INTERVIEW BY RICHARD PRINCE
INTERVIEW | JUNE 14, 2013

PRINCE: Does it ever happen that you read a book and think it would make a great movie and try to buy the rights but they are already taken?
COPPOLA: When new books come out, there’s always a frenzy of people swooping them up. When I first read The Virgin Suicides, I loved that book but someone else had the rights to it. I had to convince them to consider letting me do it. So that was about getting the rights. And people buy the rights to magazine articles, too. I bought the one in Vanity Fair. But I guess after I finish a movie, I’m always thinking and looking out for what I’ll want to do next. I always feel like it’s a reaction to the thing I just did. Like the movie I did before Bling Ring was really slow and quiet, so I was just in the mood to do something obnoxious and faster, and something kind of in bad taste. Because I feel like that’s not something I get to exercise in my life usually. [laughs] And the story seemed to say so much about what’s happening in our culture today—all the interest in reality stars and kids posting pictures on Facebook all the time. This idea of having an audience all the time. And the kids get busted because they were posting pictures of themselves with all of the stuff they stole.

PRINCE: When you make a film today, do you think about all of the multiple ways it will be viewed? Not just in a movie theater, but on computer screens, on phones. I like to watch films in the privacy of my own environment.
COPPOLA: I was in a lab doing color timing on this huge, beautiful screen, and then I figured people are probably going to be watching this film on their phones. But I like watching films at home, too, which is probably where most people view films. Films look good on iPads, too.

PRINCE: Most of the movies my kids watch are on their computer. They don’t watch TV anymore. It’s all about the computer screen.
COPPOLA: It’s funny because we were doing the sets for the kids’ rooms, and we put TVs in them, but the kids were like, “Nobody has TVs in their room anymore. You watch everything on the computer.” But I watch films at home all the time. I do think that a film in a theater is more engaging. It’s too easy to get distracted at home. And there is the idea of a communal audience in the theater.

PRINCE: But all of that is radically changing, especially the attention span it takes for a feature film.
COPPOLA: Yeah, I wonder if movies will have to be at least 90 minutes anymore. Maybe you could do a 15-minute one.

PRINCE: Do you ever think of your audience when you’re making a film? Like, “I am directing this toward this group of people or that one …”
COPPOLA: I try to just make what I want to make or what I would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much. But for Bling Ring, I did want it to appeal to about the same age as the characters. I also hoped that people my age would be into it in the same way I was interested in the story. I wanted the audience to get into it and then not until later kind of stand back and think, “Maybe there is something else going on here …” I wanted it to be seductive at the beginning.

PRINCE: It was interesting that one of the things that the kids stole in the film was artwork by Ed Ruscha.
COPPOLA: Oh, yeah. We put it in because my dad had that and we thought the Hollywood sign would bring that feeling and aesthetic to the film.

PRINCE: How long did it take to film The Bling Ring?
COPPOLA: It was about six weeks. We do everything low-budget, so we do it as quickly as possible just to have more freedom.

PRINCE: It’s kind of like cooking, right? You do all of your prep work ahead of time and that takes a lot of time. The actual cooking doesn’t take very long. And then there’s the editing. Did you see something after the fact where you said, “Oh, man, I wish I had another take?”
COPPOLA: There are always things that I wish were different, or I feel like I’ve made mistakes. But it’s just part of it. I don’t mind that it’s a little homemade. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Do you think about the audience or their opinions when you make a work?

PRINCE: You know, sometimes I have. When I watch a movie, I like knowing that the director has already made the decisions. I don’t have to make any. But on the flip side, I know how to be the director or the artist. And sometimes I try to make works where there is no mystery at all about how it’s made. I think what’s great about Basquiat’s work is that thousands of people can walk into a show and there’s no mystery as to how a Basquiat is made. It’s mark-making. Anyone could do it. It’s very primitive. And people really enjoy that. He drew a crown; he made a word. It’s true with Warhol, too. Maybe there is still a little bit of mystery about the silkscreen even to this day. But his idea of repetition is so fucking brilliant and so stupidly simple. 
COPPOLA: I showed it to a friend’s teenage daughter and she said, “Oh, it doesn’t look pretty like your other work.” And I wonder about that. When people see you a certain way, you always want to challenge yourself and do something different. But you also want to do what you’re into. An artist can do both maybe because you can make series of different works. Is that something you think about?

PRINCE: I’m the most confusing artist on the planet because I would rather be Christopher Wool at this point. I would rather be Robert Gober. I would rather be Charlie Ray. I wake up in the morning and I kind of go with whatever I feel that day. This morning, I was stapling rubber bands into different shapes using a staple gun, and it’s really punk. It’s the stupidest thing in the world, but it looks great. You kind of do a test run and then go, “Gee.” But I think the audience wants a signature. I think you, for example, are doing what all really good artists do, and that is something not similar to what they’ve done before. I think repeating, what’s the point? I think that’s working for a living. I don’t want to work for a living. It’s not labor, you know? That’s what’s interesting about [Stanley] Kubrick: he did horror, he did a period piece, he did a war movie, he did a sex movie. He did what he wanted to do. I guess I relate to that more. Or a Bruce Nauman or [Sigmar] Polke or [Gerhard] Richter. They’ll just wake up and go—like Man Ray! It’s like what you were saying about the nature of the subject being tacky, but you took something tacky and made it elegant.
COPPOLA: Oh, thank you! That’s good! It becomes something pretty.

PRINCE: It’s like taking something elegant and making it tacky. I like that idea too. I mean, personally, Paris Hilton is not my taste. I just don’t get it. But I love that I don’t.
COPPOLA: Yeah, I thought it was fun because, in a way, it’s exotic. You want to see a different world. 

PRINCE: Obviously, you had to do some legal maneuvering in order to tell this story [The Bling Ring].
COPPOLA: It’s annoying that now in movies you have to clear it if you want to use a Coke bottle. In the old days, you didn’t have to worry about that. So we had to be careful to change the names. It’s based on the real kids so we had to get the life rights from some of them. But I wanted to be able to have the freedom to change it and not have to stick to the events. I didn’t want to make a documentary or even a biopic.

PRINCE: So as long as you say it’s based on a true story, you have a little bit more leeway?
COPPOLA: Yes. It’s fiction but inspired by true events. There were a lot of phone calls with lawyers, though.

Prince: It’s similar with my work. Now we have to work on getting permission. In the past, no one paid any attention.
COPPOLA: Right. You used to just take any picture you wanted—like the Brooke Shields photo [Prince’s Spiritual America, 1983].

PRINCE: Nobody cared in those days. Nobody was watching.
COPPOLA: Because it’s art. But then when you are selling it …