Roman Coppola

After building a reputation as a hip and innovative music video director, Roman Coppola made his feature debut with CQ, the story of a young American director in 1960s Paris who's tapped to take over a Barbarella-like sci-fi flick. Here he talks to the IMDb about kitsch, compassion, and the Coppola Consortium.

Going into this movie, people will probably know you best for your work in music videos. How did you get involved in that world?
I've always been interested in music--I've been in bands, and I did a video for a band I was in. My first directing experience was doing second unit for Dracula in '91. It was very visually oriented, so I was able to cut together a reel of the work I'd done for that film and that was my foot in the door.

There was a time in the early '90s when music videos were a really vibrant form. There was the whole Seattle sound, and music was changing, and what had been the underground was now out there. It was an exciting moment in pop culture, and everyone was watching MTV. You know how it goes when you're young--you're trying to figure out what you want to do and you just fall into stuff, and one thing leads to another. It wasn't a conscious plot on my part--it was just something I had been getting into, and once you get a little momentum you keep going.

Is there a community of music video directors out there? Do you all get together and play poker?
There sort of is. I have a company called The Directors' Bureau (www.thedirectorsbureau.com), and there's a guy named Mike Mills who has done a lot of highly regarded videos and commercials. We worked together to start this company, and there are a few other people who work with us. And Spike Jonze is my brother-in-law, of course, and Michel Gondry is a friend... so there is a group of people I connect with.

With CQ you're directing your first feature film, and it's about a guy directing his first feature film. Do you invite comparisons with Paul? Do you discourage them?
A little bit of both. The movie was born out of things that were on my mind--I was eager to make a movie, wondering what it should be, how to balance between something very personal to me, that was from my heart and sincere and had some kind of artistic vision, and at the same time having a lot of affection for and interest in fun commercial movies. So in that way I connect with the character. I thought, I'm about to make a first film, and if I made a first film about an American guy going to Europe, and I'm an American guy going to Europe to make my first film, struggling between art and commerce, that would be interesting. It's rare that you live an experience that's so connected with the movie--Fitzcarraldo is the famous example (not to draw any comparison to that), where the experience of making the film informs the film itself.

But in a lot of ways I'm not like that main character. I'm like other characters, and other people are like him--like anything, you mix it all up, so it's hard to know what the dividing line is.

How long has the story been percolating?
It's funny that you use that word, because I use that word. It's been percolating a long time, about 5 years. I had a feeling for a movie that could have a really silly, dorky, playful sci-fi thing, and maybe this other side... it was something I was collecting ideas for and noodling around with for a long time. Sometimes you get on a spurt and have all these ideas and you really write stuff out; sometimes you're just daydreaming about it. After a couple years of not quite being able to put my finger on it, I said, look, it's now or never--I've got to either get this out of my system or just forget about it. So I sat down for a couple weeks and I just hammered it out. It gestated for a long time, and then it came out very quickly.

What attracted you to the time period?
A lot of directors aspire to make a western, or a horror movie, or maybe a gothic romance--I wanted to make my European '60s movie. There's the personal aspect of it, and then the kitschy side too. The theme of the movie relates to this younger character trying to define his voice, and rising up into the world, and considering the future, and it seemed like that was a parallel with what was going on at that time--there was the youth culture, and the notion of young people inheriting the world from the older generation. The movie's set in 1969 and 1970, so there's the changing of the era, the next decade coming. Also, I was born in '65, so my first memories are from that time--the feeling, the music, the clothes. I don't remember it so well, but...

What films did you grow up on?
Someone asked me recently, "What was the first film you remember?" and I had to say The Wizard of Oz, because it played on TV every year. And then Yellow Submarine, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... those were the ones that made a big impression on me. But I didn't really grow up on any particular thing. I went to NYU for a couple years and I was in the Cinema Studies program, as opposed to the Film program, so we watched a lot of movies. I took a class on French New Wave, which definitely made an impression--a lot of the images that I borrowed (or stole, whatever you want to call it) came from scenes in those films.

