Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

damn Mr Jamison, all i want to do is DAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNCEEEEE!!



I heard he had an upcoming project working with Noah Baumbach of Kicking and Screaming fame.

Whit Stillman is the world's most indie film maker.

Yeah. Me too.

I don't see why Whit Stillman is the world's most indie film maker.

the characters in his films are very indie.

Supposedly he's independent wealthy so has no need to work on films unless he really wants to.

I decided this coming weekend I will watch all of his films. I wonder if I'll like "Last Days of Disco" as much as when I first saw it...

I heard he was making a reggae movie (!) next.

A writer/director whose light, urbane sensibility launched him to the forefront of the American independent filmmaking movement of the '90s, Whit Stillman was born in New York City in 1952. The son of a member of John F. Kennedy's Presidential administration and an impoverished debutante, he was raised in the upstate New York area of Cornwall, and later attended Harvard University, where he wrote humor pieces for the college daily. Upon graduating in 1973, Stillman relocated to Manhattan and began working as a journalist. While in Spain in 1980 for his wedding, he met a group of film producers and attempted to convince them that he could sell their movies to Spanish-language cable television stations in the U.S. The producers ultimately agreed, and Stillman spent the next several years as an international sales agent for Spanish filmmakers including Fernando Trueba and Fernando Colomo. He also occasionally appeared in motion pictures, including Trueba's 1982 work Sal Gorda and Colomo's 1984 effort La Linea del Cielo. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1984, Stillman began working at an illustration agency. Over the course of the next four years, he spent much of his free time agonizing over the screenplay of Metropolitan, his debut film as a director. To finance the film, Stillman sold his Manhattan apartment for 50,000 dollars, securing the other 175,000 dollars necessary to complete the project from friends and relatives.

(i admit no guilt w/r/t movies.)

Jane Clark: Why should we believe you over Rick? We know you're a hypocrite. We know your "Polly Perkins" story was a fabrication---
Nick Smith: A composite.
Jane Clark: ---that you're completely impossible and out of control, with some sort of drug problem and a fixation on what you consider Rick Von Sloneker's wickedness. You're a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious and tiresome. And lately you've gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?
Nick Smith: I'm not "tiresome."

Fred: They're calling us pigs. That's meant to hurt!

Montserrat: I think you are too sensitive.
Fred: Oh great, now we're too sensitive.
Fred: I think it's well-known that anti-Americanism has its roots in sexual impotence, at least in Europe.

Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and -
Ted: Really?
Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

Seeing Barcelona again is suddenly urgent and in a very real sense, key.

This probably means I should see all the films again, and kind of want to, but I recall them kind of depressing me while watching, and they seem too long because of that, which makes me always reject the idea. It's a conundrum. Maybe if he just made 25 minute shorts? A specialty-channel tv show? Dear Whit, that would be good.

I feel kind of guilty for how much I enjoy Stillman movies, too, but I think Metropolitan is genuinely good.

And Chris Eigmann [sic] is awesome in anything: "I thought the surealists were just a bunch of social climbers."

Will wait for life to settle down and try again in a different mood, since everyone I love loves Whit Stillman.

I've heard about a million different projects he's supposed to be working on, all of them v. diff-sounding--a Thomas Jefferson thing, a Cultural Revoltion one and, most recently, something set in Jamaica.

I mean this, from Variety in 2003:

Five years after his last movie, "The Last Days of Disco," American writer-director Whit Stillman is developing a Jane Austen project with Brit producer Stephen Evans. Paris-based Stillman, who first found fame with his Austen-esque comedies of preppy manners "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona," is adapting two unfinished Austen novels, "The Watsons" and "Sanditon," into a single script, titled "Winchester Races."

His script merges the character of Emma Watson, a girl returning to her family after a long absence being brought up by her aunt, and that of Charlotte Hayward from "Sanditon," an attractive country girl taken up by a family of comically optimistic real-estate speculators.

Chris Eigeman is indeed awesome. I love his Whitman characters' rants about things, esp. in Barcelona on anti-Americanism and shaving.

He reminds me of TOMBOT.

WS: And these internet things like “whatever happened to Whit Stillman?” (laughs) I wonder the same thing myself.

ha ha.

I wrote a pilot for Chris Eigeman, feature player in Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco. The network loved the script but wouldn't let Chris star in it. (And that is the TV business, folks.)

Meanwhile, Krush Groove, which featured Jonah's brother, is the story of the birth of Def Jam Records, an event for which I was present, as label founder and producing legend Rick Rubin was one of my best friends at NYU. (I actually, ahem, play bass on the first two releases of the seminal hip-hop label.)

Warren Bell as Bernard Edwards!

What does this mean? You are put off them because you perceive them as "trendy"? You feel as though they are not meant for you because you are not trendy enough? What are you on about, man?

The first is snobbish and the second is insecure.

What it is about them that you think is trendy? The fact that they are spoken highly of by some on people on ILE?

At some work thing he told me he used to come to London in the mid-70s just as punk was spunking, due to family friends, but he misspent his time with sockless jet trash at Tramp and Annabel's instead (as you do). I thought he was great.

was gonna say it's deep cuz it's in his blood since his grandfather invented the term "WASP." but turns out with quick search it was just his godfather. but still...

Totally OTM. He made a movie about society preps, about as far from "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" as imaginable. Adapting Jane Austen for NYC debs in the 70s, casting a redhead lead(!), a film about the "UHB" made on a shoestring budget.

The commentary (Stillman, Nichols, Eigeman, plus the editor) is highly recommended. Stillman mentions that his impetus was wanting to make a film set in the present where everyone were dressed formally like in the golden age of cinema (38-45) and the story extended from that thought.

Stillman mentions Carolyn (and others) being typecast in her attempts to continue her career... She was a gal from Queens working a makeup counter from pretty modest background before Stillman's wife found her and brought her to Whit's attention. She "wore" a Manhattan accent for the film. Same with Clements (who had to hide his Canadian accent).

Even Taylor Nichols still gets typecast as a New York preppy, in the commentary he mentions he was born in Kentucky and raised in Michigan until he moved to New York in his mid-twenties.

yes, Stillman's uncoolness was why people paid so much attention to Metropolitan (though, by Disco, he had become, or at least adopted/been adopted by, cool), but I have a feeling that teh pinefox meant that it has become trendy to like him.

At the time they came out, I was pleased by Metropolitan and then very disappointed by Barcelona, but the latter seems maybe the best in retrospect.

no.

last days was no good, i agree.
-- s1ocki (slytus...), March 13th, 2006.

and no!

reading (upthread) of him selling their new york appartment for $50,000 raised a laugh.

He writes for the Guardian today, explaining what he's been up to.

"A screenplay I am working on," said Stillman, "is a college-girl comedy inspired by the Kate Beckinsale character in 'Last Days of Disco.' That character is the leader of a pack in a fictional college in Pennsylvania, a Susquehanna kind of area, not exactly Philadelphia. It will be squeaky- clean. PG-13. She is a gossip fanatic who reads the columns.

"She has a crisis and becomes very depressed, maybe one of her coterie becomes pregnant. Keep the baby is my motto. She is obsessed with the Tattle column, she is a regular reader of the Daily News

From the Philadelphia Daily News

sorry - cut off the end of that quote:

and she ends up feeding important items to the Tattle column about the university president."

Imagine him and Wes Anderson doing their version of Grindhouse.

Funnily enough, I think he and Tarantino have a fair bit in common, both having made flights of conversational fancy a hallmark of their work at a time when talkiness was unfashionable.

Imagine him and Wes Anderson doing their version of Grindhouse

Awesome - someone get them a meeting.

Imagine him and Wes Anderson doing their version of Grindhouse.

-- Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

lol!

