DZ-76: Spotlight on Sofia Coppola

Listen to discover how Sofia Coppola crafts character performance on the page and uses whitespace to create her distinctive cinematic voice

Following the success of the Tips from Tarantino episode, we have again decided to look at three different scripts from over the course of a long screenwriting career from a single writer to see what we can learn. Our beloved patreons not only selected Sofia Coppola as said writer, but also selected the scripts to analyse: LOST IN TRANSLATION, THE BLING RING and THE BEGUILED.

Stu and Chas are joined by repeat Draft Zero offender Melanie Killingsworth and are surprised to find that Coppola does not often write the tone or experience of her films into her scripts (given how specific her tone is and how unique the experiences of her films are). Instead, we are treated to a masterclass in writing character performance on the page - actor catnip, if you will - as well as Coppola’s insightful use of whitespace.

Thanks to Chris Walker for editing this episode, and to Carissa Lee for reading the script excerpts.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

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Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre and Lily.

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CHAPTERS

• 00:00:00 – Intro
• 00:02:12 – Sofia Coppola & Writing to Direct
• 00:13:49 – Lost in Translation
• 00:54:07 – The Bling Ring
• 01:18:24 – The Beguiled
• 01:34:53 – Wrap Up & Key Learnings
• 01:45:28 – Backmatter: Cultural Portray in Lost in Translation

FILMS

• LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) — (w) Sofia Coppola
• THE BLING RING (2013) — (w) Sofia Coppola
• THE BEGUILED (2017) — (w) Thomas Cullinan, Sofia Coppola (d) Sofia Coppola

SCRIPTS

• Study the script: LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) — Sofia Coppola
• Study the script: THE BLING RING (2013) — Sofia Coppola
• Study the script: THE BEGUILED (2017) — Thomas Cullinan, Sofia Coppola

LINKS

• Scriopts: DZ-76 Sofia Coppola Collated Scripts
• Read: The Guardian - Hit film gets lost in racism row
• Read: Latent racism in 'Lost in Translation'

EPISODES IN THE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT SERIES

• DZ-18: Michael Bay - F*ing the Frame and P*ing the Page
• DZ-76: Spotlight on Sofia Coppola
• DZ-13: True That - Tips from Tarantino

RELATED EPISODES

• DZ-13: True That - Tips from Tarantino
• DZ-16: Masters of Time and Whitespace
• DZ-60: Unfilmables 1 - Engaging imagination

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We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2021/dz-76/