So would you say it's more of a loving tribute to the era, or a tongue-in-cheek one?
It's a mixture. The tone of the movie is schizophrenic--on one hand, it's a total goof, a lark, a silly, playful thing, and on the other hand it's really sincere, really thoughtful. I think the movie's composed of a lot of opposing things: there are the old characters, the young characters, the flashy stuff, the modest stuff, the black and white, the color. There's this kind of affectionate and sincere side, and there's also the making fun of things. The main character, a guy who goes to France to understand himself and become a man, is in the bathroom shooting his soap, his bathwater, and it's simply for laughs. At the same time, here's a young guy who's sincere, and he's earnestly trying to define things around him and understand himself, and he's taking the time and the trouble to try to figure it out. I would rather see his movie than 90% of other movies, and I admire him. I see him both ways, and the same with the Dragonfly movie--on the one hand it's silly cheeseball entertainment, and on the other hand it's fun to see all the spaceships and karate chops.

The look of the film is impressive--was it tricky to shoot a period film in the streets of Paris and Rome?
It was. We actually shot mostly in Luxembourg--for budget reasons, and because we had to recreate a lot of stuff. It took a lot of resources to do that well. It was important to me to be as accurate as I could be with the time and the place and the tone, the costumes, the hair--all that stuff. This was the kind of movie where the atmosphere was very important. If that was inadequate, or didn't quite feel right, I'd be sunk, so I put a lot of effort into it.

There's also a wonderful international cast--was that hard to coordinate?
The hardest part of the movie was definitely trying to bring the cast together. In the fall of 2000, when I shot it, there was an impending strike, so everyone was rushing to take roles, and prices got all jacked up--if people weren't going to work for a year, they wanted to get the money jobs. You approach a guy like Giancarlo Giannini, who's a wonderful actor and is eager to do this, but you say 'hey, can you commit for four days in my movie on these dates three months from now' and he says 'I want to do it, but I can't guarantee.' It was very dicey at certain points, but people really did come through for me. I'm grateful to my producer, who helped make that happen, and the cast--they're the jewels of the movie. To have these great masters of European cinema, and Dean Stockwell, people with that kind of experience, and Angela [Lindvall] who's never acted before, and Jason [Schwartzman] who's chewing up the scenes, and Jeremy [Davies] who was very sensitive, very 'less is more'--it was great.

You had done some second unit direction already, but were there any big surprises in store when you took over a whole project?
Casting was the biggest surprise, because when you do second you're not particularly involved with casting. That was hard, to be preparing a film and you don't even know who you're shooting. But I think once all the things aligned, I just felt lucky.

Well, you've been around some great directors.
Yeah, maybe some of it rubbed off.

I'm sure most people assume that your family has been a great help to you. Have they ever been a hindrance?
Not really. We're all pretty close, and we see each other pretty often. We're close in the tradition of helping out. I worked with my dad in tons of different ways, and he was a producer of this movie, and I worked on Sofia's movie, and she's in my movie... it's a very collaborative thing. My family has been great, a unique way to grow up.

Needless to say, if you're working on a movie and you approach an actor and send a note... so much of getting access to people is to have a way in, and your name does become an introduction. But the real fact of the matter is that unless you're paying someone an exorbitant amount of money, no actor is going to do you a favor by appearing in your movie.

In another way, it seems that people are going to judge you with a little more scrutiny, and there are certain expectations--I dealt with that by saying, 'I'm just doing my own thing.' I made my movie, it came out of me, it's very personal to me, and I made it for no other reason than to make something I felt was wonderful and unique.

What's up next for you?
I'm not sure. I'm cooking up some ideas, but I'm not quite ready to talk about it. I'm not a big movie fanatic; I want to do lots of other things too. I'm very much looking forward to making another film, but not necessarily immediately.

Would you say there's a theme running through your various ventures?
I would say imagination, the sensation of delight, and surprise, and playfulness. I like the word mirth. Things that make me smile. I like things that don't need to exist but do, just for the sheer pleasure of it. I was in Minneapolis recently and I saw that Claes Oldenberg sculpture of the giant spoon. That's got to be one of my favorite things--why is that there? To use imagination to manifest things, to make them real... art is so essential, but it's nonessential in a way, and that aspect appeals to me the most.