![]() I don't know," she says, her delicate hand slowly working a hot chocolate, her voice a mix of girlish California and blasé. ![]() "The Oscar thing was exciting, but it's not. But in Sofia's world, nice reviews in the school newspaper are nothing to get worked up about. Lost in Translation grossed more than $44 million domestically, well beyond what anyone expected, and earned the Golden Globe for best picture and best screenplay, plus four Academy Award nominations, with an Oscar for her screenplay. "Take dumb pictures of your feet." The movie had just the right amount of emotion for the edgy filmgoer of 2003: a recognizable, fuzzy, melancholic feeling that was never taken to the limit-a trademark of the new cool filmmakers. "Every girl goes through a photography phase," Johansson's character, Charlotte, tells Murray's Bob. Exquisitely shot, quietly funny, it also had the kind of odd, true observations of an old soul. Lost in Translation (2003), starring Murray and Scarlett Johansson as two alienated travelers who connect in Tokyo through a filter of jet lag, was greeted as a revelation, and put to rest any suspicion that her filmmaker father or husband must have had something to do with her success. Her first feature film, The Virgin Suicides (1999), a dreamy, sun-bleached re-invention of adolescence in the suburbs, proved that she could masterfully execute a mood (though some male viewers felt as if they were being forced by their girlfriend to flip through a fashion magazine). It might be tempting to dismiss Coppola as a ditz who has successfully parlayed her famous name, the right clothes, and the right friends into an overblown image, if it weren't for the enormous, deserved success she has had as a director, whose three films seem to be extensions of herself: ethereal, stylish, child-like, yet powerful. Coppola puts it another way: "There's so much bad taste out there that if you're just natural." She does the characteristic trail-off. she's just very natural." Spoken like a true member of the in-crowd. "What people say is 'cool'-it's like outsiders looking at something and thinking, Wow, they have all these hip friends and they do all these fabulous things and they dress a certain way," he says. Jacobs, who has used Coppola as a muse for years, cringes at the notion that she would be conscious of the iconic stature she has reached. It's all completely effortless, of course. Sofia, at age 35, has it all-plus a Marc Jacobs handbag named after her, a child (her first) on the way, with Thomas Mars, the front man of the atmospheric French rock band Phoenix, and an airy, unruffled way that manages to disarm those who come in contact with her. They're about warm and eccentric families, working with friends, sojourns in Paris, the best new bands, 70s songs that no one has ever heard, the perfect shoe. ![]() Their personal lives have a similar gentleness. It's about mood and whimsy: frogs fall out of the sky a Brazilian guitarist in a sailor suit appears sporadically, singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese unicorns materialize. Their art is not about sex, money, or violence. They're not a Brat Pack they're a Play Group. Unlike the cool kids of 20 years ago-Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Bret Easton Ellis, et al - who were regularly obnoxious, hard-living, and in some cases hung out with hookers, the new cool kids live in a peaceful kingdom where imagination, youthful naïveté, and impeccable taste reign supreme. And the actors: her cousin Jason Schwartzman (star of Rushmore, I♥ Huckabees, and Sofia's latest film, Ma rie Antoinette), who is writing a screenplay with Roman and Wes for Wes's next movie, and Bill Murray (star of Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, and Sofia's Lost in Translation), their cool social-studies teacher, who takes them on unconventional field trips and signs their recommendation letters to the major studios. Anderson ( Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love), her ex-husband, Spike Jonze ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), her best friend, Zoe Cassavetes (daughter of filmmaker John, now working on her debut feature), and her big brother Roman (director of CQ, he shoots on Sofia's second unit). There are the directors: her friend Wes Anderson ( Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic), P. If, as they say, Hollywood is a high school, then a new group of cool kids are coloring in their sneakers in the wardrobe closet behind the theater, and their queen bee is Sofia Coppola.
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