Not many people had gay dads who died of Aids': Andrew Durham and Sofia Coppola on movie memoir Fairyland

A video call begins with a story about accidentally outing a gay father when the director was nine or 10. The film being discussed is adapted from a memoir about a childhood and adolescence with a gay father who came out after the mother’s death. The memoir’s events are reflected in the film through a blizzard of glitter and feather boas, birthday parties, and adult drug use. The director’s own life overlaps with the memoir: he grew up in the Bay Area in the 1970s, spent weekends with his father after his parents separated, and later cared for him after an HIV diagnosis. Both fathers died in 1992.

"Also like Abbott, in later life Durham nursed his father after he contracted HIV. Both Steve and Jerry died in the same year, 1992. A true auteur' producer Coppola and director Durham. Photograph: Leon Bennett/Getty Images No wonder Coppola, who optioned the book, thought Durham would be a perfect director for the film."

Read at www.theguardian.com