gia coppola adapts "palo Alto Stories"
In 2010, James Franco released “Palo Alto,” a web of interlocking stories about the anxiety of leaving childhood behind and entering adolescence which takes place in the Northern California city where Franco grew up. He hoped that one day his book would make the big screen, but he didn’t want to direct it himself. "If I did that, at best it would be a too-faithful adaptation, just one more iteration of what I'd already done," he said.
Franco had been searching to find the perfect person to adapt “Palo Alto” and was having no luck. Until one day where he was sitting at one of his favorite deli’s, Joan’s on Third in Los Angeles, "and some kids came in - hip, artsy - they really made an impression." Later that night, he saw one of the kids from the deli. Her name was Gia Coppola and she was introduced to him by her mother, Jacqui Getty, at the after party for a gala at the Museum of Contemporary Art. “We met in a very random way — I say cosmic, because I feel like everything came into place that way,” Coppola recalls.
When they met, Coppola had just graduated college and was working as a barback and was a photography major. Franco knew when they met that she was the one he wanted to direct “Palo Alto.” He picked up the phone and called her. "I said, 'Hey, this is out of the blue, and maybe it sounds a little crazy, kind of like proposing marriage before we even know each other, but I have this book, and I think you'd be a good person to adapt it. Will you take a look at it?'” Coppola agreed and ended up falling in love with it. “I read his book and I just really loved it because it was conveying teenagers in a real light, and the dialogue was so great . . . and I myself was sort of reflecting on that period on my life. So I really connected to
it, emotionally,” she said.
They had agreed that Coppola would choose the stories she liked the most and put those in the film. Coppola made a test film to help her figure out what would work and what wouldn’t work. In the end, she decided to combine the characters and intertwine storylines to make the movie come together nicely.
""one of the best movies ever made about high school life in america"