Sofia Coppola's Pink Notes

"...there is always a world and there is always a girl trying to navigate it."

It’s my birthday week! As I did last year, I’m sharing the work of an artist I loved in my youth. Today, I’m excited to share Sofia Coppola’s notes with you! I made myself an early birthday present of Coppola’s gorgeous new book and took a deep dive into almost every single interview she’s given. I re-watched most of her movies. It’s been a glorious week!

As a reminder, for the summer, every other post will have a paywall (read the thought behind this decision here). Today is the last day to take advantage of Noted’s summer discount.

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One particular scene from Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides haunts me.

Lux, played by Kirsten Dunst, wakes at dawn, alone on her school’s football field. The shades of blue emphasize her loneliness as she, only a dot of pink on the empty lawn, gets up and puts on her shoes. As she sits in the back seat of the car that drives her home, she chews on a toy crown. She is, after all, only a child.

I was seventeen when I watched The Virgin Suicides. At that time I felt deeply alone, but Coppola’s film spoke to me, communicating that this aloneness I felt was not particular to me. I was just another girl trying to navigate my world. This, I’ve come to learn, is Coppola’s perennial theme. She explains:

Across all my films, there is a common quality: there is always a world and there is always a girl trying to navigate it.¹

It turns out that Coppola’s teenage years were also difficult (as they are for so many of us). She explains,

High school was a hard time for me, and maybe that’s why I’m always interested in it as a subject. I’m drawn to projects that help me understand something about myself.²

Throughout her career, Coppola has continued to return to women in moments of transition—from the pink ribbons of girlhood to the responsibilities of adulthood.

At the end of each film project, Sofia throws all her notes, photographs, and other mementos into a box—like a time capsule from a moment in her life.

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Sofia’s Visual Inspiration

Sofia has been fascinated by the visual arts since childhood. For a time, she even studied painting. She attended California Institute of the Arts and ArtCenter College of Design. She struggled to figure out what she wanted to make.

I wanted to be an artist and tried painting, but was no good at it. I got into taking photographs, guided by the photographs I loved.³

Clearly, her training in the visual arts had a huge influence on her films, which are known for “deliberate pacing, spare use of dialogue, meticulous mise en scène, arresting musical selections, natural lighting, and muted colors.”⁴

In fact, there is a reason so many of Sofia’s scenes look like famous paintings or photographs. She prepares for shoots by collecting images that help her get a feel for the aesthetic and tone she’s aiming for. Here is a collection of images Sofia collected as she prepared to film Marie Antoinette— it combines images of Jean Paul Gaultier, the New Romantics, and late 18th-century fashion.

Visual inspiration for Marie Antoinette

In the photo of Kirsten Dunst (bottom right corner in the image above), we see early inspiration for the movie’s controversial shot that included an anachronistic pair of converse sneakers—they appear nine seconds into this clip:

The Virgin Suicides had a very different tone. For this film, Coppola drew on Bill Owens’s photographs for Suburbia.

Bill Owens, Untitled, From Our Kind of People ca. 1972-1973

The above untitled Owens image influenced the prom dance scene in the film. Here, Lux and Trip learn they’ve been elected King and Queen:

Once filming begins, Coppola glues photos into her scripts to guide her.

Coppola’s script for On the Rocks with a photograph pasted in

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Sofia’s Adaptation Process

When she adapts a book (or article), as she did for three of her films (The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and The Bling Ring), Coppola starts by reading with a pink highlighter. She explains her process to Adam Moss:

When I’m adapting something, the first thing is I’ll go through the book and highlight everything that interests me, then try to string the things together. I don’t really outline. I don’t like being too organized. I like being in a state where you can listen to your subconscious.⁵

Here are Coppola’s highlights in Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides.

Sofia’s highlights in Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, from Coppola’s Archive