In ‘Marc, by Sofia,’ an intimate portrait of fashion luminary and friendship

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Neither Sofia Coppola nor Marc Jacobs were convinced a documentary was a good idea. Jacobs wasn’t sure he wanted to be the subject of one and Coppola wasn’t sure she wanted the pressure of being the person behind the camera. This was her friend of over 30 years, after all. What if the film wasn’t good?

Yet the idea, which they credit to producers R.J. and Jane Cha Cutler, started to take hold. Coppola has always been interested in fashion and the creative process. Jacobs knew that if anyone could make him feel less self-conscious, it would be her. And they decided to jump into the unknown. At least it would be together.

“There was no off limits,” Jacobs said in a recent interview, alongside Coppola, with The Associated Press. “It was just like come as you are and you get what you get and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“Marc, by Sofia,” which had its world premiere Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, is an evocative, and very Coppola, collage of Jacobs’ influences, his biography and his team at work putting together a ready-to-wear collection.

“I’ve never done anything like this where there isn’t a plan or a script,” Coppola said. “What I was trying to do is show his creative process around this one collection and then interweave inspiration and references and artists who collaborated with him to have this full portrait.”

It was a very lo-fi production, they said. Sometimes it would just be Coppola coming into the office with her own handheld camera. Sometimes her brother Roman Coppola would come to help. Coppola had never done a feature length documentary before and found the process exciting, though she said it’s not signaling a new phase or director for her as a filmmaker.

She also got to see some of the behind the scenes things she’s rarely privy to, including being backstage at a runway show.

“I had total freedom, which was great. I was just filming what interested me,” she said. “It was really the same as like taking snapshots, which wasn’t unfamiliar to me.”

The two met in the early 1990s in New York, when Coppola asked her mother if she could go see the Perry Ellis show that Jacobs was working on. They quickly hit it off, bonding over shared loves of art, music, fashion and movies, and have collaborated many times, on handbags, dresses, commercials and more. Jacobs has visited her film sets and even provided clothes for some of her characters, including some of the coats Scarlett Johansson wore in “Lost in Translation.”

While Coppola wanted to acknowledge their friendship, even making a little cameo in her film, she also didn’t want it to be about her or even them, necessarily. The focus would remain on Jacobs.

“I didn’t want it to be too much about me,” Coppola said. “But I wanted it to feel that it’s personal and made by me and that I’m part of it and in that way it’s not just a generic interview or portrait.”

In addition to the behind the scenes of designing the Spring 2024 ready-to-wear collection, “Marc by Sofia” is full of film and art references, with clips from “Hello, Dolly!” “All that Jazz,” “Sweet Charity” and many more of Jacobs’ most beloved films. He was particularly blown away that she was able to get the rights to use the clips.

“It made me feel very special. And I couldn’t imagine all those things coming through for just anyone,” Jacobs said. “I felt like it was OK because it was for Sofia. That may not be the truth, but that’s the way I like to think of it.”

It also includes some biography, big career moments, and some rare glimpses of Jacobs’ grandmother, an influential figure in his life who he lived with as a teen in New York and who instilled in him the importance of caring for beautiful clothes. After the runway show, Coppola and her brother visit Jacobs at his home where, in his silk pajamas, he discusses his comedown. He likes to borrow a phrase coined by his friend, filmmaker Lana Wachowski, to describe the feeling: Post-art-um.

“I just sort of just felt like it could have been any conversation,” Jacobs said. “Nothing felt like director and subject. It just felt completely easy.”

Still, Jacobs was nervous the first time she screened it for him. He worried about what he was going to look like, and sound like, and what it was going to be.

“In very typical me fashion, when it was over I said I don’t hate myself after seeing it,” Jacobs laughed. “I just thought it all felt natural. I wasn’t pretending. There was just nothing synthetic or false or anything. So whether people like it or not, I know that I just felt good about me being me and Sofia, you know, sort of seeing that her way.”

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