Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series, highlighting the year’s most talked about screenplays, continues with the Sofia Coppola biopic Priscilla. Based on the 1985 memoir Me and Elvis The screenplay, co-written by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon, was adapted by Coppola, who also directed.
The story begins when the teenager Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis at a party and the man, already a meteoric rock ‘n’ roll superstar, becomes someone completely unexpected in private moments: an exciting lover, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. From Priscilla’s perspective, the film illuminates the unseen side of a great American myth about Elvis and Priscilla’s long love and turbulent marriage.
Cailee Spaeny plays the eponymous role for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. Jacob Elordi plays Elvis.
At the world premiere in Venice, the real Priscilla Presley choked up as she took the microphone and told the press: “It’s very difficult to watch a film about you, about your life and about your love.” Sofia did a good job, she did her homework.”
Coppola said she was drawn to the project because she was “so impressed by the unusual setting, but she’s experiencing all the things that all girls experience as they grow into women — their first kiss and becoming a mother — that’s all these things.” Moments that I can identify with, but in this very unusual environment that we are so curious about.
Adapting the memoir for the screen was Coppola’s first real foray into living history. Rereading the book, she told Deadline’s Joe Utichi, “It kind of grabbed me to be able to see this alluring, inspiring visual world of Graceland and 1960s Memphis.” It was something I had never done before and it was so American.
In her Deadline review, Stephanie Bunbury wrote that Coppola’s “stylistic sense overcomes the murky feeling that we know exactly what’s going to happen.” The details she shows “are like an additional story emerging from the facts, which we already know.” The “power” of Coppola’s films “is that everything seems to be seen.”
A24 released Priscilla domestic November 3; Nearly $21 million has been raised so far.
Click below to read the script.
Source: Deadline
Ashley Root is an author and celebrity journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a keen eye for all things celebrity, Ashley is always up-to-date on the latest gossip and trends in the world of entertainment.
