2
Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola
Winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture
at the 2010 Venice International Film Festival
Production Notes
durée: 98 minutes
Sortie le 5 janvier 2011
Dossier de presse et photos téléchargeables sur www.pathefilms.ch
DISTRIBUTION PRESSE
PATHÉ FILMS AG Jean-Yves Gloor
Neugasse 6, Postfach, 8031 Zürich Route de Chailly 205, 1814 La Tour-de-Peilz
T 044 277 70 83 F 044 277 70 89 T 021 923 60 00 F 021 923 60 01
Synopsis
won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the 2010 Venice International Film Festival. From Academy Award-winning writer/director Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette), is a witty, moving, and empathetic look into the orbit of actor Johnny Marco (played by Stephen Dorff).
You have probably seen him in the tabloids; Johnny is living at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood. He has a Ferrari to drive around in, and a constant stream of girls and pills to stay in with. Comfortably numbed, Johnny drifts along. Then, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) from his failed marriage arrives unexpectedly at the Chateau. Their encounters encourage Johnny to face up to where he is in life and confront the question that we all must: which path in life will you take?
Filmed entirely on location, reunites the writer/director with Lost in Translation editor Sarah Flack and production designer Anne Ross. Stacey Battat (Broken English) is the costume designer, and Harris Savides (Elephant) is the director of photography, on .
A Focus Features presentation in association with Pathé Distribution, Medusa Film, and Tohokushinsha of an American Zoetrope production. . Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning. Music Score, Phoenix. Costume Designer, Stacey Battat. Film Editor, Sarah Flack, A.C.E. Production Designer, Anne Ross. Director of Photography, Harris Savides, ASC. Executive Producers, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Rassam, Fred Roos. Producers, G. Mac Brown, Roman Coppola, Sofia Coppola. Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola. A Focus Features Release.
About the Production
When he got the call inviting him to work on the new movie from writer/director Sofia Coppola, veteran producer G. Mac Brown sensed that it was just the challenge he needed. Not that he had been lacking for challenges; as he notes, “My last two film projects had budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars and each shot for more than 100 days.
“I don’t want to say that was easy, because everyone worked really hard. But this was such an intimate, small movie that it was easy to stay focused on the heart of the story, which is between a father and daughter.”
Sofia Coppola’s brother Roman Coppola, who was already on board as producer of , remarks, “Keeping away extra stuff that can pile onto a movie was important for us. Sofia was modeling this project in a European, intimate style as well as in her own personal style, which is simple and no-nonsense.
“One of my duties was to encourage the notion that less is more. While it was important to save money, it was far more important to create the intimacy that Sofia wanted in the filmmaking process. The spirit of the movie meant recruiting people who would embrace it; I live in L.A. and Sofia hasn’t lived here in a while, so she relied on me to refer local crew to her.”
Brown offers, “There’s a saying that the two most expensive words in the movie business are ‘what if,’ and that necessitates a lot of equipment and staff to make sure you’re ready for any eventuality. We tried to remove those two words from this production’s vocabulary; Sofia is so clear about what she wants. For me, it was a sea change in figuring out what is essential to getting a movie made.”
The shoot would impact the storytelling, and vice versa; as Brown comments, “If you can have anything you want to have, it’s hard for you to decide what’s right.”
When contacted and contracted, everyone joining the production realized that they were going to be part of something different than any picture they’d done before. Stephen Dorff, cast in the lead role of Johnny Marco, states, “After making around three dozen movies, I’ve gotten a gift of a part. is special – poetic, sweet, and truly in Sofia’s style.
“The opportunity came out of nowhere. Sofia, whom I’ve known for years but hadn’t talked to in a while, called and asked if she could send me the script for her new movie. After reading it, I called her the next day to ask her if I could come to Paris immediately to meet and talk about the film. On my last night there, I got the call from Sofia that I had the part. I started bawling, because it was the one-year anniversary of my mom’s passing, and I felt her smiling in that moment; this was the kind of role she’d wanted for me. Right after I hung up, the Eiffel Tower lit up.”
The actor admits, “I know what it’s like to live as an actor like Johnny Marco. I get who he is. I’ve had times where I’ve coasted. When we meet him, Johnny is lost in a monotonous rhythm and a decadent lifestyle. He’s a nice guy, but he’s drinking and popping pills. I don’t think he’s proud of a lot of the films he’s done – like his new one, Berlin Agenda. He hasn’t gotten his yet. Then his little girl shows up, and even though he’s thinking ‘I can’t handle this,’ he spends more time with her than he has probably since she was a baby – more than just an afternoon.
“Sofia and I talked about Johnny’s back story, so I was able to plan where he starts [out] and where he goes [in his relationship] with his daughter, who is becoming a little lady. We filmed so much of it in sequence, which was a joy.”
Dorff confides, “I always get a little nervous before I start a movie. But I’ve got to say that on this one, I felt that I knew what I had to do. I felt it when I [had first] read it. My mom always wanted me to play a Steve McQueen-type character. She would say, ‘He’ll be flawed, a ladies’ man, but he’ll have heart.’ That’s who I saw in Johnny, as Sofia had written him.”
