pop music um just immaculately and this the songs are part of the atmosphere and they carry a lot of the character and emotional development and she has quite the ear as you noted and so there are some really tremendous ones um i some of these are like if we do this now then i'm just

going to step on the rankings of a couple but i guess that's okay i i gotta say i don't agree with these at all so this is kind of interesting okay it's It's great. That's great. You can share your opinions. You want to do this now and then you want to do the movies? Okay. All right. That's fine.

Okay. Yeah. Just flex. Do your thing. All right. I rewatched the bling ring. We'll talk more about it. It's going to come earlier

in the rankings. Okay. That's all. But my one takeaway was the first three minutes when Crown on the Ground, the sleigh bell song is playing and it just like melted my face off.

And I was like, remember Sleigh Bells. It took me again to a very specific moment in a very dirty bar in New York City, RIP Hopper. It wasn't even that dirty, but the memories are. And it was electric and exciting and that if the rest of the movie could live up to it it would be a very different movie in my opinion i yeah we'll talk about the bling ring i i like this cue this isn't my favorite cue from this movie i think my favorite cue from the movie is the rye rye m.i.a song oh yeah which is a great great kind of forgotten jam and then also um the just

unreal time capsule of these white girls rapping the rick ross song in the car which holy moly that just felt like 2012 frozen in an amber i was amazed by that revisiting it it definitely has the like not the most music but at some point they're just like now we're going to do a two-minute music video in the middle of the bling ring, which is again, why I don't think it works as well as some of the other ones, but it definitely is a sense memory to, to another time that feels like very long ago, even though it was only like eight years ago. So that's it.

So like, I'll give you basically, I'll give you a counterpoint in each film. Okay. Um, number four. Is more than this Roxy Music and Lost in Translation. I just, I mean, I didn't count the karaoke scenes because those aren't music cues.

Those are performances and they're very moving. And when Bill Murray sings special to Scarlett Johansson, when she's doing Brass in Pocket, you know, and he's doing the backup, that's a very special moment. Incredible moment. It's just an incredible moment in the movie. It's, I mean, that's unbelievable. Two people falling in love with each other. It's amazing. Exactly. But I just didn't count that because that's like the movie so in terms of just music cues more than words is very special um also just prompted like a five minute

conversation on my couch um the other night about whether bill horat is a roxy music fan what do you think oh 100 100 if you go back to um the Star Wars theme song that he would sing on SNL he's kind of affecting a Brian Ferry kind of lounge lizard quality so yes definitely I mean to me just like Honey is the one the one that drops just as we get the montage at the end after he whispers in her ear and we see the tokyo skyline and we see them kind of moving through japan as he heads to the airport but they're i mean they're kind of paired together yeah more than this and just like honey all right uh number three is the one that i just rewound recently just because i was so delighted by it and i had kind of forgotten it even though I love this movie, which is playing song.

It's so cold. It's so cold. It's like it's only for dead. And Marie Antoinette during the coronation, and when they're walking down those stairs. And it's ridiculous and hilarious to me and also so clever and in a lot of ways kind of sums up that movie's entire approach and that a cure song would work as perfectly as it does in that particular moment i'm very amused

this movie i think is one of the great achievements in in music scoring and soundtracking almost every drop i think is perfect my i have three more that I like better personally. Okay. The first is just the credit sequence to natural is not in it by gang of four, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Is it the best possible announcement of what this movie is going to be? Yes.

You know, this is not your average costume drama. This is a movie that is very conscientious about the materialism and about the absurdity of the glamour, but also has an admiration for it. It's like it's a spiked, it's a spiked bat of a movie in a lot of ways, even if it doesn't always feel that way. Second one is Avril 14th, which is the Apex twin song that would later be sampled by Kanye West for Blame Game, which is what my wife said when we were rewatching it. She was like, where do I know this from? And I think that's like a montage of her and her daughter

after her daughter is born. Yeah, yes. They're like, I don't can't remember whether it's a Petit Trianon, but yeah. Right. Yes, I think it is. I think it is. And then the last one is the Bow Wow Wow. I Want Candy. Yeah. I mean, that's that's like again i'm just like that

that montage is extremely important but it feels like picking like the musical performance in a rom-com you know for best music cue it's just so it's very obvious i support you i support you to me it's the Gang of Four song. That's the one where I was like, holy shit, this is so cool that she did this. Yeah. All right, number two, and this is the one I feel most strongly about,

and I know people go with a different cue in this one. For a long time, I felt that this was the best music cue ever in movies, but it's the crazy on you cue in Virgin Suicides. When Kirsten Nance runs back out of the car and it just starts making out with Josh Hartnett just right as the guitars go, I'm just like, holy, I really don't think that I understood

the power of guitars until that moment. And then I was like, oh, this is why people like rock music so much. Okay, maybe it was sex for other people much earlier than that. But for me, that's when it all clicked together. There are a lot of 70s jams. I mean, I love a movie set in the 70s in which characters are obsessed with their record collections.

You know, like the Kirsten Dunst's character is so into her records. And so you get How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? And you get that great Magic Man moment with Josh Hartnett's character. And you get A Dream Goes On Forever by Todd Rund rungren like there's so many good ones in this um but i i think that the movie is best remembered for the the score by air yeah playground playground love yeah that's the that's the sonic cue um and then i think that that leads to her meeting brian reitzel who becomes her music supervisor who played on some of those air records and then who was a part of helping pick all these songs we're talking about. Yes.

And then I think that is also how she eventually, um, that collaboration and or, um, and Roman Coppola working with all of them introduced her to Thomas Mars of Phoenix, who is now her husband. Um, I really recommend the i believe it's 2000 and it's 2003 because it's to loss in translation um lynn hershberg profile of sofia coppola for a moment in time um that that's a good pick but i still think crazy on you is better okay um and and the first one i already spoiled it but it's i'll try anything once in somewhere there's a lot of great music cues in this movie. Your pick is the right pick. I don't disagree with this one at all.

