Sofia Coppola on the 20th Anniversary of The Virgin Suicides : “It Means a Lot to Me That It Has a Life Now”

Sofia Coppola resisted being a director for as long as she could. The daughter of Francis Ford Coppola and cousin of actors Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman, she comes from a family whose roots run deep throughout the industry.

“I was really proud that I had interests outside of my family,” Coppola recently told Vogue over the phone, while quarantining in her family home in Napa, California. “Everyone in my family worked in film so it made me less inclined to.”

Coppola explored Hollywood with a handful of roles in her father’s films, but made a name for herself launching a fashion line, Milk Fed, and modeling. “I was in my 20s, and it felt like there was a freedom to do whatever you wanted,” she recalls of this era spent cruising around ’90s Los Angeles. It was around then, when Coppola dropped out of CalArts and picked up photography—“I hadn’t quite found my way”—that Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore recommended a certain novel about a group of five mysterious teenage sisters.

The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 debut, immediately resonated with Coppola. Not the facts of the story—a group of infatuated teenage boys observe the Lisbon sisters, against the backdrop of ’70s suburbia—but its themes of loss and teen heartache, which felt ripped from her own psyche.

Coppola’s film hit theaters 20 years ago today. Shot in Toronto during the summer of 1998 for $6 million, The Virgin Suicides saw the beginning of Coppola’s directing career. “I was really motivated to make something sensitive and accurate to a teenage girl,” Coppola said. “I saw visually in my head how it could look, and I wanted to protect it because I didn’t want anyone to mess it up.”

Sofia Coppola, on the set of The Virgin Suicides in 1999.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, director Sofia Coppola, on set, 1999. ©American Zoetrope/courtesy Everett Colle

Sofia Coppola, on the set of The Virgin Suicides in 1999.
Photo: American Zoetrope/Courtesy Everett Collection

The film failed to find much of an audience in 2000, but it has since become a cult classic. The Criterion Collection added The Virgin Suicides to its library in 2018; an anniversary screening at Lincoln Center, featuring a live orchestra accompaniment of Air’s hypnotic score, was scheduled this month before COVID-19 precluded public gatherings.

Having recently completed her seventh feature, On the Rocks, a comedy starring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones due out later this year, Coppola has been busy at home with husband Thomas Mars, frontman for the French indie pop band Phoenix, and their two daughters. Taking a brief respite from homeschooling duties, Coppola spoke to Vogue about how she brought the gauzy world of the Lisbon sisters to life.

Take me back to when you first came across Jeffrey’s novel.

I bought the book after Thurston Moore recommended it to me and immediately fell in love. I heard a guy was adapting it and planning a dark version. I thought, Please don’t mess up a book I love.

I’d never written a script, but I thought I’d try the first chapter because it was so vivid, visually, in my head. It was just a private project I’d do at night for fun. I wasn’t planning on showing anyone or even finishing it, but before I knew it, I’d written the whole script for something I didn’t have the rights to, which is something you’re never supposed to do. Chris and Roberta Hanley had the rights, and I said, if the other guy’s version doesn’t end up happening to please, read mine and let me do it, which is exactly what happened.

Did making a short film first feel like a test run before committing to a feature?

When I made my short film, it just came naturally. I’d spent my whole life on film sets. I learned through osmosis all those years and didn’t realize I knew how to do it from all those years with my dad. He was always talking about filmmaking to my brothers and I as if we were all going to be filmmakers. He’s always talking about writing structure and actors, and included us in his projects, so I got an incredible education.

What about the book made you want to adapt it?

It had such a specific visual sense of time and place. I thought suburbia was so exotic, because I didn’t grow up there. There was always a sort of romantic quality about American suburbia that was so clear in my head once I figured out the puzzle of adapting it. I had a look in my mind of how it should feel while reading it, of that hazy, backlit style of ’70s Playboy photography.

What were some of your artistic reference points? What did you want to convey visually?

I studied photography, so one of the main things I immediately grasped was the look of the film and how I wanted to shoot it. I loved the cinematographer Ed Lachman from his work with Todd Haynes. He was always looking at the frame like a photograph, and he really helped me find the look of the film and supported how I thought, which is lucky for a first-time director. Bill Owens and Takashi Homma had books on suburbia, with the flatness and color of the suburban ecosystem. Growing up, I never felt like movies made for teenagers were very artfully made. They were usually cheap and cast people in their 30s as teenagers.

This was a time when teen comedies were booming. American Pie, 10 Things I Hate About You, and She’s All That all came out the year before The Virgin Suicides. Was your interest in the material in any way a response to the type of movies you saw being marketed to teen girls?

