National Post gossip columnist Shinan Govani observes that Quentin Tarantino and Sofia Coppola have quite a few things in common, besides their current public displays of affection ...

But for every person who wonders what Quentin, the high-school dropout who majored in film at an L.A. video store and once appeared as an Elvis impersonator on an episode of Golden Girls, has in common with Sofia, the heiress to a wine-gulping film dynasty and confirmed muse of designer Marc Jacobs, there is a defender.

For many, it makes a weird bit of sense. Both Coppola and Tarantino have the Italian thing in common (his dad comes from pasta-land). Both are completely in love with movies, and indeed in love with being in love with movies. Both have a thing for Japan, as evidenced by their most recent films, respectively (though their versions of Japan are as different as sugar and salt). And both, of course, have won Academy Awards for best original screenplay (he for Pulp Fiction; she more recently for Lost in Translation).

It's like a friend put it to me the other day: "Forget about meeting the folks. I wonder if his Oscar has met her Oscar yet?"

And there's this thing that they indubitably share: Both dabbled in acting at one point -- with horrifying results. Coppola was scourged by reviewers for her stiff-as-five-day-old-gnocchi performance in The Godfather: Part III. Tarantino, meanwhile, earned a series of vituperatively cruel reviews when he starred in an off-Broadway production of Wait Until Dark. The New York Post's theatre critic declared, "He was far better than I was led to expect. He was merely terrible."

Now... if only Tarantino would direct a film with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, while Coppola directed a film with Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman and Samuel Jackson.

Actually, Steven Sommers will be directing both of them in a remake of Casablanca starting in early fall.

"I know, I know," Sommers waves his hand dismissively as he reclines outside Priscilla's at Coldwater Canyon, then distractedly fingers the edge of his Wherehouse-logo'd bag. "People say it can't be done, that it shouldn't be done. But that's not why I'm in it, you know? Critics just don't understand the trip that, that shooting a project with such a cool history is--it's like, you know, like when someone does something really good, and then someone else goes Hey, hey, let's just soup it up a little bit. That's why cars are classics now, you know, and all these import racers are souping up their cars just like we did back in the day. It still has the feel of a Toyota to the kids, but when you're behind the wheel, it drives like a GTO. That's all I'm saying."

He laughs, taking up his quadruple breve mocha, pausing long enough to adjust the edge of his bag around newly-purchased New York Minute soundtrack to better thwart the Santa Ana wind.

"Different year, different car, but it still goes fast, right?"



----------

At this rate, it's only a matter of time before someone remakes Citizen Kane.

Bortz, you have an evil, EEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL imagination.

I think that's all a mistake. They should go for the shot-for-shot approach in the tradition of Van Sant's Psycho. I mean, who WOULDN'T pay good money to see Tarantino's interpretation of dialogue like "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," or how Jack Black delivers lines like "I'm no cheap, crooked politician, trying to save himself from the consequences of his crimes!"?