The Venice Film Festival is going to be weird this year because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. It starts a week from now and while it’s usually a star-studded affair, this year most actors involved with the films at the festival won’t be able to attend. However, the studio A24 has a waiver because they reached an agreement with the union. A24 isn’t affiliated with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers so they were able to do their own thing without the major studios. Sofia Coppola’s new movie Priscilla, a biopic about Priscilla Presley, falls under that waiver for reasons that are kind of convoluted (it has to do with the fact that the movie was filmed in Canada). So potentially, Priscilla stars Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny could attend the festival to promote the movie. I’m not sure if they will because of how it would look while most actors are still on strike, but we will see. Sofia Coppola is also part of the WGA but she’s allowed to promote the movie and I think she will be doing the lion’s share of that work.
Sofia and Priscilla were interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about the movie ahead of the premiere. Sofia says she was drawn to Priscilla’s story because it was surprisingly relatable, and Priscilla says that Sofia could understand her life because she also grew up in the orbit of a very famous man, her dad Francis Ford Coppola. There’s also an interesting little interlude about Priscilla’s legal proceedings with her granddaughter Riley Keough. Riley had become the executor of Elvis’ estate through Lisa Marie Presley’s will, and Priscilla claims she wasn’t notified of that. It seemed like she was trying to push Riley out of her position, shortly after Lisa Marie Presley had suddenly passed away. What kind of grandma takes you to court when your mom has suddenly died?? It was shady, but both Priscilla and Riley now claim to be on excellent terms.
Sofia related to Priscilla because of her dad: “I know from my family what it’s like to be inside a show business family,” Coppola says. “I know that growing up, people are looking at you in a different way. And also living in a house with my dad, this big personality, a great artist and a lot of our life revolving around that. And seeing my mom’s life, how she was trying to find her way within his, I could relate to that,” Coppola says.
Priscilla trusted Sofia with her story: “Her story was so vivid in my mind and the visuals of that world, Memphis, the ’60s. It’s so American,” Coppola says. “And I always like themes about finding one’s identity and teenage girls growing into adulthood.” She reached out to Priscilla, who says she had been a fan since Lost in Translation, which won Coppola an original screenplay Oscar. Priscilla, who has an executive producer credit on the film, felt Coppola was someone she could trust. “I just got who she was and I felt that she could get me,” she says. “I thought, we have different stories, but she could understand this better than any writer because she kind of lived it in her own way.”
The drama about Lisa Marie’s will and Elvis’ estate: “Riley is now the executor, which should be right, obviously, being her daughter,” Priscilla says. “Riley and I are on good terms. We were never not on good terms. That was all publicity. This is private and this is not something to fool around with and say that we’re not agreeing. In fact, I’m having dinner with [Riley] tonight. We understand what needs to be done. I’m there for her. She knows that. She wants me there for her to help her.” In comments to Vanity Fair published the morning of this interview, Riley characterized the relationship similarly. “Things with Grandma will be happy. They’ve never not been happy,” Keough told the magazine of Priscilla. “She was a huge part of creating my grandfather’s legacy and Graceland. He was the love of her life. Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy.”
I agree with Priscilla that Sofia is probably the best person to tell her story. A consistent theme across Sofia’s work is female alienation, female isolation. Priscilla’s story is most similar (to me) to her film Marie Antoinette: a teenager marries a famous, wealthy, powerful man. She’s swept up into a world that’s very different from what she’s used to, with intrigue and power struggles. And she’s not prepared for the ways in which the world will judge her or the alienation that comes with that kind of fame. Anyway, what really piqued my attention is how Priscilla and Riley talk about each other. I do not believe–at all–that they would be on such great terms after Priscilla tried to basically cut Riley out of the estate and Riley had to pay her a lump sum of $1.4 million to settle out of court. What Riley says is extremely gracious, but Priscilla comes across as controlling. “She wants me there for her to help her.” Really? Then why was Lisa Marie so careful to make sure that Riley was the one in charge of her estate, not Priscilla? It doesn’t scan.
It sounds like Riley and Priscilla spoke about how to deal with the publicity for the movie and came to an agreement. Maybe they’re whitewashing the truth, but I can respect the fact that they’ve agreed not to bash each other in public.
I agree, Coppola is good at the teenage fever dream; glittery and misunderstood. Priscilla’s early life could be described as such, based on my optics.
The whole premise of this movie is so gross to me. whitewashing of how a 24 year old man initiated a relationship with a 14-year-old, and her parents later sent her —still just a high school student— into his custody. “It was a different time” yes, the phrase always used to justify awful s*** that, in fact, people at that time also knew was WRONG!
Thank you. She was groomed and her father did not bother protecting her as he should. Priscilla still has an obvious bag of issues stemming from her parents failing her including the link to Scientology.
And her current battles with her child and grandchildren to control their own father / grandfather’s estate shows she’s more about the money than anything else. Priscilla did divorce him and while it made sense for her to preserve the estate when her daughter was underage, she has held on to it for decades well behind need.
