Coppola Makes History with Oscar Nomination
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Lost in Translation” director Sofia Coppola found her way into Oscar’s history books on Tuesday.
The filmmaker received an Academy Award nomination for best director, making her the first American woman to be so honored. Only two other women have competed in the category: Italy’s Lina Wertmuller, nominated in 1976 for directing “Seven Beauties,” and New Zealander Jane Campion, nominated in 1993 for “The Piano.”
Coppola — who also received a best original screenplay for “Translation,” which is up for best picture — was still trying to process the historic accomplishment Tuesday morning over champagne.
“I’m kind of in a daze,” Coppola said. “It’s been a really exciting morning, and it hasn’t hit me yet — this morning was surreal. It is so hard to believe that there have been so few (female directors nominated). I’m happy to be a part of things changing.”
Coppola’s fellow nominees in the directing category include Fernando Meirelles for “City of God,” Peter Jackson for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” Peter Weir for “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” and Clint Eastwood for “Mystic River.” Eastwood and Coppola are the oly Americans.
The Oscar nominations cap an impressive award season run for Coppola, daughter of Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. She has already received a DGA nomination for best director, a WGA nomination for original screenplay, three nominations for the IFP Independent Spirit Awards (feature, director and screenplay) and numerous critics’ prizes.
The film, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in the tale of two foreigners who form a platonic relationship while visiting Tokyo, also won three prizes at Sunday’s Golden Globes: best comedy/musical, screenplay and comedic actor for Murray.
“She’s beyond thrilled with her place in history and I think she is very moved by it,” said Ross Katz, who produced “Lost in Translation” with Coppola. “I watched her face this morning and she had the biggest smile I had ever seen. She’s so honored. Not to mention too that we’re both very aware, and she’s very aware, of the company that she’s in.”
While Coppola admires the male nominees in her category, they all had something she didn’t: big budgets. “My friends joked that the budget of our movie was like the craft service of these other movies,” mused the filmmaker, who made her directorial debut with 1999’s “The Virgin Suicides.” “It’s pretty cool that a low-budget movie is in there with these epics. I never thought when we were running around Tokyo camped out in karaoke booths that we would be going to the Academy Awards.”
She may have doubted the prospects for “Translation,” but those around her never did.
The nominations are “a testament to the fact that it’s her movie,” Focus co-president David Linde said. “It was her idea, her gumption to go to Japan. It’s very much who she is and what she is.”
Added Katz: “She’s an incredibly meticulous artist. She doesn’t really ever talk about her work and she doesn’t say ‘I’m good at this,’ she just quietly plots along and dreams up these scenarios and makes them real.”
Now that her place in history is real, Focus co-president James Schamus said his company and Coppola’s team are ready to shoulder the burden that comes with it. “Making history is one thing and being it is another,” Schamus said. “She needn’t carry the entire burden, she gets to be it. The rest of us should shoulder it, so she can enjoy it.”
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