But I would just honorable mention for the Gwen Stefani cool drop while Elle Fanning's character is ice skating. It's fabulous. And then all of the songs that are played when the two girls are stripping in his room at the Chateau marmont like i think foo fighters my hero um it's the first one and then the second one is amory's one thing

which is just a banger of all bangers that's one of the great pop songs um yeah and then like love theme from kisses in this movie i don't know somewhere is it's fascinating i look forward to talking about that with you okay do you want to do the rankings back yeah let's do the rank well should we take a quick break yes we'll take a break Okay, we're back. We have a list of films. We're going to rank them. I just, to go behind the curtain here a bit for everyone,

typically there is a bit more coordination ahead of time in terms of, you know, we'll put these movies in this tier and it'll probably be one of these. And I think there's the coordination of a lot of friendship here and also me blabbing a lot about stuff, but we haven't discussed this. So I want you all to be prepared for either a very emotional journey. Well, it will be emotional, but whether it's good emotions or bad emotions, TB. I'm ready. I have nothing to lose. I have faith and hope in you

and in the listeners of this show to trust that we take this home. We should probably say there's nine documents here that we're going to rank, right? So she's got a fairly contained filmography. And then what are the stray items that we're going to talk about? So the seven feature films plus Lick the Star,

which is her short film, released in 1998, and also available on Criterion right now. And A Very Murray Christmas, which is a 2015 Christmas special starring, yes, Bill Murray, made for Netflix, available on Netflix. Frankly, I consider it a feature film. But anyway, it will be ranked on this list would you like to begin or would you like to meet to begin i'm i'm i'm ready to go i think you should you should present a pitch you're in charge here you're you're the boss and i'm the guy who says are we sure we want to do that which is we've we've role reversed here okay i i think that's good. So I think I have a, this would be for position number nine. I have a pretty obvious, I know what I would like to pick. There's one argument that,

there's one counter proposal that I would accept, but I'm going to propose the bling ring at number nine. Yeah. So she has been living with us. We met when my parents divorced and now my mom homeschools all of us. Based on the philosophy of the secret, which is based on the laws of attraction. Can I talk please? I think that this is the movie that just doesn't totally work as a movie of all of these. And there are some like structural or craft reasons for them among them that none of the actors are very good with all respect to emma watson she's miscast and this that's not fair um leslie man is is very funny that is leslie man right it is yeah um that's

not fair leslie man is very funny as the mother who believes in the secret but i there's the chemistry of the teens and the people that you're meant to focus on never really quite gels i don't think that it looks as good in part because it's trying to evoke the tmz tabloid culture of the mid-2000s and satirize that to an extent but it doesn't it means sacrificing some of Sophia's like good taste basically and we can talk a little bit more about her taste um but I just it it's supposed to look a bit kind of tabloid trashy but I think it does a little bit and I'm a superficial person I go to Sophia Coppola movie to look at pretty things um and then i there's something about this thematically that i just feel it's like the movie that critics of sofia

coppola movies always want her to make because it is somewhat in judgment of the characters and it's like see these people are bad and look what happened look what happens and that's not totally fair because again no sofia Coppola movie offers like a huge mission statement. Um, or as like, here is the moral judgment against this person, but you can just, it feels thin. It's not particularly personal. You don't really empathize with any of the people. And it just, I don't know. It doesn't, it doesn't come together for me i agree with you i'm not going to quibble with this at all it feels like the only movie that she's made that was made from upon a pedestal i think one of her gifts as a filmmaker is to is to sympathize and empathize

with characters who don't always get that kind of a treatment in the storytelling and this is one where i agree with you it seems like she's kind of standing in judgment of these kids who did a very stupid thing and a very illegal thing. And we're obviously frivolous teenagers of a different kind of a privilege, but it does feel like she's just passing down some judgment. And more specifically, I think it's the only movie that she's made that on paper sounds like a home run and doesn't work. And most of her other films if you just

describe the plot of the virgin suicides or lost in translation or somewhere and the movie was made by you know jim connor not sophia coppola or you know nancy walsh instead of sophia coppola you'd be like that's not a movie i'm not going to give you money for that movie because there's no plot. There's no engine. There's no intrigue. The bling ring is all intrigue. It's fame. It's crime.

It's Hollywood. It's, you know, the capturing of the TMZ culture of the 2010s. It's everything that you want in theory. And in some ways, I feel like it's not that it's too trashy a topic for her. It's that it just feels like she didn't totally crack the point of the movie. And it actually comes at a surprising time because it feels like she's due for a breakthrough. And we'll talk about The Beguiled, but I have some thoughts about that as well. I mean, that's a great segue to number eight which I was also I was going to suggest

the beguiled for this so I would probably rank it higher I'll tell you why okay I think this this might be her funniest movie and I don't know if I got that the first time around and I definitely got it the second time

around I think it has its flaws we can talk about its flaws but the stuff that the bling ring thinks is funny is not that funny to me and the stuff that the beguile thinks is funny is like devilishly funny but what do you think i think i do think it's very funny i think that sophia coble is extremely funny i like all of the things make me laugh so i don't think it's the funniest just because there are seven other movies on the list that I also find hilarious um I also think that within the world of this movie it's like a pretty

good movie or at least like a complete or quote successful movie like the performances are good it is funny this idea of what happens when the colin farrell character comes into a group of women is you know and and the dynamics in a group of women and especially young women is obviously so via coppola like core interest so and and then it's funny like wild things happen it's kind of a horror movie there's a great twist that i think was a bit um overshadowed by the other mushroom twist of 2017 but i it's good but like i never understand why she's making it like i i don't understand why this movie i don't understand why you need to remake the quentin Eastwood 70s version of this movie in order to explain its or explore its gender dynamics I don't you know and then the Civil War of it all is just kind of

it's famously there was a um a black character in the 1970s 71 I believe version of the film that Sophia Coppola removed from her version of the film and she's making a movie about the civil war with uh no black characters and basically no mention of slavery so just why you know why does it have to be set in that time is kind of the thing for me and also why is this the movie that you need to make in order to explore these very funny gender dynamics i mean there are some i think there are some answers to the questions that you're posing um why does it have to be said at this time because it's based on a novel that was about these women in this kind of small finishing school in virginia and during the civil war deep into the civil war

um i think the decision to eliminate the black slave character from the story is simultaneously very smart and very complicated to accept because sofia coppola as she talked about when the movie came out when she was questioned about this, she was just like, I felt like I was not the right person to try to communicate this character in this story. I just didn't feel like I could tap into it. And on the one hand, you could say, well, that is a perfect example of a person with privilege, not really engaging with some of the problems in our world. I accept that. That's an expected and perhaps even righteous claim. On the other hand,

