Focus Features

Over at the MTV website, movie correspondent Josh Horowitz has a good, in-depth conversation with writer-director Sofia Coppola about her upcoming film for Focus Features, Somewhere, which premieres this week at the Venice International Film Festival.

Below is the opening of their chat:

MTV: The title is Somewhere. Did you come up with it early on?

Sofia Coppola: Yeah, when I was first writing, that was just a temporary title until I thought of a real title and then it became the title.

MTV: Where did this film begin in your mind? What was the genesis?

Coppola: I'm not sure if it was the character or the setting for this one, but I think it started with wanting to write about Los Angeles, and I was living in Paris at the time. So thinking about Los Angeles, this character came into mind, that Stephen Dorff plays, and then I wanted to do a portrait of this guy and it took its shape from there. And then the character of his daughter came after, and that evolved into kind of the father/daughter part of the story.

MTV: What were you trying to capture about Los Angeles that may or may not have been captured in film before? Do you feel L.A. is ever captured well on film?

Coppola: I like Shampoo and American Gigolo, and I feel there hasn't been a portrait of modern-day L.A. And I was just looking at how tabloid culture was while I was living in France. You know, there's always stuff about the Chateau Marmont. I remember going there when I was in college, and now it's so different with our reality TV shows and paparazzi around there. There wasn't Us Weekly when I lived there. It was a different world and I started with wanting to do something set in that world.

You can read the entire interview over at the MTV website.