Convertible, caviar and binoculars: the night of NYC.
"I feel like we shot the movie ten years ago, even though it was only a few months ago," he said. sophia coppola in full global lockdown. When, from her personal and family confinement in her father's vineyard, Francis Ford Coppola in Napa , she put the final tie to the last and seventh film of hers, On the Rocks (premiere on AppleTV+ on October 23).
It has cost Coppola seven films to film in her city, New York, where she was born and where she lives. When she rolled over, everything was fine; Now that she's out, half the places featured or seen in her movie are closed, hopefully just temporarily. For this reason and despite everything, she hopes that On the Rocks, take us “on a tour of the city we all love”.
Coppola and Murray on the Upper East Side.
For Sofia Coppola it has been an experience of many first times and some nice and fun repetitions. On the Rocks is the first time that she shoots in New York. It was the first time she worked with her friend, actress Rashida Jones, playing the alter ego of the director (recognized by her); and it was also the first time she sat down to consciously write and direct a comedy, a lighter film because she felt that way with her personal situation.
Yes Lost in Translation transferred her state of mind to the screen with the separation from Spike Jonze, in On the Rocks she talks about her maternal-professional crisis. “I started writing this when I had just had my daughters and was trying to figure out this whole new situation of harmonizing being a mother with keeping the excitement of your marriage and also trying to do your job like you always have. It is a small moment of crisis, you feel somewhat lost, you're not exactly who you were and you have to find yourself in all these new roles,” she explains.
Soho, who wouldn't want to live there.
In all that balance of things, New York entered and the way she has of living, relating and moving in a city that never stops. "Wanted to the film was my particular love letter to New York, but I did not want a city like the one that appears in some of the most famous comedies, ”says Coppola. "I hope it is a New York rooted in reality for people to identify with, adding the fair fantasy to raise it a bit. I wanted to shoot in all those places that have that classic New York feel of history and romance."
We have bad news, Sofia, we don't identify with that New York, quite high class. From a loft in Soho and a father with a flat on the Upper East Side (in details, even in the wardrobe, you can see that Uptown/Downtown duality of the protagonist: Chanel bag and Strand tote hanging from the same arm). The good news? Yes, we dream of that New York, a New York of classic clubs, martinis and convertible rides with impromptu caviar picnics. And some good binoculars. If you also drive BillMurray, nothing can go wrong.
Coppola, Rashida Jones and Bill Murray hit Soho.
Laura (Rashida Jones) is the protagonist of On the Rocks, a successful writer, mother of two little girls, married to an entrepreneur on the crest of the wave, who lives in a wonderful loft on Wooster St (85 would be the number of the portal), with a decoration that is very reminiscent of the photos of Coppola's house. An oasis of peace in the face of the madness of this nerve center of Manhattan.
She takes the girls to a nearby school and they go often. to dinner at Raoul's, a French bistro on Prince St, with a lot of tradition. All those streets that go out, between Soho and the West Village, is the Sofia Coppola quadrant, where she lives (I once spotted her on Bleecker St), and she hangs out. Her neighborhood.
“Locating the film in the Sofia neighborhood was a lot of fun,” confirms producer Youree Henley. “A lot of people were proud that she took out her restaurant or her corner in the movie. We were able to honor these spaces and I think the audience will enjoy how Sofia brings these places into history.”
21 Club, the table where Bogart and Bacall got engaged.
It is a New York that, moreover, is now more necessary than ever to remember. A New York of lunches and dinners out, coffees to go and chatting on the street. To enjoy it at all times, each in their own style.
Bill Murray, whom Coppola reunites with after Lost in Translation (A Very Murray Christmas isn't quite up there), and who plays Felix, is Laura's philandering, misogynistic yet funny and charming father. an old-fashioned New Yorker, an art dealer with excellent taste: one of those who belongs to the Martini circuit. And try to be the waiters of many restaurants, bars and private clubs in Manhattan.
In the bar at the Carlyle, where Woody Allen plays.
As he himself says in the movie, when he finds out that his son-in-law, who is being followed in that red convertible for possible infidelity, is going to Soho House, he asks: "Why? With the good clubs in New York, the Knickerbocker, for example”. And Felix prefers to take his daughter to dinner to a classic among classics: the 21 club and, specifically, to sit on the same table where Humphrey Bogart proposed to Lauren Bacall. To finish off the night with a Martini, the penultimate, in the cafe of the Carlyle Hotel, where Woody Allen and his band have been playing weekly for years and its **Marcel Vertès murals** alone are worth putting on a (mandatory) jacket and visiting.
On the Rocks is a love letter to New York, a love letter to his New York, Sofia Coppola's, a privileged, fantasy New York for most, but how the rest of us mortals like that New York.
Manhattan On the Rocks.