Sofia Coppola writing that character and fucking that character up and ruining the movie by doing something that is offensive or hurtful or just historically inaccurate, um, I think would be a big problem. Um, and so she avoids that problem. Now,

the reason I think to, to make the movie in 2017 is because the original movie is a Clint Eastwood movie and it's seen through the eyes of Clint Eastwood. And Clint Eastwood is the alpha and the omega of American masculinity in the 1970s. And this idea of, you know, and that movie is kind of absurdist in its way. And it's about this, these women like encroaching upon this, this noble man and the way that they kind of castrate him by you know liberating him from his leg is is about like male fear right it's about what the the the castration complex that comes from marriage or or childbirth or all the things that men are supposedly afraid of and the new version is about a different is

about a kind of empowerment and is a question of like what women were asked were put through during the civil war when they were abandoned by the men who largely ran society and the workplace. And so I thought that there was like a lot of intentionality to choosing to make the movie. And I do think it has good performances. Um, it's not,

it's funny and not fun. And I think most of her movies are fun and not necessarily funny so it's an odd duck for sure like it's by no means a top five contender for me but just revisiting it last night I was I was just really impressed it's also like from a technical perspective it's just an amazing period piece it captures the look of that time so beautifully it's like all this you know all of the like let me shoot through the leaves into the sun dappled sky stuff that you see in the virgin suicides this is like her doing on steroids and the beguiled yeah and i will say i also um recently watched another remake of a gothic horror or a gothic classic film which i believe we're going to be discussing on monday available on netflix uh and uh yo that was not good so

so i at least appreciate um that this is a well done version of it and i also i like i do understand and have always suspected that the reason to do it is to be in dialogue with that with the clint eastwood original but it just in other movies and I think it is just because they are personal and you can tie to biographical details or to to personal experiences a bit more I can understand like the connection I understand that why this matters to the person making the film and while I think it is interesting on a number of levels I just like I don't understand why this one in the same way and so that for me is why I would put it at eight, but you are allowed to make a counter proposal unless it's a very Murray

Christmas, in which case get out of here. Let's leave it at eight and we'll see if I can make some negotiations along the way. Okay. All right. I'm not sure if I can deal with a very Murray Christmas in the top five, Amanda. It doesn't have to be in the top five, but it doesn't need to be at be at eight i just feel it's really underrated and it means a lot to me and i'll tell you i was having a very difficult day yesterday as we all do from time to time and so what i decided i need to do was to re-watch a very murray christmas at like 1 p.m on a tuesday

and my husband came up and was like what's going on here and i was like well it's october and i'm watching a very merry christmas in the middle of the day and he was like cool and then he left and it brought me a lot of joy so it's a heartwarming tale by the way like definitely like this big study for on the rocks. You can't have on the rocks without a very Merry Christmas for three very essential reasons. So I won't accept a very Merry Christmas at eight or even at number seven. What do you want to put at number seven? I thought this is probably where on the rock should go.

Wow. Okay. Which I liked, but is it really in the conversation with lost in translation and the virgin suicides i it just didn't i i have a lot of i have a lot of feelings about that movie but i'm reluctant to spoil it for people who haven't seen it yet okay i think that probably we should do lick the star then which is good oh yeah yeah i mean it's like at some point it's just ambition okay so number seven is going to be like

the star yep that makes sense I will give you a very merry Christmas at number six do you see what I see what I see a star a star dancing in the night with a tail as big as a kite with a tail okay because i said i wouldn't do it top five i just want to say in a lot of ways i think it is like the it's the boiled down simplified sofia coppola mission statement which is wouldn't it be great if we put a bunch of people I love in a very cool place in this situation at the Bumbleman's Bar at the Carlisle, which is a tremendous bar. Like, God, I hope the world opens again

so we can all go back to Bumbleman's. A drink on me for every listener of the big picture at Bumbleman's, which by the way, will bankrupt me because it's unbelievably expensive. I can't afford it, but I love you all. Don't write a check that your ass can't cash.

Amanda, be careful promising drinks to the millions and millions of big picture listeners. And BEMLMENS does show up in on the rocks, which is why I said that it does to be fair to say Rashida Jones is also in a very Murray Christmas christmas as is um bill murray but it just has a gang's all here vibe to make a way more stylish and funny and slightly ironic version of a a silly thing that nobody needs, which is a Christmas variety special and also Christmas itself. Um,

to, and, and everyone's kind of lonely and like has the Christmas blues at the beginning. And at the end, they're all happy and they've worked through their stuff together, uh, by singing fairytale of New York,

which is the coolest Christmas song. And then at the end, she's just like George Clooney, why don't you just like make a martini on Paul Shaper's piano for fun? And George Clooney does that. That to me is like the quintessential Sophia moment. It's George Clooney in a tux just being like, hey, Paul, I'm going to make a martini now because I thought that would be great.

And it's like knowing and funny, but it's also George Clooney in a tux making you a martini because it's Christmas. Like, great. Thank you. The one thing I can say about this is I don't understand why every great filmmaker doesn't get the chance to make their own Christmas special. This should be in the contract for every person who signs on a Netflix that they have to make a 90 minute Christmas special of their own making.

It can feature singing and caroling. It can feature, it can be a cooking special. It can feature Muppets. I don't care, but you know, I need to see Brian De Palma's Christmas special. You know, I need to see, I don't know who, who, who would make a great Christmas specialty. Where's Fincher's Christmas special for Christ's sake? What could pair better with Mank?

It could happen. What else does he have to do? Okay. A very Merry Christmas at number six, which it's happen. What else does he have to do? Um, okay. A very Merry Christmas at number six, which it's fine. At least it's not number nine. And if you have any interest at all, I really recommend it to you in October or around Christmas.

