Following the release of her new movie, Priscilla, director Sofia Coppola has opened up about the difficulty for female directors in getting film budgets that are even a fraction of their male counterparts. In an interview with BBC News, Coppola spoke about making the film Priscilla on a low budget of $20 million.
Coppola said, “I just see all these men getting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then I’m fighting for a tiny fraction of that. 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 make my movies independently and find people that believe in them.”
Due to financial restrictions on the film, Priscilla was filmed in only 30 days using digital instead of film, which was Coppola’s first choice. Elvis Presley’s music was also not featured because of the inability to acquire the rights.
Despite the setbacks, Coppola spoke about the advantages of a lower-budget film, “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. So, I have that freedom, and then you have to be really crafty, and it was really hard, but I had the best team.”
Coppola and her team reused most of the sets and costumes featured in the movie. Coppola also found an alternative to using Elvis Presley’s music and instead featured Dolly Parton’s song, “I Will Always Love You.”
“To me, it is really important to have Dolly Parton at the end, to have a woman’s voice at the end,” Coppola said in the interview.
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