1970s San Francisco was a place where a young girl and her widowed, gay father could live a fun, unconventional life. That was writer Alysia Abbott’s childhood before the AIDS epidemic. She wrote about it in Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father , and the story resonated with filmmaker Sofia Coppola, who helped turn it into a film set for wide release on October 10.

Actor Scoot McNairy portrays Steve Abbott, who raises his daughter Alysia, at first played by Nessa Dougherty, after his wife dies in a car crash. They move to San Francisco, a city where he was able to live freely as a poet and novelist, a gay man and single dad.

“Why do you only have boyfriends and never girlfriends?” Alysia asks him in one scene in the movie.

“Because your mother was my favorite girl,” he tells her. “And I c

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