Go for it. So number five on the rocks. So we've got five movies left on the rocks. For those of you who would like to watch it, isn't it's now available on apple tv plus which is interesting because this is the kind of movie that i think is a hard sell for movie theaters because it is a small quasi rom-com about a mother and or excuse me about a father and a daughter and a woman who is reached a certain crossroads

of her life would you say she's middle-aged she's middle-aged right i think she certainly thinks of herself as middle-aged or is afraid that she's middle-aged and is working working through that maybe that's what it is maybe it's fear of middle age as a as a strain here the complexities of marriage after a number of years and making sure that your partner is still interested and that your partner is still connected to you and that they're not just performing the act of marriage, but they are married to you. And I think it's really perceptive about some of those things. I think it's really perceptive about some of that parental stuff that we talked about. I think it's some really great bill murray um i i really i i think he is just exceptional in this movie and

in a different time there would be a like it's now time for us to give bill murray an oscar conversation and i feel like we're not going to have it i don't understand why i i really i know i said already that he is very much sofia coppola's, but I think she also just sees him more clearly in terms of his abilities than anybody else. It's extraordinary. I'm sorry to be the person who's just like, let me tell you about another making of documentary that

I watched on YouTube, but whatever. Here we are. There's a great loss in translation one. We're really turning into each other a little bit have you noticed that this is like my one time a year so i'm just gonna go with it i've watched all of the making of documentaries i just want to say there are a couple notable things about the loss in translation one one of them being that spike jones films the first five minutes

and then it's never seen again okay anyway but he does film it is spike jones filming like the day that bill murray arrives and sophia coppola actually looks like it's christmas for her and she's like bill's coming today she looks so excited and he's filming her and she's just like i can't believe that bill murray's gonna be here and i can just make him do whatever i want to make me laugh and i can put him in a text just because i think it's funny and I can just make you know Bill Murray be Bill Murray in my movies and like it kind of goes both ways but he's extraordinary in this and in in all of her movies and I was entirely charmed by this character even though maybe I wasn't supposed to be yeah I mean I think that the charm of the problematic father figure is kind of the

point, right. That there is something undeniable about his ability. I mean, I, you know, I love a character who is able to effectively banter with a, with a person in the food service industry.

You know, that's, that's, that's my energy right there. For people listening, that Sean does not patronize the women in the service industry in the way that they're going he gets and he's like he's bill murray so you don't care sexualizes them and you just like want to have a long island conversation with everyone

yeah i do i want to have a like how are you what's going on kind of a conversation um but yeah i think he's very funny in this movie. I think the scenes in particular where he gets pulled over by the cop is like one of my favorite moments of the year in movies thus far. The like, I knew your father scene is just speaking of Long Island. Yeah.

That's just great stuff. And I think that his chemistry with Rashida Jones is phenomenal. And I think it's a very funny and accomplished movie that has very modest aims in terms of the production and the scope of the story

that pretty much hits its marks across the board, except for the ending, which I don't like and which I will talk to you about at some point in the future. Okay, I'm trying to guess which part of the ending you don't like without knowing

without any specifics. And I think I know it's like the fact that kind of an easy out. Yeah. Yes. I don't disagree with you. And I, it's so interesting. I,

to me, this movie was like, not about the marriage at all. The marriage is just like a complete, uh, side show, which is was not about the marriage at all. The marriage is just a complete sideshow, which is definitely not the case. It's both the inciting incident and the engine of plot that is propelling the entire movie. But I just watched a very charming Bill Murray performance

and a movie about fathers and daughters, and then a movie about someone who is closer to my age than I would like and owns far too many of the items that I also own the set design in this is just impeccable but also was brutal for me as a person who uses Instagram and once lived in Brooklyn I was just like oh god I have that too and like I wanted that, but I couldn't afford it. And oh, I know what that is. And like, oh, I felt quite indicted by it,

which is the point. It is. It's also self-critical, I feel like. Yes. I feel like it's her kind of taking aim at herself. That Bernie Sanders sticker is not a mistake. There are some very subtle comments that feel self-abnegating in a way that are super interesting yes and and that's kind of what i was talking

about is that i did feel pretty close to it or recognize a lot of it even though i um don't have children and my husband has never um come home from a flight on xanax and confused me for someone else which is like spoiler but that happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie. I just, he's been, he's been expressing some displeasure with how he's portrayed on this podcast in recent, in recent weeks. So I just wanted to make it clear everyone was saying that that is not a similarity, but to a person who is maybe

the character who's maybe not in the swing of it as much as she once was and is coming on the limits of the hipness and facing a new phase of life and trying to make sense of it all i i thought it was really well done i recognized a lot of it i don't i guess you see that more and more now, thankfully in film, but I was still kind of like, huh, this particular age of woman at this particular stage of her life, exploring these particular issues,

especially with her father. You know, I haven't seen that a million times. And so I really enjoyed it. I agree with you that it's just kind of smaller in scope and ambition and that's okay. Absolutely. But it had that personal sofia quality to it that i agree that i enjoyed i think the writing is really strong i think the the kind of the

verve and the energy is great she gets great performances out of her two leads um it's also just it's kind of a comforting movie to watch at home you know it's it it's a good fit for quarantine you know i think if people are looking for something to ease their evening, ease their idle Wednesday night, this is a good movie for that. I think that's true. It was also filmed before quarantine in New York. And I had a lot of New York longing and nostalgia. It is filmed with love for New York as well.

So if you miss New York, even if you are in New York and you miss it, it's worth your time. We have four films left. And this is, I'm just going to read them in chronological order. The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Rianne Chouinette, and Somewhere. Those are four excellent movies. And I know one play that I'm going to make, but otherwise I kind of want to open it to you. What would you put at number four? Four seems obvious to me.

Okay. I think, I think somewhere is four. Really? Yeah. I'm surprised by that. I, you don't think so.

I think somewhere is kind of a misunderstood masterpiece. I honestly, and I could have seen you be like, Somewhere should be number one, but I don't think it should. I love this movie. And I think in a lot of ways, it's like the purest Sophia experience. And if you have not seen Somewhere, it's about an actor who is, is he washed up? He's not quite washed up, but it's not going, he's not in his five years anymore.