[Spanish Woman: You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.
Fred: No.
Spanish Woman: All those people killed in shootings in America?
Fred: Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.]

Am I ever going to get a chance to see this film?

See, I've already waited too long

I think I was wrong to say, years ago, that Stillman was too trendy for me. Maybe it was just the fact that N. liked him so much that made me think that. Or maybe LDD had changed my perception of who liked him. In fact, I saw and loved Metropolitan way back when I was 16, so I shouldn't have had any qualms about continuing to love it - as I do.

N. was quite right to say that Stillman and Tarantino have things in common: the Lady & The Tramp discussion in LDD is probably the clearest example (I have seen) of this.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2267966,00.html

Jesus - this clown has got a whole book out of a 15-second throwaway speech in The Last Days of Disco! Even in the film it feels a bit tired.

In fact - book this clown.

Long interview. He's neither a Fourierist nor a Buckleyite.

Criterion Last Days of Disco

If you have a copy of the first-run DVD, ebay that shit NOW.

NOW NOW MOVE SOLDIER!!!

u can watch this on hulu u know

If you have a copy of the first-run DVD, ebay that shit NOW.

Woot!

Wow. The Last Days of Disco remains a total disappointment. What a waste.

i'm glad i'm not the only one who feels that way...

It's so fucking leaden. The Scrooge McDuck shit is the worst thing he's ever written.

i love last days of disco so much.

such a great movie.

oh, scott...let's go dancing.

i only dance to latin freestyle and hi-nrg. just so you know. but you are in florida, no? that shouldn't be a problem there!

Yeah, pretty sure I'll never see a Walt Stillman film.

yeah

by far my favorite of his films. Partly bcz there isn't much disco in it.

as opposed to his other disco-packed dancefloor romps?

Screening at Lincoln Center on Thursday, with Stillman there.

There's plenty of disco in TLDOD -- he just doesn't have an ear for it or a sense of what to do with the damn tunes.

yeah, it's not really about disco. hate to break it to you!

Yeah, pretty sure I'll never see a Walt Stillman film.

― irreconcilable aesthetic criteria (Eric H.), Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:45 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah

― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:45 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, pretty sure I'll never see another film again in my entire life.

i wish there was a last days of disco t.v. show i could watch every week. forever. until i die. gilmore girls was as close as i ever came. (omg i can't wait to get first season of thirtysomething on dvd!!!! i told maria to get it for my birthday. so, i have to wait until october. oh sweet agony of waiting...)

just impulse-bought the criterion edition last night. i only have a vhs copy currently...

Huh. Well, Last Days of Disco was the first one I saw (unless you count half of Metropolitan on PBS, which I kind of don't), and I was definitely into it, but it's possible it was just that Halcyon Summer of Indie Films (1998) that found me running to the cinema to see Buffalo 66 and The Opposite of Sex and Love! Valour! Compassion! and Whatever and Pecker and Slums of Beverly Hills and Henry Fool and Your Friends and Neighbors and High Art and The Spanish Prisoner. So, you know...

well, he's back and the US and not really doing much
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-25/film/whit-stillman-speaks-eleven-years-after-his-last-film/

yeah there's really no disco vibe at all in Last Days, but i like the film. now Barcelona, that one was boring and dissapointing (Metropolitan easily being his best)

Really? I like Barcelona much more than Last Days.

barcelona is my favorite, though i could probably stand to watch all three again

metropolitan was the only one i liked, but i've not seen any of them since Last Days came out

Barcelona had this strange violent twist and unlike the other 2 (but I guess mainly Metropolitan) it's trying a little too hard. it reminded me of L'Auberge Espagnole.

Well now. Look at who's fancy. :)

i like the first 1/2 of metropolitan

a bit of barcelona

and this was a letdown.

he tends have really nice ideas for... i don't know... let's say, "settings" for films. and a good sense of how to communicate those times and places' vibe, and what actors to populate them with. but i don't think he's really capable of that much more.

i'm not being entirely fair there, he does have a pretty good way with dialogue and simple conversation scenes... which is nothing to sneeze at.