The already-cast Dorff was screen-tested with Elle Fanning, then the front-runner for the role of Johnny Marco’s astute pre-teen daughter Cleo. In keeping with the production’s aesthetic, Roman Coppola operated film and video cameras recording the duo and Brown wielded the boom microphone, while Sofia Coppola gave direction to the two actors and took photographs of them. The only other crew member with them was a hair stylist who gave Dorff a cut beforehand, and then left. “We got right to the core of how Stephen and Elle would work together, without any pressure or tension,” notes Brown. The young actress was officially offered the part later that same day.
It was important to the writer/director that the on-screen father and daughter relationship play out authentically, so she arranged for Dorff and Fanning to spend time together before the start of production. Fanning reports, “Stephen and I have a lot in common. He went to the same school that I go to. We both bite our nails. We’re both from Georgia, and we both like our food well-done – really crispy! We now have a father/daughter-type relationship outside of the movie.”
Though only 11 years old at the time of filming, Fanning has been making movies since around the time she learned to talk. In reading the script, she saw as “a movie where everything felt real, including Cleo’s relationship with her dad.”
Like Dorff, Fanning still wonders about just how things will go when she steps onto a film set. But on , she “was never nervous, never felt rushed. If you had something to say or an idea, you could tell Sofia and she would listen to you. If Stephen and I had an inside joke or something, we’d ask her if we could incorporate it into a scene. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and she doesn’t put pressure on. She gets things done without yelling.”
When asked how she would prepare for the film’s more emotional scenes, Fanning says simply, “I just do; I put myself in the character’s place. Acting is making believe, then being natural – and going with whatever happens.”
To train for the rink sequence early in the movie, Fanning took to the ice from 7:00 to 8:00 A.M. for six weeks. “I was excited,” she remembers. “I had started learning for another movie, but [in that one] I didn’t have to be that good; for this, I learned to skate backwards. Now I can show off to my friends.”
Former competitive figure-skating champion Renee Roca was engaged to teach the young actress, and can be seen on-screen as Cleo’s instructor. “The day I met Elle, an hour later we were on the ice working hard,” marvels Roca. “Sofia got [what would be the accompanying] music [, the song, “Cool,”] to me and told me she wanted for the scene – for Elle’s skating to be dreamy and free and elegant.
“Once Elle had learned to skate, and could do jumps and spins, I choreographed what Elle would be doing. We did it several times every single day until it became muscle memory [for her]. Elle was a perfect student; she was determined to get it right, and she never complained.”
Dorff credits his relationship with his younger sisters as helping him to get a handle on Elle and her character. He comments, “My sisters are, or have been, near Cleo’s age and I’m very close to them. I pulled from that a lot for my scenes with Elle – who is a brilliant little thespian and also a real, sweet girl.
“Being around Elle was a change for me, since I don’t have a child. I felt this when was driving her in my car one day [before filming]. Now, usually I’m in my car smoking and cursing when someone cuts me off – because we do have the worst drivers in L.A. – but I had to stop doing all that. [Instead,] it was ‘Seatbelt on!’”
En route to playing the role of Johnny Marco’s friend Sammy, Chris Pontius remembers getting “a phone call that Sofia wanted to meet with me. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and after we started to talk and catch up, she said she thought that I might be the one for the part of a wild man who’s not too bad. I met with [executive producer] Fred Roos and the casting people, and I could tell Fred was a big-timer. I looked him up online when I got home – and was glad I hadn’t before I went because I would have been anxious! A week later, they told me I’d be in the movie, and I was psyched.”
While acknowledging that he is best known for his participation in the Jackass TV programs and movies, and as the host of his own reality adventure show, Wildboyz, Pontius muses, “What I do on Jackass and Wildboyz is mostly improvisation and us playing off of each other, though we have things planned out that we’re going to film. In the script, my character would only have one or two lines written, so a lot of my part was improvised. I did make up histories in my head and remember stories to have in mind.
“Sometimes I would go in with an idea of where to take [a scene], but then when we started filming, all of that would go out the window because of something someone else said. I got a kick out of shocking Elle sometimes; I said extra-crazy stuff to her in some scenes. But I know when to be vulgar and when not to be.”
Pontius found that he and Dorff had friends in common, “so we hung out. We had a blast; whether we were filming or not, it didn’t feel much different.”
To play out more provocative scenes opposite Johnny, Playboy models Kristina and Karissa Shannon were cast after being brought to Sofia Coppola’s attention by a friend. When the writer/director met with the twin sisters, “she didn’t tell us anything about the roles,” says Karissa Shannon. “She just said it was [roles written] for twins. We were excited to [be asked to] work with her.”
Kristina Shannon adds, “She asked us if we could dance. We love dancing, and we’re good at it. Because I’m more girly and Karissa’s more of a tomboy, that’s how we got our [respective] parts [assigned by Sofia]. I get to kiss Stephen Dorff, and Karissa gets to smack him.”
The Shannons had to spend a minimum of three hours a day for three weeks prior to production training with choreographer Robin Conrad and learning their two demanding pole-dancing routines. Kristina Shannon remembers, “We had bruises from head to toe, with all the climbing up and down.”
was the first feature for the twins, and Karissa Shannon notes that “working together on such a small production, we got to see everything that goes into making a film. Kristina and I would love to do more [movies].”
The Shannon sisters filmed their scenes during the first three weeks of shooting – all of which was done on location at the celebrated Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, playing itself for the first time at length on-screen.
“The Chateau doesn’t allow a lot of filming,” comments Brown, who entered into negotiations with the hotel early and often. “If and when they do, they can charge a very high location fee and it probably has to be done in the middle of the night. None of this was the case with .”