He's in phase two, still very successful, still very wealthy, but kind of adrift and now making projects that maybe are not that exciting right and but he has also um lived in the kind of white hot fame complex and is um affected by that and as a result just lives by himself at the chateau marmont and over the course of the movie reconnects with his daughter and the actor is played by steven dorff and the daughter is played by L Fanning and he learns about his relationship with his daughter and hopefully we are led to believe by the end of the movie about himself um but in terms of like pure on me Sophia style in a hotel with music playing that you really like, this is it. It is. It is. It's a Antonioni Manche, though. It's a movie that has many forebearers. And those forebearers, I would say that to my mind, her best work is totally singular. And we can talk about that as we get into the rest of the movies here.

But this is a movie that is an Americanized version of a kind of film. This is like Jacques Demy's Model Shop. This is like Red Desert. This is a movie that's like, I will show you in specific the metaphor of isolation, the metaphor of loneliness, by showing you a wealthy, rich actor in his sports car driving around and around and around or driving until the gas runs out and he has to walk. You know, like these are, they're putting your thumb on the scale metaphors. Now, they're not

bad. They're cinematic and there's great stuff in the movie. And this is clearly like at the top tier of the work that she does, but it's like, if you watch a lot of European cinema, especially sixties and seventies, European cinema, you can be like, okay, I know what this is.

I mean, it's her, it's her turning her attention to Hollywood in that respect, but the style, it has a lot of, a lot of fathers and mothers, I think. So do all of her movies.

She literally, they have Francis Ford Coppola as a father. Not in style. That's true. I mean, that's fine. I feel like it's really boring to be like, I watched this in the 60s in Europe, so I don't care about somewhere. But that's fine.

I don't say I don't care about it. I just think it has its own burden, you know? I think it is a little... I do remember the first time i saw it i was like oh okay so this entire movie was just built around that one chord resolution in that phoenix song the really long one from um well it's list no wolfgang amadeus phoenix is the album and list of mania is the song um no list of mania is also an obvious reference for a movie later on um i just i understand that it's simple and perhaps a little too spare for some people but i don't know watching

this for the first time since we moved to la and listen i'm i have never i have been to the chateau marmont but i've never been inside like an actual room where people stay in the Chateau Marmont. I'm not like living this somewhere life, unfortunately, or fortunately for the most part. But it is, I think it's beautiful. And I, okay, that's fine. The movie, not the Chateau Marmont, right? Yeah, no, the Chateau Marmont is not beautiful anymore. No, given what we know goes on there

uh okay number four for somewhere so i don't have to you don't you don't have to accept that like if what what what was your number four in your mind's eye i'm not really sure that i had one because I guess you could put Virgin Suicides at four, but I also think Virgin Suicides is pretty remarkable. And as a mission statement is pretty exceptional. So I'm okay with it at three as well. I was honestly willing to be flexible. It's one of those things where I'm just like, I love all my children, you know? So I wanted to hear what you had to say. Um,

I see them as paired, the Virgin Suicides and somewhere, and they happen kind of 10 years between each other and they have, they're seen from, you know, they're really the only two movies that she's made that are kind of from the, from the point of view of a boy,

you know, like lost in translation has Bill Murray's character, but it's really, that's Scar Jo's movie. And, and I think, you know, somewhere and,

and the virgin suicides are about men looking at young women and not knowing what to do with them. And that's a very real thing. I mean, that's really perceptive for a filmmaker to identify and not do so in like a horny, typical like 80s comedy way, in a sensitive way, in a confused way. And like Johnny in Somewhere is such an interesting character. I mean, he's kind of a dimwit and kind of like a nothing.

But also, he's a person who's like, he's tapped out. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to be a person. He doesn't know how to connect with his daughter. He doesn't, he is full of regret and confusion. And the same is true of all the boys in,

in the virgin suicides. I mean, these guys have no idea what to do with these women that live across the street. They have no idea what to do with people, that live across the street. They have no idea what to do with people, things and people that they're attracted to. Now, whenever we run into each other at business lunches or cocktail parties, we find ourselves in the corner going over the evidence one more time.

All to understand those five girls, who after all these years, we can't get out of our minds. That's a very smart observation about adolescence you know that it's mysterious and it draws you but it doesn't it very rarely resolves itself and the virgin suicides is this like operatic version of that where these girls take their lives but it's that too is a kind of a metaphor right for like how women like vanish from your life because you don't pay them the right attention. Yeah. I think also the verge of suicides to me is such a insightful and really stunning re-imagination of like a teenage film and how especially teenage girls are portrayed in movies. And, you know, when you watch a John Hughes film or you watch any movie about popular girls or girls who are quote like on in the in crowd or girls who are longed for and what like we as a society but certainly as movie viewers are trained to

understand or not understand about those girls and what sympathies we are meant to give them and what qualities we associate with them and and and really how we understand them in this movie is about how people look at teenage girls and really kind of the it's about memory and it is about observing and it is about how onlookers actually create a version of a person as well. And, and shape, especially, especially in adolescence. So I think it's a pretty, it's wild that this is her first movie. That also just in terms like of a vision and stylistically, she just comes out of the gate.

Like that world is fully realized. You can see all of the Sophia texts. You can, you know, the shots and the, and the colors and, and the music. So that should get some credit as well.

So I'm good with that at number three. She, you used the word taste earlier. And I think when we were talking about cool in this moment in the 90s, she really was a tastemaker, right? Working with Marc Jacobs and directing music videos, appearing in music videos, the curation. But she also has incredible taste in collaborators

you know like choosing air to score the film working with ed lackman who is one of the great cinematographers of the last 50 years um she knew how to surround herself with tremendous artists and i mean she really makes kirsten Dunst in my mind. I mean, she really is like the relationship that they have in her as like, she is not her, you know, Bill Murray is her muse, as you said, but Kirsten Dunst is her avatar. And that's another thing that I think speaks highly to the beguiled is like, she's able to get that performance out of Kirsten Dunst and the beguiled and this performance out of her and virgin suicides as Lux, which is like really the two polarities of female sexuality, you know, that sort of like the repression. And then also that like explosive, almost uncontrolled seductiveness that, that she

has in this movie. And that's pretty amazing. I mean, she's just great with actors. Yeah. Also in the behind the scenes origin suicides documentary there's a there's young kirsten dunst being interviewed about the experience which is very sweet because it's much younger than the kirsten dunst that we know now and i mean that's it's nice and adorable in its own way but you are reminded of how young all of these actors are and then you see sofia who is also very young I believe she's 27 when she's making this movie um interacting with these teenagers and making them feel comfortable and kind of like creating that world where it's okay for them to be in what's like a pretty intense movie um for sure and it's you can't you realize that only this person in this particular dynamic could have produced it.

