Though her examination of the Hollywood Hills burglaries, The Bling Ring, was a major disappointment in terms of its inability to explore the motivations of its subjects, director Sofia Coppola is still an undeniably interesting and talented filmmaker – her films Lost in Translation and Somewhere are considered modern classics for a reason. Now, Coppola is gearing up for her next project, working on the script for an adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland: A Memoir Of My Father.
American Zoetrope Productions, which is owned by Coppola’s father, Francis Ford Coppola, has snagged the rights to Fairyland and set Coppola to co-write the screenplay with Andrew Durham. The pair previously worked together on Coppola’s short film debut, Lick the Star.
Coppola will also produce alongside her brother Roman Coppola, who co-wrote the script for Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.
Fairyland focuses on the relationship between a daughter and her bisexual father in San Francisco during the beginning of the AIDS crisis. The Amazon synopsis for the book reads as follows:
After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves in with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child.
Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference.
In Alysia’s teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she has befriended—fall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create.
Though Coppola is only committed to the project as a writer and producer, the director has always written the scripts for her films and has served as a producer on every project but her first: The Virgin Suicides. With that in mind, it’s safe to assume that we’ll be receiving confirmation that she will helm Fairyland sometime within the next month or so.
Tell us, are you a fan of Sofia Coppola? And if you’ve read Fairyland, are you keen to see a film adaptation?
