A seasoned showgirl must look for a new future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run in Director Gia Coppola’s drama, The Last Showgirl.
Coppola’s film spins the tale of Shelly, a glamorous showgirl who has headlined a glittering Las Vegas revue for decades and must now reconcile with the decisions she’s made and the community she has built as she plans her next act.
On December 28, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Coppola discussed the making of The Last Showgirl during a Q&A moderated by Director Francis Ford Coppola (Megalopolis).
During the conversation, Coppola explained why she opted to use a lot of handheld photography in the film that was shot on 16mm in only 18 days.
“Partly why we were handheld too was just because we really wanted to be on film. Film is so expensive, but we felt like that texture it's really cool but also sort of symbolic, kind of a metaphor of the film how it kind of deals with the analog versus the digital, the ‘out with the old, in with the new.’ But in order to do film, we had to forego our lighting budget and everything else. But that also allowed us to be really fast and get a lot of setups in a short amount of time with a lot of actors.”
She also revealed how she borrowed a technique her grandfather used on the making of The Godfather to get her cast to really bond with their characters during meals in their off time.
“The script is originally a play so for me it was trying to just get her [Pamela Anderson] to let go of the script and just kind of embody it. We did little things that I've learned from you, like on weekends I had the cast go to Pamela's house and had her cook vegetable soup and teach all the younger dancers sort of how to make different [meals].”
Coppola’s other directorial credits include the feature films Palo Alto, Mainstream and The Seven Faces of Jane. She has been a DGA member since 2016.