A friend went to his NYC appearance at screening/Criterion party, said someone in autograph line had a copy of Whit's novelization of Last Days of Disco.

i would kind of... expect that? at a signing?

i didn't know there was a novelization!

"I find that a good novelization is more effective. That way you get to enjoy the writer's prose without watching the film."

http://ellenandjim.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/90metaudreytomeveryonedislikesfanny.jpg

ha.

only seen Metropolitan but it made me want to murder everyone involved. do not want

are you sure you weren't just in a murdery mood?

there's an interview in gothamist where he says that he hangs out in dunkin donuts, writing. i didnt expect that.

only seen Metropolitan but it made me want to murder everyone involved. do not want

Oh so YOU'RE one of those public transportation snobs!

Shakey, you don't have to like the characters in films, just like ILX

Shakey was a great enemy of that response when I said similar stuff about Sopranos and Calvin & Hobbes!

Anyway one thing that's sort of interesting (but maybe not entirely brought out) about the amount of disco in the movie is that, kinda unusually, it's basically looking at a club culture from the POV of some of its squarer participants -- not really wealthy enough to be catered to, but prim and upscale and uncool enough that they're barely tolerated (and definitely discouraged from bringing more of their kind). But that is the experience of the thing, for them. (This is a pretty weird POV, and I really appreciate that Stillman has this way of unselfconsciously looking at the experience of a social class that's rarefied and privileged and in a lot of quarters found pretty hateable.) I sorta think that it is, in some ways, about disco, and about the club; it just happens to be about the social experience of those things by people who participated in them in a specific way.

unselfconscious is not a word I would use to describe Stillman's ouevre

(also sorry nabisco yr dislike of C&H will always be inexplicable to me)

spaceman spiff storylines were sooooo tired. in fact, it was too much like what a little kid would come up with. thus, completely boring.

sorry, i've been waiting YEARS to get that off my chest.

I don't believe I used the word "unselfconscious" to describe Stillman's oeuvre!

I think his characters and writing are conscious (and occasionally self-conscious) about class, but I like that he as a filmmaker seems pretty honest and straightforward and non-vexed about telling stories from within this world of "urban haute bourgeoisie"; he's not all sweaty or weird or apologetic about it, he's not interested in glamorizing it or using it in an aspirational way nor is he interested in lambasting it or making huge social points out of it; he seems pretty comfortable and confident about that just being his territory, the thing he knows and writes about, you know?

he strikes me as being very defensive about it

ya isn't metropolitan as much an elaborate defense of that class as a stinging pisstake on it?

i think that anxiety actually makes the film more interesting

hmmm, i don't remember it being either, really, but it's been a while. i think i see him pretty much as nabisco does
xpost

i mean there is some "i'm not going to feel guilty about being in this class" but it's sort of matter-of-fact, not overtly defensive

Yeah, I see a difference between class being something the characters/film deal with (at length) and class as something the filmmaker is defensive about or trying to evade. I mean, I guess I find it hard to imagine a guy who's all that defensive about class making a film about upper-class kids sitting around talking about their own class position, or two other films about markedly upper-class people just being markedly upper-class. You know? He seems casually/curiously interested in it, and then at other points just unstressed about presenting this particular world -- this seems like a guy who just knows his own experience and doesn't feel weird about just speaking what he knows.

He seems casually/curiously interested in it,

seeing as it is his SOLE topic I think he's more obsessed with it than casual/curious

dude you just said you'd only seen Metropolitan, so I have no idea what you're talking about with "sole topic"

busted!!!

I am aware of what his other movies are about. I've seen bits of the last days of disco (sucker for Chloe Sevigny *sigh*). Haven't seen Barcelona.

Barcelona is about some Americans in Spain, mostly, which is similar to the class stuff but is now more about culture and politics. Last Days of Disco is far more about the socializing and social organization of young people, though it does include a sorta Marxist publishing peon who gets on people's case about class, mostly amusingly. (One recurring type with him; another's the cool-guy womanizer his main characters tend to obsess over.)

