Barely two years after the release ofElvisthe biopic dedicated to the King signed by the Australian director Baz LuhrmannAmerican director Sofia Coppola chose to tell the story from the point of view of the girl who was Elvis Presley’s childhood sweetheart and only wife.
Who was Priscilla? How did she feel when, as a 14-year-old teenager, she was thrust into a fairy tale where she quickly felt trapped, until she decided to leave everything behind at the age of 26? to find your own way? What was the King’s true face? What was going on behind the scenes? This is what this new atmospheric feature film from the director of Marie Antoinettein theaters January 3, 2023.
In Paris to present her new feature film, Sofia Coppola, wearing a loose gray sweater in the cool of autumn, tells a handful of journalists gathered around a round table the motivations, challenges, and behind the scenes of her new film .
“Anyone can relate to his life”
“I was very moved by the Memoirs of Priscilla Presley”, begins Sofia Coppola. “We never really know what will affect us. It’s always a discovery” adds the director, who constructed her screenplay almost exclusively from autobiographical elements told by Priscilla Presley in her book Elvis and Me (“Elvis and I”), published in 1985. “It’s a unique story, in a completely unusual environment, but I think anyone can relate to his life, in many aspects,” notes Sofia Coppola.
“Behind the myth, there are real people. What interests me in my characters, whoever they are, is their humanity”
Sofia Coppoladirector
“The steps you take to grow up, to know who you really are, and your path to finding yourself… It’s a story that resembles the story of many other women, particularly women of my mother’s generation”, continues the director who confides having exchanged with the latter to nourish her reflection. “I asked her questions about life, and about the things that girls did at that time, in the 50s, 60s. And later, when she saw the film, it led to conversations very interesting.”
“My goal was to tell a story that I identified with, and that I hope other people can relate to. For me, connecting with others is really what art is about ” underlines Sofia Coppola. “I think I learned something about the generation of women before me. I learned from that experience how things have changed and also how, in some ways, things haven’t changed “.
“What interested me most was Priscilla’s experience as a woman trying to find her identity.”
“I was really impressed that she left, that she left him. I think it was really difficult at that time, in the early ’70s, to be a woman with no income and to leave a powerful man. It was unusual at that time. It was all the stronger because her whole life was built around him.”
“Elvis wanted to direct everything around him, including Priscilla, who had to be the reflection of what he wanted, of how he wanted things to be. So she was playing a role and he really had to free himself from it to have its own identity.”, says Sofia Coppola, who also exchanged a lot with Priscilla Presley to nourish her film.
“I think it was also important to show Priscilla’s loneliness, the control and the violence too, because I believe it is an experience shared by many women”believes Sofia Coppola, who digs deeper into her exploration of the female condition with this new feature film. “I speak about what I know, and naturally I identify with female characters. I think we can learn a lot from other women’s stories.” assures the director.
“What interested me especially with this film was Priscilla’s experience as a woman seeking to find her identity, and more broadly to show the place of women in that era. In fact, I am still interested in the search for stories that we can identify with, whatever the era, and I think it’s interesting to be able to project ourselves into struggles, whatever the era. It’s universal.”
“Another side of Elvis”
“When I learned that Warner was preparing a biopic on Elvis, I wondered if it was ultimately a good idea to make my film,” confides the director, “but ultimately since Baz Luhrmann’s biopic was focused on Elvis’ career, I said to myself that it would be interesting for the public to see another film on the story of the King, but from Priscilla’s point of view. I I told myself that this would not be redundant, but on the contrary that it would offer two different perspectives on this American myth.
“My goal was not to break the myth of Elvis”
Sofia Coppoladirector
“I think that through Priscilla’s point of view, we see another side of Elvis. It reveals the private persona behind the public image, including the dark side of the character. I think there is a dark side in everyone. So it’s interesting to show it and it also allows you to understand your frustrations as an artist in a different way.”
“I don’t feel like my film angered Elvis fans. I don’t think I disrespected him, but I think Priscilla has the right to have her voice and her story heard. I tried not to make him a villain, I tried to approach him with his sensitivity and as a man, as an artist sometimes in difficulty.
