Gore Vidal inspires Sophia Coppola



Gore Vidal in Fredrico Fellini's Roma

To whom do we have to give credit for Sophia Coppola's astonishingly shitty wine in a can concoction? Oddly, that would be Gore Vidal, America's greatest living Essayist and dryest wit. On his best day, Gore Vidal can make Oscar Wilde seem semi-literate. How, you ask, does he bare blame for that four pack of citrusy tasting Ass-in-a-can? According to Point to Point Navigation, Vidal's melancholy final tome, it has to do with his inspiring Francis Ford Coppola, a fellow screenwriter for the stinker Is Paris Burning?, who, in turn, turned on his daughter to the fiery waters:

"Recently, Francis told me that I had turned him onto wine which, in turn, led to his becoming one of the leading winemakers in the United States. I asked him how I'd made this contribution. 'Remember when we'd go out to lunch and you'd have a glass of wine and so would I though I didn't particularly like it at first? I associated wine with the older guys in the family who always drank red wine out of these Gallo jugs. I thought it was strictly for Italians hung up on the old country. Then you started talking about French wine and I was hooked.'"

As always, Francis Ford Coppola's Weltanshauung begins through the chiroscuroed prism of what The Family dictates and then, after contact with other human beings not named Coppola, slowly Evolves. We love Gore Vidal, for the astonishing scene in Burr when the former Vice President relates how he killed Alexander Hamilton, for 1876, for The Golden Age, for his hysterical dissection of the Commentary Magazine Gang, "The Empire Lovers Strike Back," and for the urbane appearance in Fellini's Roma -- but for inspiring Sophia Coppola's Blanc de Blancs? That, my good man, is unforgivable (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment).