Director/Writer/Producer Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola grew up in Northern California. After doing costume design on two feature films, she studied Fine Art at California Institute of the Arts. She then wrote and directed the short film Lick the Star (which world-premiered at the Venice International Film Festival), followed by the feature The Virgin Suicides.  Ms. Coppola wrote the screenplay for the latter film, adapting it from Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides' novel of the same name. A world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival, The Virgin Suicides subsequently earned her the MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker.

Producer Ross Katz
Ross Katz received Best Picture Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations as producer of Todd Field's In the Bedroom . Mr. Katz' first job in the movie business was as part of the crew of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. He later worked with producers Sydney Pollack and Lindsay Doran on Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility.   He then joined leading NYC independent film company Good Machine working on some of the company's most notable productions, such as The Ice Storm and Happiness. In 2002, Mr. Katz inaugurated his own NYC-based production company, Elemental Films. In 2003, he was cited as one of Variety's "10 Producers to Watch."


talk with sofia coppola and ross katz

Q: Sofia, the vantage point of a young woman has been a constant in the work you've done so far. But here, working with Bill Murray, you explore the older man's as well…
Sofia Coppola: …and he's having a midlife crisis in Japan - where it's already so confusing. In the film, Charlotte is having that early 20s, "what do I do with my life" crisis. She and Bob are two people at opposite ends of something comparable; she's just going into a marriage and he's on the other end, having been in one for years. There is camaraderie between them at the moment in time that they're at. It's two characters going through a similar personal crisis, exacerbated by being in a foreign place. Trying to figure out your life in the midst of all of that…I always do that on trips, just start to think of these issues when I'm away from home.
Ross Katz: One of the exciting things for me was what Sofia said to me when we met: "Bill Murray is my leading man." We did not conceive of this movie without him. I genuinely believe that Sofia would not have made it if he didn't agree to do it. He is a real leading man and his performance is, I think, wonderful.

Q: What was the genesis of the idea for Lost in Translation? Did it come from a specific trip?
SC: It was inspired by spending time in Japan in my early and mid-20s. I went there six or seven times over a couple of years. Just from spending time there, being in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, I wanted to do something set in Tokyo, and I liked the idea of how, in hotels, you keep running into the same people. There's this sort of camaraderie even though you don't know them or even talk to them. And, being foreigners in Japan - things are distorted, exaggerated. You're jet-lagged and contemplating your life in the middle of the night. Also, I love Bill Murray and I really wanted to write something for him showing his more sensitive side - what you felt a little bit of in Rushmore, I wanted to see more of that side. And there's just something funny about being stuck in a situation that you don't really want to be in.

Q: The Park Hyatt hotel that you stayed at, that's the one in the movie, right?
SC: Yes, although I didn't stay there when I was younger because it was expensive [laughs]…I stayed there a few times later on. There's something very specific and odd about that hotel. The city is so chaotic and here's this silent floating island in the middle of Tokyo. They have the "New York" bar and a French restaurant - but it's the Japanese version.
RK: The pool is pretty amazing too. And the view - we would often sit by windows, look out at Tokyo from 40 stories above and say, "How the hell are we going to make this movie in a few weeks?"

Q: Ross, when and how did you come aboard the project?
RK: We were brought together. I was finishing up The Laramie Project and was in L.A. on behalf of In the Bedroom, and Bart Walker - Sofia's agent - thankfully put us together for a meeting. Bart had asked me, "Would you be interested in meeting Sofia?" I said, "Are you kidding? She's one of the most exciting filmmakers around." I had just loved The Virgin Suicides so much. We met and it was a little bit like asking someone to the prom. I left our meeting thinking that she has a great sense of humour and perspective. She really understands the movies that she wants to make. Every nuance is so clear to her. I wanted to help her realise that. I waited by the phone and then she called - the best call you could get. When we were talking about Lost in Translation it was clear that she would evoke Charlotte's [(Scarlett Johannson)] journey. In addition, she really had the Bob Harris [(Bill Murray)] character down. She saw the film in terms of those special times in your life where you make a connection, and it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't fit into your world but somehow you connect with someone. Everybody comes from different places in their lives yet a lot of things are the same. Sofia talked about a memory of something that only lasts a short time yet stays with you forever - and I thought it was a great way of describing the movie.

Q: Sofia, had you gone to Japan to write the screenplay, or for further inspiration?
SC: I didn't write it there. I'd been there a lot and had my photos. A lot of the places in the movie are places I've gone. My friend Charlie Brown always takes me around. That's his nickname; his real name is Fumihiro Hayashi. I met him a long time ago and he has a fashion magazine there. Charlie is in Lost in Translation, he sings "God Save the Queen"; he always sings that, and that was one of the first images I wanted to make a movie around. I did go back a year before we shot, with friends, and videotaped anything that looked interesting and worked on the script after that. Some of that stuff I did put into the script: staying in the hotel and seeing the "aquaerobics" in the pool and having the shabu-shabu dining experience. Then there are these advertising campaigns that you see in Japan: American actors endorsing products and being a little bit embarrassed about it. I'm affectionately poking fun at it; I don't look at it as hypocritical. It's just so weird to be in Japan and to look up and see Brad Pitt selling coffee, and see a Brad Pitt head floating in a vending machine. It's one of those out-of-context things in Japan, like a replica of a French café.

