Sofia Coppola is getting candid about making films on low budgets because, as a female director, she doesn’t tend to get the massive budgets her male counterparts do.
In a conversation with BBC News, the Priscilla director opened up about how she had to get creative with the Priscilla Presley biopic, based on the biography Elvis and Me, because of its relatively low budget of $20 million.
“I just see all these men getting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then I’m fighting for a tiny fraction of that,” she said. “I think it’s just left over from the way the culture of that business is. It’s frustrating, but I’m always fighting to get it, and I’m just happy to get to make my movies independently and find people that believe in them.”
Despite how frustrating it can be, the filmmaker admitted it does have an upside: She doesn’t have to deal with a lot of feedback from higher-ups because they don’t have as much invested in her projects.
“There’s a challenge and a freedom in making things small because if you have a big budget, you have a lot of input from studio executives, and I would never be able to make a movie like that,” she continued. “So, I have that freedom, and then you have to be really crafty, and it was really hard, but I had the best team.”
She and her team reused a lot of sets and were able to make many costumes, which Coppola attributes to her creative department heads who took what they could get and ran with it. Due its financial constraints, Priscilla was shot in 30 days and on digital, instead of film like the helmer wanted, because they had to move so fast.
Another issue they faced was being unable to use Elvis Presley’s music in the project. The Marie Antoinette director originally wanted to have three of the King of Rock and Roll’s songs, but she knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to get the rights. So, she turned to another legendary musician’s tune instead.
“To me, it is really important to have Dolly Parton at the end, to have a woman’s voice at the end,” Coppola explained of the film playing out to Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”
Priscilla stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi and is now available to stream on Prime Video.
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