Sofia Coppola: Listen To 4 Hours Of Podcast Talks

It’s been a bit of a rough week for Sofia Coppola, at least in the micro world of Film Twitter media. Her new film, “The Beguiled,” starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kristen Dunst and Elle Fanning has received excellent reviews and it heads into the arthouse box-office this weekend with strong chances for success (here’s our review). But online, the film—a Civil War-set movie based on the book by Thomas Cullinan and something of a very loose remake of the 1971 movie by Don Siegel — and Sofia’s art has been put under the microscope. Everyone has their rather reductive two cents of what’s “problematic” in the film and there’s nearly been a crowdsourced dialogue about how Coppola should shape and conceive her art. It didn’t help that many were aghast that the filmmaker didn’t know what the Bechedel Test was. Heatstreet wrote that the filmmaker had been “dogpiled on by feminists,” but the main controversy grew over the fact she excluded African American slaves (present in the book and the movie) in her movie set in the Antebellum South.

https://twitter.com/MarkHarrisNYC/status/877596511617646592

Exploring the story, The Daily Beast wrote something of a considered takedown of Coppola, albeit a very mannered, well-written and thoughtful piece. The opinions of how Coppola should treat the material she adapts reached something of a tipping point this week, and perhaps exasperated, the above tweet, written by New York Magazine’s Mark Harris summed it all up rather well (and some suggest it could be a subtweet aimed at The Daily Beast and some of the other high profile stories). It’s thicket of thorns I’m not really going to get into, other than I agree with Harris’ tweet.

The good news however is that those still fascinated by the “Lost In Translation” and “The Virgin Suicides” filmmaker, warts and all, should be happy to know there’s several podcast conversations floating around this week will let you in on her process. In fact, there’s four high profiles ones: a conversation with podcasting deity Marc Maron; a Nerdist talk; a Q&A from the Film Society of Lincoln center; and another FilmLinc podcast, this one from the vaults around the time of 2013’s “The Bling Ring.” As always, they’re fascinating chats that range from the makings of the film themselves to conversations about growing up with her famous filmmaking father Francis Ford Coppola, that extended family (that includes people like Jason Schwartzman) and working with folks like Bill Murray and Nicole Kidman. If you’re doing any kind of traveling, exercising or house cleaning (the way I listen to podcasts), slap on the ear buds and this should keep your brain occupied for a few hours this weekend.