Q: This film was made entirely on-location in Japan. How does a purely American filmmaking team plan on and prep for such an adventure in an exotic break from the familiar - especially as an independent feature with a modest budget?
SC: It was a big adventure. One of things I love about Tokyo is that it's so different than being in Europe - much more foreign and unfamiliar with regard to the culture, the language. Everything's different, even getting the groceries. There's different rules and traditions that you learn as you go. We got there a little bit in advance. There were about eight of us from the U.S. and the rest were local.
RK: Very different than what I'd been involved with. You can't really embark on this kind of a journey without a total willingness to have your plans change, your ideas thrown back in your face, and reinvent your plan on a daily basis. The only way you can do that is with a true partner, and that's Sofia; she was really up for the adventure. It was completely exhilarating - and terrifying at times. It's not as simple as a language barrier. A lot of people work with language barriers. More than 90% of our crew was Japanese, many of whom were non-English-speaking. In Japan, there's a different kind of cultural protocol, there's a different way that things are done, including on the filmmaking side of things - the structure of a crew and how a crew works. So, there were a lot of big adjustments on both sides. Sofia and I didn't want to jump into Japan and make an American movie, American style. I think a lot of people plop down in their location and say, "Well, we're just going to do it the way that we do it."  But there were certainly examples of the language barrier. One night, we were shooting the fire alarm sequence that comes toward the end of the movie and takes place in the middle of the night. Our casting folks were great - mainly non-English-speaking. They had arranged for us to have about 50 extras there. When the extras arrived, we were ready to shoot, the camera was there, everything was set, great night for shooting - and all of the extras were dressed in business suits. We looked around and went, "Uhhhh…it's the middle of the night…?" And the casting people, through the translator, were saying, "Yes, yes, we're ready!" And we're saying, "Well, in the middle of the night, people are generally in their pajamas, nightgowns…" So our costume designer, Nancy Steiner, had to make a mad dash to the wardrobe van. We went into the Park Hyatt and pulled every robe, nightgown, casual attire, kimono that we could get and basically re-dressed all of our extras in the parking lot. Those kind of things happened a lot. But I think the other thing that happened to us, which is probably more exciting, is that the experiences and extremes of making the film were just like the experiences in the film. A lot of what was happening in the film was pure for us.
SC: Respect and honor are central to Japanese culture. We wanted to do it more Japanese style, not walk in and say, "Well this is how we do it in America." However…I remember when we were at the shabu-shabu restaurant, we were only permitted to shoot 'til 4:00 P.M. We went about 10-15 minutes over, and the owner pulled the plug - pulled the lights out. We were disrespecting the owner because we weren't done. The location manager felt we had dishonored him, too.

Q: You were on a tight shooting schedule of 27 days, including 6 days a week.
RK: "Stamina" is the word that best describes it. We pushed hard to make sure we got the movie that Sofia wanted to get. First, we had a sensible director who's not only assured but understands her actors. She has incredible intuition yet was incredibly adaptable. Second, we had a remarkable cinematographer in Lance Acord, who'd worked with Sofia on her short film Lick the Star. Lance is this great guy who you can drop from a helicopter into the middle of wherever with a camera and he'll be climbing up a tree and finding the best angle and constantly be excited and enthusiastic, always fighting to get the best shot.
SC: Lance and I had both spent time in Tokyo and like the look of the city. There's a spontaneity that we wanted to include - I wanted the informality of running around and taking snapshots. My memories of being there are snapshots. He wanted to be quick and non-invasive, and not to have to light it. We were stealthy; we relied on people in the streets being our extras. The camera was very small and portable. You're not allowed to shoot in the subway; we had to keep moving so we wouldn't be stopped - to get those shots it was just me, Lance, Scarlett, and 1-2 other people.
RK: Sofia always said, "I want to be able to move, I don't want to be burdened with having so many people that we can't actually run out and get a great shot." It was very run-and-gun, for two reasons: (1) in terms of the amount of time we had, and (2) we also wanted to have an openness to where we were. In other words…a lot of times, when you make a movie everything is so rigid in terms of "you can only shoot at this point, this is what the schedule is, and on this day we're shooting this." We wanted the ability to throw away the map and go and get what we wanted.
SC: We did steal a lot of shots on the streets. But, one day, my brother Roman was shooting second unit and ran into some Yakuza. They said we'd have to pay up, because they have their neighborhoods. And that was the end of that neighborhood for us. Our crew helped us navigate and steered us away from other Yakuza neighborhoods.
RK: One day, we had an entire interior sequence planned. And it started to rain in a very interesting place - the intersection with the elephants and the dinosaurs and all of that. And Sofia really wanted to see Charlotte in the midst of hundreds of Japanese people heading to work, heading to lunch and carrying umbrellas. We wrapped up at the arcade we were shooting in and scrapped everything, grabbed the equipment, ran several blocks away and started shooting in the rain. We completely reworked the plan because the weather was really unreliable and we just knew it was never going to look this good again, so let's get it. I'm really happy that we did, and you can see it in the film.

Q: Many independent filmmakers would have opted for DV or HD. But you remained committed to film. How was that discussed?
SC: We were encouraged to consider DV, but I wanted the movie to feel romantic…like a memory. Film does that. With the high-speed film stock [Kodak's 5263] that we were using, we could go anywhere, not light it and just shoot. Film might not be around that long, so we wanted to shoot on film while we still can. It has the nostalgic and romantic feeling of the past; that's how I remember things, through film and photos. Film gives a little bit of a distance, which feels more like a memory to me. Video is more present tense, there isn't that stepping back.
RK: None of us wanted to shoot on video. We just didn't want to do it. Basically, the philosophy going in was, let's be lean and mean in terms of the size of our crew and our ability to move. And on top of that, we wanted beautiful lighting in our film - without the standard lighting package that you would use for a scene in a big movie. We didn't want the hassle and time of that many people and that many lights. There were some people on Lance's crew that were saying - in Japanese - "There's not enough light, it's not going to be bright enough…" Lance said to them, "You've got to trust me on this." And it looks stunning; we basically used less light on this movie than I think any of us have ever used. It's glowing, it's beautiful.

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