“It’s a challenge for an actor to play Elvis without making him a caricature”
For the casting, Sofia Coppola did not choose her actors for their resemblance to Elvis or Priscilla. “I think it’s a challenge for an actor to play Elvis without making him a caricature, or an imitation, and to remain a real person. Elvis is such a famous figure, you had to give the illusion that it was good him, to ensure that at no time the spectator is distracted by the idea that it was not him”, believes Sofia Coppola, who chose actor Jacob Elordi to play Elvis in her film.
“He doesn’t look like him physically, but he worked on the voice, on the gestures, the body language, with a coach. He also worked on the look, the costumes, he studied the character of Elvis enormously in did, but then he had to forget all that and make him human”, adds the director.
“For Priscilla, it was especially important for me that it was the same actress who plays between 14 and 29 years old. And that was a real challenge” reports Sofia Coppola.
“When I met Cailee Spaeny, she had such a baby face, and at the same time she seemed mature and thoughtful.”
Sofia Coppoladirector
“I was really impressed afterward when I saw the film, how she was able to make such subtle transitions in time, even though we filmed everything out of sequence and very quickly.” says Sofia Coppola. “And what’s more, she comes from Missouri, so she grew up and was immersed in the myth of Elvis.”
“Even though there was a height difference between Elvis and Priscilla, Jacob Elordi is really huge, and Cailee Spaeny really short, so filming them when they were both was a bit complicated. We set up platforms ” laughs the director.
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“I like to recreate a world”
In this film, it is also a painting of America in the 1950s and 1960s that the American director draws, who had fun reconstituting the glamor of Graceland, Elvis’s legendary house. “QWhen I read Priscilla’s book, jI told myself that there hadt enormously of things that could be said visually about this era, and that turned out to be very interesting to recreate this world” underlines the director, who adds that she loves it when she goes to the cinema herself “to be immersed in a totally different world.
“We had an excellent decoratorr. Graceland changed a lot since the 60s, but fortunately there is a lot of plans and photos and therefore we were able to reconstruct the places” she explains.
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“On the other hand there is nowillt no picture from their room so we imagined. We relied on other elements of Graceland. For example we know that he collected all these big animal statues and we brought them into the bedroom. This fit well with how Priscilla describes in the book how intimidating it was to go to her room. NOT“We emphasized this intimidating side by using our imagination.” explains the director.
Not a single Elvis song in the film
No King songs appear in the film. “We didn’t have the rights, the estate didn’t give us permission to use his songs”, explains Sofia Coppola. She therefore thought with her husband’s group, Phenix, about how to get around this size constraint. “Priscilla has a really good memory for detailsand she remembered the song that was playing when she met Elvis, she recounts it in her Memoirs”underlines Sofia Coppola.
“So we listened.”Venus” this song by Franck Avalon, and starting to work on the music for the film with Phenotix we thought about making it LPriscilla’s theme. The group therefore compound an instrumental version of the song and written a whole series of different versions of “Venus”“ explains the director.
The film closes with I Will Always Love Youby Dolly Parton, another song “very important to Priscilla and Elvis”but also full of meaning for Sofia Coppola, who wanted it to illustrate Priscilla’s departure from Graceland. “Priscilla told me that when she left, she didn’t really know who she was. She didn’t even know her own tastes because her tastes were Elvis’s”reports the director. “So this breakup, even if it is painful, because she still loves Elvis and she has to give up the dream that Graceland represents, but it is also a departure towards a new life where she will be able to discover her own centers of interest, and become who she really is”adds Sofia Coppola.
“I imagine the joy of finding one’s own way for someone who had not been able to be herself until then, and I think that This song perfectly captures the emotion of that moment. And then Dolly Parton refused to sell her song to Elvis, she kept the rights. So for me it is also a symbol of strength and independence“adds Sofia Coppola with a smile.
Priscilla was “very moved” when she saw the film
The director admits to having had some apprehensions about making this biopic of a personality who is still alive. “It was a bigger responsibility, because she was going to see the film and so I had to respect her opinion. It was the first time I had to impose control on myself over what I wanted to do as a artist, and take into account a third person and what they might feel on the subject”she explains.
“When she saw the film for the first time, Priscilla was very emotional and she told me that it was her life. She found that Cailee Spaeny was able to express the emotions she felt at the time. I was really relieved because it was very important to me that she felt that this portrait of her was accurate, and that the film reflected her experience.” concludes Sofia Coppola.