Yes, Chaine, it’s revolting. A different time? Nothing made it ok then, either. I came out of an abusive household with no training in healthy relationships and where children had zero power, but, as a young teen at the time, even I knew that the setup her parents agreed to with Elvis was weird AF and very messed up.
I have the book Elvis and Me. Have read it several times over the years. When it first came out, I was younger and it just all seemed so glamorous (for lack of a better word). I mean, what teen is so lucky to meet a rock star, get to leave her parents and all the rest? That was my younger, child of the 70’s viewpoint.
Read it when I was a little older and the book was different. Saw it as kinda weird. I mean, who lets their kid move out of the country to live with a rock star? Elvis seemed to do a lot of drugs and she was too young to be around that. That was my late 20’s viewpoint.
Now I read it recently, as a 50 year old woman. The whole thing shocks me. Her age! The grooming! Her parents! The enabling of Elvis! How was this allowed?!
It’s good read. But times have definitely changed. In the 60’s and 70’s, a girl getting married at 16 happened. Getting married to someone 10+ years older happened. It wasn’t seen like it is now. Not saying it is right, but it wasn’t seen as wrong back then due to societal views of women, as well as options for women.
The fact that Priscilla turned out okay is amazing. I see her dedication to Elvis (if not love) as more of a Stockholm Syndrome vs greed. She just never knew anything else during her formative years.
yes. all of this. I had NO idea that was their history, somehow it just passed me by, and recently learned it when a podcast I listen to on celebrity memoirs covered elvis and me. color me shocked and disturbed!!! And the way he treated her after they had lisa marie. What a freaking weirdo he was
It doesn’t matter if it was “a different time”, it’s still gross. I wonder if the film will acknowledge that, or if it will make it all seem romantic?
Not to be nitpicky, but most actors in Venice films will be able to attend, because it is an international film festival and only American actors are on strike. The majority of films at Venice do not feature Americans, and what a great opportunity to highlight them!
I thought some English actors were on strike too? Or is it just if they are working on an American production, like “Bridgerton?”
Elvis and Priscilla didn’t see each other again for 2 years after meeting in Germany. She moved to Graceland in March 1963 and turned 18 in May. By the time they got married, he didn’t even want to marry her but Ann Margret instead, who was not underage when they had an affair during Viva Las Vegas.
Why doesn’t Muhammad Ali get the same backlash as Elvis? From his Wikipedia page:
At age 32 in 1974, Ali began an extramarital relationship with 16-year-old Wanda Bolton (who subsequently changed her name to Aaisha Ali) with whom he fathered another daughter, Khaliah (born 1974). While still married to Belinda, Ali married Aaisha in an Islamic ceremony that was not legally recognized. According to Khaliah, Aaisha and her mother lived at Ali’s Deer Lake training camp alongside Belinda and her children.[158] In January 1985, Aaisha sued Ali for unpaid palimony. The case was settled when Ali agreed to set up a $200,000 trust fund for Khaliah.[159] In 2001 Khaliah was quoted as saying she believed her father viewed her as “a mistake”.[158]
That’s a good question. It may be because of Ali’s humanitarian work and his illness. (Did Elvis do any humanitarian work? I have no clue.) And maybe also because Ali openly stated that he believed his Parkinson’s disease was the karma he earned for mistreating so many women. I don’t know, really, I’m just speculating.
Elvis did do a lot of humanitarian work. I’m comparing them btw because they were both friends. Muhammad Ali also married Khalilah Ali when she was 17 and he was 25, they met when she was 10 at her hometown mosque. And he also met his last wife Lonnie Williams when she was 6 and he was 21. But he doesn’t get any backlash at all for any of this.
Yeah, I already know about Muhammad Ali and his dastardly deeds. I appreciated the fact that the documentary about his life that showed on PBS (in the US) a few years ago talked a LOT about his infidelity. I will say that although he met his 2nd and 4th wife when they were children (Lonnie lived next door to his parents, I think), I don’t think he kept in touch with them. I think in both of those cases, he reconnected with them years later. But again, I don’t know the answer that you’re looking for. The facts about them have been exposed for decades and now they are both dead. I don’t know how others have processed those facts after their deaths.
Every time I see Priscilla I think that she really went overboard with the plastic surgery. She changed so much over the years. I see that she’s letting herself age now.
Lisa Marie’s life wasn’t easy. I can’t imagine having Elvis as a father and Priscilla as a mother. If I remember correctly, didn’t Priscilla try to break into show business after the divorce. It just seemed to me that she worked hard at being with the right people.
I always thought it was strange that she held onto Graceland so tightly once Lisa Marie was an adult. The lawsuit tells its own story. I wonder how much money she made over the years in her various roles connected to Elvis?
Her face was botched by this phony plastic surgeon who ended up going to jail. I think he injected regular silicone into her face rather than silicone that is approved for plastic surgery. She got it corrected as much as she could.
As for the show business thing, she did at one point have a legitimate acting career. She was a regular on Dallas and she was Leslie Nielsen’s love interest in some of those Naked Gun movies.