And that's pretty impressive. And getting great work out of people like James Woods and Kathleen Turner and Scott Glenn and really seasoned actors. I mean, James Woods is famously a very difficult actor to deal with. And it sounds like he was difficult to deal with on this set. But he's really great in The Virgin Suicides as one of his better supporting performances. And like you said, she was 27. Now she'd been on film sets her whole life.. It's one of his better supporting performances. And like you said, she was 27. Now she'd been on film sets her whole life. And she had one of the all-time great coaches

by giving her father a ring and saying, what do I do with crazy James Woods? And he says, well, let me tell you a story about Marlon Brando and how crazy he was. And then she's got some opportunity there. But I agree. I mean, it's just very incisive and insightful and beautiful debut.

Yeah. So we have two movies left. Number two is going to be lost in translation. And that's not up for debate. I just don't know what I'm supposed to be. You know? I tried being a writer, but I hate what I write. And I tried taking pictures, but they're so mediocre, you know? And every girl goes through a photography phase.

You know, like horses. You know, take dumb pictures of your feet. You'll figure that out. I'm not worried about you. And you knew it was coming. And if you have any disagreements with that, they won't be honored in the final ranking, but you can share them now along with your thoughts about Lawson Translation.

The Dauphin rules with an iron fist apparently on this podcast but yes thank you um yeah i you know agree to disagree but it's like a hair's breadth between the two i think that they're they're both two of the best movies that have been made in the last 20 years um you want to talk about lost in translation first sure yeah do you want me to? Oh, I think we should have an exchange of ideas. What do you think? Should we podcast about it? Sure. I think about the speech that Scarlett Johansson gives when she talks about taking pictures and how mediocre they were. And they're just a bunch of girls taking pictures of their feet at least once a week uh and i think about it in

relationship to myself and when i fear that i have edged into me equity which i do every day but i'm not happy about it and when i feel like i'm taking pictures of my damn feet which i think has just lodged it in my head as a definition of lack of imagination, lack of inspiration, just a little bit of basicness, but just something that I'm striving to overcome. And I think that as a portrait of a young person who hasn't quite figured this out. That performance has definitely stayed with me. It's also like the time I saw it. The Anna Faris performance. Top five movie performances of my lifetime.

One of the funniest things ever. One of the funniest things and also a recurring character. And I was very, I won't spoil anything about On the Rock. Except to say that jenny flayt is on it and is in it and um she has clearly seen anna ferris's performance in lawson translation and there is a recurring character and almost or there's a character in every sofia movie who is not smart but thinks they, and is very confident and just wants to talk so much. And they are mocked mercilessly

within the confines of the film. And you just know that she can't stand these people. And I feel that way about people on the internet and in my life every day. And it is so gratifying to see the tremendous Anna Faris performance performance also anna ferris's best performance ever justice for anna ferris well maybe not ever but i really love anna ferris and it's up there yeah i i agree she's hilarious it's a very thinly veiled portrayal of a very

famous person and it's absolutely savage i mean okay we'll talk about that now since you brought it up just in everybody knows i like gossip you know i i can't be above it and i just as this being a movie about a well-documented marriage that isn't going the way the person wanted and the person making this movie still while in the confines of the marriage and then literally giving a a quote to the New York Times Magazine being like, we'll figure out what's up with our marriage after September 12th, which is the date that the movie was released. And then the marriage no longer happening.

I find that remarkable. And I would be lying if I said that it didn't enhance my enjoyment of the film. That is quite something. And I commend her, even though it's perhaps not how I would have done it. But you can feel the real emotions in the movie. And that's important. I'm pointing my finger at Sean right now, just to make sure he understands. Yeah, I mean, it's a good lesson for you. Be careful how you talk about your marriage on this podcast when you're making your art you know it's just it's all very precious and it can go away at

any minute so be careful be cautious i think like you know the the obviously the the film is very thinly veiled in a lot of ways and and the scarlett johansson character feels like a real manifestation of some of sofia's anxieties insecurities. And also I think ably captures, you know, let's, let's say for the sake of conversation that the Bill Murray character is a stand in for her father or for another actor that she knew or someone in her family. Um, you know, she's related to Jason Schwartzman and Nicholas Cage and she, you know, Talia Shire, she's in this huge Hollywood lineage, so she knows about the insecurities of performers and creative types and feeling alone or like

you've lost your sense of creativity or that your family doesn't understand you and this goal that you're on to be understood over time. And she taps into all of those deep feelings. And she does it by making this very smart choice to set these two people adrift in a foreign country which is obviously one of the most alienating experiences in america i will say i mean the number one criticism of the movie is completely justified which is that like it totally others the japanese in the movie even though it's their provenance and not the main characters now i think you could make the case and i've thought about it this way for years and i'm not sure totally where it stands

i'd be curious to hear so if you talk about this actually i think in many ways the flawed people are obviously bill murray is a flawed person and the jokes he's making at the expense of japanese people in japan is not a something to be cheered it's something to be like observed and undignified and considered undignified but you know there's a lot of like broken english kind of jokes in this movie there and it's not great i mean i think there's the especially the broken english jokes are just like it's a no that's a pretty clear no um i do think that they're supposed to be screw-ups and they're supposed to be people who can't connect to anything and they can't connect to their lives at home and then they've come to

this place and they're staying in this amazing hotel and they have like literally nothing to do and they can't figure out a way to enjoy that either i don't think that's supposed to speak well of them um i i completely understand watching this movie and being like you just used tokyo and japanese people as a backdrop and this you know it's and it is trying to use the beauty of the city and make that a character but is not really engaging with the culture um or the people in the way that you would if you were making a movie about them. And it is not about Tokyo or Japanese culture. So I get it if you watch it and you're just like, no thanks. That makes perfect sense.