It was more the ones I grew up with, like Porky’s. They never had good cinematography and were always cheaply made—like kids didn’t need good production values. But I love the John Hughes movies I grew up with in the ’80s and my dad’s movie Rumble Fish. I always appreciated that he made an art film for teenagers. I thought it was so cool to do something poetic for kids.

How did casting come together? I read that Kathleen Turner and James Woods were the first actors cast, as the Lisbon sisters’ parents.

I knew Kathleen from working with her on my father’s movie Peggy Sue Got Married, so I was able to approach her and she agreed to do it. After I met James and he said he’d do it, I was able to get the rest of the film financing, so I feel really grateful to them for giving me a shot.

Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides.

VIRGIN SUICIDES, Josh Hartnett, 1999

Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides.
Photo: © Paramount Classics / Courtesy Everett Collection

Did you write the script with any specific actors in mind for the teenage characters?

Because these were kids, I wasn’t thinking of anyone, and more so had a sense of the type of characters they were. Fred Roos is a legendary casting director I grew up with who worked with my dad, so I asked him to help me with it. He knew Josh Hartnett from a TV show he was on. We were in Toronto during preproduction and Kirsten was there shooting some teen comedy, I think. At that point she’d been doing more broad comedies, but I’d seen Interview With the Vampire, and she stands out. What I love about her is that she looks like this all-American blonde cheerleader but has this depth behind her eyes that contrasts her look. I just clicked with her right away. She just totally gets me and got how I wanted to do it. Back then she was just a kid, but it was the beginning of our friendship.

Given that she was mostly known for big studio comedies and blockbusters, what made you think she could pull off a character as internal as Lux?

I thought she had the right qualities. We had a connection and that’s what you always look for, that they get what you’re trying to do. She had a unique quality and it was sorta her first older role after being a kid actor. It was scary for her and different from what she was doing at the time. But I was approachable because I was also a kid then. I was 29, so we just had a good rapport and she trusted me. We kind of found our way together.

Sofia Coppola directs Kirsten Dunst on the set of The Virgin Suicides.

Sofia Coppola Kirsten Dunst Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola directs Kirsten Dunst on the set of The Virgin Suicides.
Photo: © Paramount Classics/ Courtesy Everett Collection

The film was shot in one month the summer of 1998. Did that feel as short as it sounds?

Yeah, it was very short, low-budget, and scrappy. We shot on film and were always running out because we’d do these long shots of the girls lying around their rooms. It wasn’t until they got really bored that those little details would start to come out, so I’d shoot these long shots of them lying around the room and the producers would yell about how we didn’t have enough film stock.

Did you get to savor the experience or was it more stressful than that?

I was stressed out the whole time. My mom was worried I wasn’t eating enough because I was so stressed, just a marathon for 27 days. But I loved all the cast and kids—they were so there for me. There’s nothing like working with a whole team who really believes what you’re doing and wants to help you. We had to have a set chaperone because the kids could only work a certain amount of hours and we were running out of time, but we had to get some shot and the kids were like, Let’s do it anyway! We’re just gonna keep going! I felt like they were really all there on my side and helping me figure it out.

How did you settle on Air to compose the score for a ’70s period piece? Their sound is so dreamlike and works beautifully with the atmosphere of the film, but they’re a contemporary group with a lot of electronic and modern influences.

I didn’t want it set in the ’70s, but to be more about these boys looking back at this time of their life in the ’70s. I was in London at Rough Trade when I saw Air’s Premiers Symptômes album. I liked the cover, so I picked it up and asked the workers if it was any good, and they said, “Oh, yeah.” The more I listened while writing, the more I felt it had this dreamy quality that was the mood of the whole movie and would help it feel like a memory piece, so I asked them if they’d do the score. I never wanted it to feel clichéd and I always wanted it to feel real and subtle as far as the clothes and music.

Brian Reitzell was the drummer in Redd Kross and a good friend of mine, and I asked him to help me pick the period songs because he has good taste and would help me find things that didn’t seem obvious. It was important for us not to let the soundtrack feel like a greatest hits collection from the era.

You finished the film just in time to screen in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. What do you remember from your first Cannes as a director?

I’d gone since I was a little kid with my dad’s movies, so the place was familiar to me, but it was really nerve-racking going with my first film. We’d finished it right before Cannes and it was also the first time I’d ever shown it to an audience, so it was really nerve-racking. But it was exciting because the French press seemed to embrace it.

If I was in that position, I’d just be sitting in the front row with my head turned, watching the audience the entire time.

