A2 Media Coursework
PALO ALTO
Gia Coppola (Director)
Director: Palo Alto (2013), Casino Moon (2012), Blood Orange: You're Not Good Enough (2014), Strange Love (2015)
Writer: Palo Alto (2013), Casino Moon (2012)
She was born in LA, California and comes from a filmmaking background. Her granddad Francis Ford Coppola is known for The Godfather and her cousin is Nicolas Cage.
To begin with she didn't want to be a director and studied a degree in Photography instead. This changed when she was introduced to James Franco by her mother when she was 22 (because she was a big Freaks and Geeks fan). He encouraged her to send him some of her photos and the rest, as they say is history. He persuaded her to try filming and decided to adapt James Franco's short stories (2010) of his teenage experiences called Palo Alto. He liked the feminine perspective on his book that the girly influence of her photography would create.
Palo Alto
The film is full of emotional abuse of reckless boys and adults without morals exploiting girls and boys; all who are falling into self-destruction. It does great work at stripping back stereotypes and creating multi-faceted characters that are more complex than their 'teenager stereotype'. It tries to put in check the prejudices created by the stoner, punk or slut stock characters that are common in coming of age movies.
What I liked about the film so much was how real and down to earth it was. As Gia says in an interview her visual style is 'Just capturing what’s around you and viewing things that normally people would think are ordinary or mundane in an interesting way'. It's not over dramatic. It is made more authentic by the use of a mostly unknown young cast and the use of Gia Coppola's real childhood bedroom as April's room in the film.