That makes perfect sense. I do also think that it's supposed to be about their inability to appreciate it and their inability to get past themselves. Agree. I think it's meant to be from the point of view of these somewhat shallow tourists you know and these people who can be shallow at times but also have this deep reservoir of pain and feeling and the idea of those two things coexisting is part of what makes the movie good you know that they can have this intense bond and this you know sense of confusion and frustration with their lives and they can also be kind of assholes to strangers um that's that's pretty common

that's how most people are frankly right and assholes to each other at the end at not at the very end obviously but you know never forget that bill murray just sleeps with the lounge singer who is the real lounge singer at the park Hyatt and they have that terrible last lunch they're not like nice well-adjusted people who know how to have normal relationships um and that's what makes that last scene so magical with the Bill Murray performance in that last scene which is now a very famous scene um because Bill Murray whispers something to Scarlett Johansson and we don't know what it is. And what did he whisper? Tell us, Amanda.

I was just asking. I don't know. It's not for me to know. That's the joy of the movie. It's between them. Maybe I just don't have like, maybe that's not my brand of voyeurism. I certainly have plenty of other brands of voyeurism.

So it's fine. But I have never really wondered. I think also the acting after that whispering between the two of them particularly bill murray is amazing just very moving yeah i know i know what he said okay great do you want to share or do you want to just keep it to yourself yeah he said zendaya is michi which you know that's a i know it's a shocking revelation but i'm really yeah he was just way ahead on that he's way ahead of the curve as always bill murray out of the curve like famously on that they were planning to fill it in later they she didn't know

what to say and so they were going to just kind of like do it after the fact and then decided not to fill it and then it worked better that way but that's become like a it after the fact and then decided not to fill it. And then it worked better that way. But that's become like a, I mean, it's definitely a meme much like Zendaya is Michi, but it's, I think like a, a very mature and effective filmmaking decision, like pretty early in a career and also very moving.

I just kind of get, at some point the movies just reduced me to, to real emo, you know, pulp that doesn't speak. Yeah, I think it's just one of the best movies in many years. If this were solo action, this would be my favorite. Okay. This is my favorite of her movies.

It can be your favorite still, even if collectively we're putting at number two because we're putting my beloved marie antoinette at number one anyone with rights of entry may enter at any time so you must pay attention to acknowledging properly each arrival i am just going to talk about marie antoinette for a while. I love this movie, obviously. Should I go on mute? What do you want me to do? Should I turn my camera off? What happens? Please. No Zoom camera jokes this week, okay?

We're going to pin your camera on the screen. Okay. You can only see yourself. I would like to clarify that I'm talking about Marie Antoinette, the film, and not Marie Antoinette, the historical figure. Though what this movie presupposes or asserts about that historical figure is one of the interesting things about it.

I like this movie because I think it's both expertly done and it is like the summation of Sophia. In terms of visual style, in terms of scenes, in terms of execution, in terms of a little bit of provocation. It's based on the Antonia Fraser biography of Marie Antoinette which is a little bit revisionist and you know it's like maybe she didn't tell everyone she actually didn't say let them eat cake that was and it would have been brioche anyway in french but you know that this figure has been kind of maybe not

scapegoated but misunderstood in terms of what her situation was and her power was and how the whole french revolution went down um i don't think it attempts to ultimately justify any of her frivolous behavior just put it puts it a bit more in context and that's what this movie does as well and it's kind of re-examining what um how we think about female figures in history it is re-examining how we think of teenage girls and social dynamics it's re-examining fashion and visual aesthetics and the power that fashion and visual aesthetics have, both socially and politically. And it's also for a good portion of the movie, just very fun, which in itself is another provocation that a movie about Marie Antoinette, who was a

heartless, despicable royal who then was beheaded. I'm not going to go, well, I mean, she was beheaded, so we don't need to go whether it was like rightful or not. But I can't endorse the court of Louis XVI. I just want to get that on the record. Can't, I'm not, I'm not a pro-Louis XVI person over here. That's a really brave political act at this difficult time do you also want to weigh in on the recent elections in bolivia for example are there other complicated

pipe bomb to style issues you'd like to weigh in on i don't i just you know i i want to be clear but also i do think that this movie was initially especially in france it was famously buddha can um in part because it was understood to be like justifying rio antoinette uh how hilarious that they fucking premiered this movie again that's amazing that's a great troll and this movie is a troll on french people because absolutely yeah and that's hilarious this movie is if if anyone is to blame in this movie it is all of the it's the court it is all of the the onlookers and the who are hilariously played by uh molly shannon and um your girl rose burn and uh she is delightful in this movie she's so good and the people who are just accepting everything as it is that who who aren't examining frivolity or even enjoying their frivolity or just kind of going along with it, thoughtless.

Sophia does not like unexamined people. But it's definitely a troll on France. And it's definitely a troll on bureaucracy. And it's, I just think such an interesting re-examination of both history and costume dramas. And that's the other thing is like, I love costume dramas. These are the most beautiful costumes that you've ever seen in your entire life. They filmed it in Versailles.

The sets are beautiful. Like it is, there is literal confectionery in this film, but it is also so beautiful to look at, but that's not all that's going on. And I think we've been trained to expect that from a costume drama. And as you said, from the, the gang of four song in the credit sequence, it's just like, this is something else. We're, we're going to look at this differently. And it rules.

I love it. I'm a big fan. I don't think everyone loves it. That's an interesting part of this conversation. Obviously, the crowd at Cannes did not love it. It was her moonshot after the success of Lost in Translation, which became an unexpected massive hit i thought you really summarized better than i could kind of what the movie is about and what

it accomplishes really well i do think that um i love when a filmmaker is like fuck it i'm going for it uh and this is her going for it you know this is her using the capital that she had at arguably the last time that a filmmaker of her stature could do it. There just won't be another movie like this. There might be a TV show like this. And if you liked The Great, you can see the heavy weight of influence that Marie Antoinette has on The Great, just as Barry Lyndon has a major weight of influence on Marie Antoinette. Those two movies should be watched back to back because they are about long gazes and the the foolishness of the wealthy in historical times and beauty and the cost of beauty and

they're both really kind of like they have an arched eyebrow at everyone involved which is a style that i like it's a tone that I like, you know, I don't think Coppola does. Sophia Coppola does not get compared to Kubrick very often, but I think they have more in common than you might think in terms of their view of certain, certain,