I was pretty terrified. I remember Faye Dunaway was in the audience and her cell phone rang and it was not the best, but only Faye Dunaway could get away with that. My friend told me that before Muhammad Ali goes in the ring, he says something like, “Did I train as best I could? Did I do everything I could?” That’s all you can do.

<h1 class="title">THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, US poster, 1999, © Paramount Classics/courtesy Everett Collection</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: © Paramount Classics / Courtesy Everett Collection</cite>

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, US poster, 1999, © Paramount Classics/courtesy Everett Collection

Photo: © Paramount Classics / Courtesy Everett Collection

Were there any clashes about the marketing with Paramount Classics? I rewatched the trailer and it feels like it’s promoting a completely different movie. There’s a Fatboy Slim song playing over it.

That’s so funny. It was so long ago, I kinda blocked out that whole aspect of it because I remember it was a struggle to get the movie put out the way I wanted. I remember fighting for the poster. Geoff McFetridge was a graphic designer friend who did the titles. There were so many fights with the studio, because when you look at movie posters, they’re not usually so artful and they wanted something normal. I can’t remember the ones they proposed, but they looked cheesy and I had to fight to keep Geoff’s poster, a close-up of Kirsten with the handwritten titles. The other options were just so corny. I think they were worried about it seeming dark, but it wasn’t very commercial. I didn’t expect a big release, but you fight to get your movie out there as much as you can, and it wasn’t embraced so much.

Given the reception at Cannes, were you disappointed about the response when it came out in U.S. theaters?

It was a little bit of a letdown that it didn’t have much of a release, but I did have the satisfaction of having it in France. It was a different time, before streaming, but I was just excited I got to make what I had in mind and satisfied I got to keep it the way I wanted. The week before shooting one of the financers fell through, so the fact that it got made at all felt like a triumph. It gave me the confidence to feel like I wanted to continue directing, so it means a lot to me that it has a life now.

When did you first notice it had such a devoted cult following? I’m sure getting added to the Criterion Collection in 2018 helped.

About 10 years ago people started telling me their daughters loved it and I was like, “How do they know about it? They weren’t even born.” During The Bling Ring I worked with Leslie Mann, and she told me her daughter Maude [Apatow] loved it. Tavi Gevinson also wrote about it for Rookie and it reached this whole new audience of young girls. It made me happy that it still had meaning and connected to girls of another generation. It didn’t feel underappreciated, because in Europe and Japan people connected with it. I felt very connected to people through the film, plus I feel a special connection to my work with Kirsten. But it was a dream to make the Criterion.

<h1 class="title">THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, from left: Chelse Swain, Kirsten Dunst, Leslie Hayman, A.J. Cook, 1999. ©Americ</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: American Zoetrope / Courtesy Everett Collection</cite>

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, from left: Chelse Swain, Kirsten Dunst, Leslie Hayman, A.J. Cook, 1999. ©Americ

Photo: American Zoetrope / Courtesy Everett Collection

Have you shown the film to your daughters?

My 13-year-old watched it last year and it made me very happy that she liked it, because a teenage daughter’s inclination is to reject their mother’s work. [Laughs] The fact that she can admit she liked it and the fact that she’s 13 and can relate to it meant a lot to me.

Why do you think it continues to resonate with new generations of teen audiences? Especially those who, like you said, weren’t even born when it was released?

There’s not a lot of art that treats that age and era of life with a lot of respect. It tapped into something specific, but hopefully it conveyed something sincere about that age for teenagers. You make things to connect with other people, and when I was young, stuff for teenagers was always condescending. I’m proud I got to make something about teens concerning serious topics where they were complex people and not just kids.

I’ve seen a few articles pop up talking about how The Virgin Suicides is the perfect movie for quarantine.

That’s so funny, I hadn’t thought about that in relation to this moment of suburban malaise we’re in, and feeling isolated. I think the New Yorker recommended watching it right now because of that, but that’s so funny.

Looking back at the film, what do you get out of it differently now as a filmmaker and a viewer?

I don’t usually look at my work, but a couple years ago we projected it and it was fun to see it on a big screen. I felt good that it held up and wasn’t embarrassing, and I wasn’t cringing the whole time. Now I just enjoy seeing it. I love when Josh comes in as Trip Fontaine with that big entrance, and I just love watching Kirsten and all those kids wearing those prom dresses designed by Nancy Steiner. Enough time has passed for me to enjoy it as a memory of that time and what I was into at that specific time in my life. Seeing it all these years later you can get lost in what happens when a movie somehow comes together.

Watch Now: Vogue Videos.

Originally Appeared on Vogue