I think my point is this: I would consider him self-conscious about or "obsessed with" class if he, e.g., seemed uncomfortable with the class of his characters, or tried to evade it, or felt a responsibility to caricature or lambaste it, or made big earnest statements about class, or polemics, or avoided the issue entirely and made crime thrillers, or a lot of other things. But it seems to me that he just writes upper-class characters who are meant to be likable or not pretty much as they are. It's not portrayed as aspirational (like Gossip Girl or films about "normal" people with expensive stuff) or as foreign and despicable (like, I dunno, Law & Order episodes about prep-school kids). Class is obviously something the guy and his characters are aware of and interested in, and they talk about it a lot, usually in a sort of wry and funny way; not passionately or earnestly, but like people who know they're in a rarefied position (upper-class, or "Americans in Spain") and are interested in what that means and what they're supposed to do about it. Sometimes it's an anxiety. But it seems like it comes from someone within that world who's comfortable writing about what he knows and thinks about, and isn't neurotic about just letting those characters be who they are. Someone who's very interested in the background of those characters and how that works, yes, but someone who's comfortable having the characters talk that stuff out up-front, pretty casually.

I wrote that this was unusual because it seems to me that it is, just statistically. I think it's a contrast between Stillman and any number of directors who'd probably be nervous about making their characters too obviously privileged, and definitely nervous about acknowledging it or having them discuss it. Between him and any number of writers/directors who might feel weird making films about acknowledged haute-bourgeoisie without having some polemical point to it or calling out its hidden evils or something. Stillman's haute-bourgeoisie don't seem like a point about class, they seem like who he knows and sorta what he's used to, with all the attendant anxieties about class that might come with that.

(Anyway, he strikes me as way more interested in like socializing and how it works than class itself.)

Haha I guess the short version of that is that his films aren't like "here are the distant wealthy and here is the thing about them" -- they feel more, to me, like "here is the world I happen to know well, which happens to be wealthy, and sometimes wonders about that"

Part of my larger problem with Stillman, despite the immense charm of his first two films, is the thinness of their textures. I'm not expecting vicious satire, but I do expect other signifiers of haute bourgeoisie besides tuxes, Averril Harriman allusions, and shots of the Plaza.

http://www.whitstillman.org/2010/06/03/damsels/

:0

crosspost with the "affectations" thread?

My friend went to a fancy banquet and was seated next to him, didn't even know who he was. (Later she was like, "So this guy is...do people know him? I mean his movies? Should I watch them?" So cute.) I think he gave her the script to read(?!?!?).

He is very approachable and friendly; I didn't find him at all standoffish. BUT I HAVE LOST HIS EMAIL ADDRESS. Gah.

yay!

Oh, fuck you: srsly.

I think she might have been saying yay! about a new Whit Stillman movie just FYI

Suzy, I think you've confused horseshoe with someone else. No way she would be yay-ing about you losing an email, and I get the impression that's what you responded to.

I am suspicious of this as a story idea, but still, Whit Stillman, so yay.

OK fine, sorry - retracted, but HEY the value of x-post, huh?

oh sorry suzy, yeah, i was just happy about the movie! that was dumb of me.

suzy surely u now someone who knows him though

yeahhhhh but I always manaña asking for friends to resubmit contact details. 'Lost' in this case means on the hard drive I last saw at a friend's place five years ago.

New interview!

I like how a couple of the comments are essentially saying "Hey this doesn't have anything to do with theocons!"

great interview! i know stuff but i'm not allowed to talk. about the movie. can't wait!

You're the newest star! We always knew.

Driver...follow that pedestrian.

great interview! i know stuff but i'm not allowed to talk. about the movie. can't wait!

