Lauding Coppola

SOFIA COPPOLA is the most original, exciting American director of my lifetime -- and I was born in 1938 [Letters, Nov. 12].

Pauline Kael (my friend from 1962 until the day she died) would have loved Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides,” “Lost in Translation” and “Marie Antoinette.” Jean and Madame Renoir would have loved Coppola’s movies too.

I met the Renoirs when I was a student at Immaculate Heart College in the late ‘60s. I was invited for dessert with Renoir and his lovely wife. For 5 1/2 hours, we talked movies nonstop: his own and those of Truffaut and Godard, especially. Jean Renoir was a great friend of Kael’s.

RICHARD CRAWFORD

Los Angeles