certain members of humanity. Um, and it's also like it features, I think most of this, the key themes and motifs of her, all of her movies. This is a bit a bed movie you know people

characters in bed is that's the number one Sophia Coppola tick think of throughout the films think of Bill Murray and Scar Jo sitting together in bed and lost in translation think of the teenage girls in their bedrooms and in the

virgin suicides think of Johnny in bed at the Chateau marmont and somewhere this is like the the the illusion of relaxation the illusion of comfort is is one of her major ideas one of her major concepts where do we go and we want to be safe from the world we go into bed where does marie antoinette where do we see her every morning they open up the curtain and there she is in bed a hundred people watching her you know like what that's tmz that's that's tabloid culture i mean like that's such a so such a incisive way of portraying that idea i mean that's like that's very high level shit is really what i'm trying to say um i was gonna say if there's like a single shot that science summarizes sophia for me it is

when the one of the many times that that bed opened the curtains open and kirsten dunst is just sitting there slumped like i'm still here uh and you know with like the thousands of dollars of like textiles and curtains and like the florals that are basically going to suffocate her um it has it all right there in in one shot and but at the same time the thing that's so exciting to me about ranch and that is that it is like maximalist sophia like you said she was just kind of like all right i'm how much how large of a fireworks budget can i get and then i will just shoot them all off at versailles and it's cool that a filmmaker like sophia gets a chance like that i think she gets a tremendous Kirsten Dunst performance.

I think she gets just like visually stunning every shot. It looks beautiful. And it pissed off the people of France, which is just funny, you know, with all respect to everyone living in France, who's listening to this right now. She's also,

I think one thing we haven't really talked about is like she's a great talent scout. So she was very early in Elle Fanning, for example, and then she works with her in Somewhere and then works with her again in The Beguiled. Speaking of the great, the star of the great is Elle Fanning.

And there's a, this features I think her best and strongest and deepest cast. Marie Antoinette, right? So it's not just Kirsten Dunst and strongest and deepest cast. Marianto and I write it. So it's not just Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, but Judy Davis and Steve Coogan and Rip Torn and Rose Byrne and Aja Argento and Molly Shannon. Like you mentioned, Danny Houston and Marianne Faithful. And then also really for the first time I'd ever seen them, Jamie Dornan as as Von Furson and and Tom Hardy as Romain. Yeah. as von furson and and tom hardy as roman yeah like i i don't i think i matthew uh matthew almaric shows up in this movie in that amazing scene at the mass ball like she she has she has

taste she has she has she's a star spotter she knows when someone has the magic and she she did it she does it with josh harnett in the in the virgin suicides you know never really seen him before and then he shows up and you're like holy shit this is the hottest guy in the world so it's a it's a skill yes and especially with the hot guys she also understands what um they should be on camera or what she wants them to be i really think jamie dorn says 10 words in this movie like that's not an exaggeration like i honestly i was thinking about it i'm not like i think he says 10 words he's asked how long it took to get from sweden and then he mumbled something to kirsten dunst after one of their sex scenes but i honestly couldn't tell you what it was but that's you know

that's not what he's there for he's not there to talk um the tom hardy one is very funny we talked about it on the tom hardy hall of fame Um, that Tom Hardy is the person who brings the oysters in 2006. That's really good stuff. I think also that scene in the film, when they're playing the heads up celebrity game, the same game that they play in Inglourious Bastards, you know, which this movie was made three years before that. I, you know, I know, I know Quinn is a fan of Sophia's movies. Um, you know, it's like, she has a great sense of staging too. Like that scene is played totally differently than the inglorious bastard scene in that scene the scene is all about the game and what can be revealed by the game and the things that people say in the game in in the

sofia scene it's all about the way that the characters are looking at each other and what they're seeing on each other's faces and it's edited totally differently and shot totally differently and it's like a contrast in styles you know it's like that's what that's what makes her singular she's got her own very specific vision of how to build out these worlds can you live with marie antoinette number one i mean you have to but i just will you be upset i am but a passenger. Okay. Well, I'm pleased that for one night only, here on the big picture, Amanda reigned and got to pick the number one. I'm pleased with this list here.

Should I read it over again? Yeah, let's summarize it. Number nine, The Blending Ring. Number eight, The Beguiled. Number seven, Like the Star. Number six, A Very Merry Christmas, which you should watch if you haven't. five on the rocks number four somewhere number three virgin suicides number two lost in translation and number one marie antoinette i feel good about it

i wanted to echo something that alex ross perry said when i talked to him a couple weeks ago on the show which is a sofia coppola movie is coming out and I feel like people don't know. This is really weird. This is one of the most important directors that we have. And she has a huge movie starring Bill Murray that is premiering on Apple TV Plus today. Are people going to watch this? I hope so. I mean i have no idea it has it's been funny to watch the commercials for it which play during all of the sporting events which you know i don't mean to gender essentialize sports and i have been watching sports and thus we have been watching them but they're definitely playing like the goofy screwball bill murray angle of it all. And when advertising to a bunch of people watching like the NFL or whatever, and I,

I don't know whether that's the target audience and the conversion rate that you're looking for. I think the people who know about a Sofia Coppola film will probably seek it out. It's not that hard on Apple, but you know, we talk again and again just about learned behavior. And if it's only available in one place, how much effort is anyone going to go to? I hope to a lot of effort. If you're listening at this point, I'm assuming you're going to.

Yes. I think it unfortunately does have some competition in the form of what we're going to be talking about next week on this show, which is there are a handful of new movies. There's Rebecca on Netflix. There is the witches remake from Robert Zemeckis, which is getting not very good reviews that I have seen that I've not yet seen that is on HBO max. And then of course there's Borat two. Are you ready for Borat two, Amanda? I am not ready. I've read some news reports today. I've got to be honest. And that's, it's going to be interesting. I will watch it, obviously, but I will buckle up first, I guess.

Buckle up. We're going to have a couple of special guests from the Ringer Podcast Network Universe on our show next week to talk about Borat 2 and a handful of other movies. Do you want to send us off now? Thank you to everyone listening to this podcast about Sofia Coppola, who means a lot to me. Farewell.