Embed from Getty Images
Last week, a “source” from the Elvis Presley Estate told Page Six that Lisa Marie Presley hated the script for Sofia Coppola’s movie Priscilla. And now, shortly after the film was released in theaters in the US, Variety has an exclusive from someone with access to Lisa Marie Presley’s emails. (That’s a mystery I’d like to untangle: who is leaking this to Variety?) Lisa Marie sent two super angry emails to Sofia Coppola in September 2022, shortly before production began. She called the script “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous” and said her father “only comes across as a predator and manipulative.” She also threatened to publicly speak out against the movie, her own mom, and Sofia.
The movie is based solely on Priscilla’s memoir, Elvis and Me, and reportedly some parts of Elvis’ courtship of Priscilla (which started when he was 24 and she was 14) were toned down for the movie. Sofia responded very graciously judging by the email that her representative provided to Variety when asked for comment. Sofia wrote back to Lisa Marie that she was “honoring” Priscilla while presenting Elvis with “sensitivity and complexity.”
Before her death earlier this year, Lisa Marie Presley expressed shock and horror over the depiction of her father Elvis Presley in the script for Sofia Coppola’s new film “Priscilla.” Described in two emails obtained exclusively by Variety, the late Presley asked Coppola to reconsider her vision for the character and to spare her family public embarrassment. The messages were sent four months before Presley suffered fatal cardiac arrest in January.
Presley’s messages called the script “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous,” and contained pleas to Oscar-winning director Coppola to refrain from straining her fragile relationship with her mother – the film’s subject, Priscilla Presley – as well as bringing scrutiny on Elvis’ living grandchildren as they continue to grieve the loss of Lisa Marie Presley’s son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020.
“Priscilla” is a biopic of Priscilla Presley, based on the subject’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me.” It has sparked conversation among critics and audiences for its portrait of Elvis and Priscilla’s courtship – one that began in Germany in 1959 when Priscilla was 14 and Elvis was 24.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative. As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?” Presley wrote in one of her messages. Both were sent in September of last year, roughly four hours apart.
While Coppola had yet to roll cameras on “Priscilla” when Presley reached out, the latter told her bluntly that she would speak out against the project and her mother, who is credited as an executive producer and has participated in publicity for the A24 release. Already an awards season contender, the movie opened in limited release on Oct. 27 and expands wide on Friday.
“I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly,” Presley wrote.
When asked for comment on the exchange, Coppola responded through her representative with words she expressed to Presley in response to her September emails, saying it encapsulates what the director intended to do with her film.
“I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently, and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity,” wrote Coppola.
[From Variety]
First of all, of course the script for this movie would be sensitive and difficult for Lisa Marie in a way it wouldn’t be for anyone else in the entire world. If your dad groomed your mom (there’s no way around it–that is what happened), and someone is going to make a movie where that truth is acknowledged, it would feel shameful. At least, if I were Lisa Marie, I would feel ashamed. It’s her dad. We often idolize our fathers, and hers was “The King.” The predatory nature of her father’s courtship with her mom–that would have been such a grenade rolling around in Lisa Marie’s psyche, just waiting to be set off. Because coming to terms with the fact that your dad abused your mom, it isn’t easy. My parents’ relationship wasn’t that bad by any means, but it was still bad, and children absorb all of that subconsciously. Poison spreads in families. It creates a huge amount of cognitive dissonance, to both love someone and be ashamed of them. Judging from these emails, Lisa Marie chose to deny the truth of what her father did. Sometimes people just can’t face these things. I haven’t seen Priscilla yet, I’m going next Tuesday when it becomes available at the independent art house theater in my town. But every review I’ve read has praised it as sensitive and intelligent. Nobody has said “this is a hack job on Elvis.” Lisa Marie just attacked Sofia because reading the truth of her parents’ courtship touched an incredibly tender nerve.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy7E8GKp4YF/
Embed from Getty Images
Embed from Getty Images
Source: Read Full Article