― scott seward, Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:20 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg!

i wish i was in it. i am sworn to secrecy though. if you read this thread you would be able to figure out why. anyway, again, can't wait!

okay i read the thread and omg!

love that interview

excited!

"I like how a couple of the comments are essentially saying "Hey this doesn't have anything to do with theocons!"

Yeah, some of the comments are truly weird - and I admit I read First Things often.
Anyway, very happy to see Stillman back at work.

“And light,” she says. “Everyone always says you’re always running out of light.”

“For my past films, we were always running out of night.”

Love it. Want to watch TLDOD again right now. In fact I might just do that. Fuck the ironing.

So depressing though how much difficulty he has had getting the money together to make another film, and also confused as to how he actually has made a living over the last 12 years. Living in Paris isn't cheap.

yeah i was just wondering how he affords his lifestyle

At one point he mentions doing some adverts in Jamaica for a chocloate company. Perhaps they paid really well?

Sorry, meant Jakarta (but he travlled to Jamaica).

The mundane reasons are that you can actually live here better, cheaper than in New York. I got priced out of New York, I lost my loft in Soho and schools were getting very expensive and actually the situation here is much better in the macro scale. I think when people go to cafés they think it’s all very expensive, but when you’re paying tuitions and rent it’s much cheaper. The more you get.

but yeah sort of wonder how he affords tuitions and rent and everything else. suppose he had that last days of disco novel published ten years ago?

v excited about a new w stillman movie

85 Minutes with Whit Stillman

watching metropolitan again recently, it kind of amazed me how rough so much of the acting and filmmaking was... still charming though.

^^^ had same reaction when i *rescreened* it year or so ago

i mean, for a movie that's so dialogue-driven, the fact that only one actor really "came out of it" into any kind of career (eigeman), kinda says something

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0166221/

:/

taylor nichols has done all right, but yeah

slox:
http://www.queenswaycathedral.com/pastoralteam.html

is that near you?

it looks like it's in toronto?

i'm not sure i 'get it'

take another looky

whoa is that

maybe he'd be up for a "where are they now?". i'd read it.

dude sounds like he's got a pretty interesting life from what it looks like

he skydived!

how did you find that??

Allison Rutledge-Parisi is an attorney, the chief administrative officer for Kaplan, Inc., and a former actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Jane Clark in Whit Stillman's critically acclaimed film Metropolitan (1990).

bizarre

http://www.google.com/search?&q=toronto+pastor+clements

haha ya but how did you find out he was a toronto pastor??!

Carolyn Farina is so cute in metropolitan, wasn't she like a sales girl at macy's or something when she got the part?

yeah she's great in it imo

Oh haha, on his imdb page msg board you linked, someone said he became quickly disenfranchised with the entertainment industry and has been a pastor in toronto for almost 20 years.

ahhhhhhhh

stillman's commentary where he talks about the casting process makes me forgive the roughness (amateurism?) of the cast and performances, i think he was aiming for talent with less experience for better or worse. it's a crazy first film, almost a dare that held up on my last ~*rescreen*~.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6uBlj1OBZg

kind of intriguing interview... on a canadian christian tv show

man i remember reading some interview forever ago w/ whit stillman where talking about the cast of metropolitan he mentioned that one of the cast members was not doing so well and for some reason i just assumed it was tom townshend. so glad he turned out ok! somehow 'found god, moved to canada' is the perfect american graffiti/hot for teacher epilogue. maybe whitman was making some veiled jibe at mind of the married man.

last days of disco is my fave i think (it's got disco) but metropolitan is definitely always going to be the one that meant most to me. huge movie for me in high school, i'm almost afraid to revisit it now. love it when audrey rouget pops up in last days and kate beckinsale talking about her. love you forever ms. farina!

whoa! thanks for the link i watched the whole damn thing.

also, JB, dude didn't move to Canada, that was a home for him (I always wondered how an UWSider had that Canadian accent going on).

is that the mom from that 70s show he's talking with?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH98-0MNsN8&feature=player_embedded

Eigeman is looking like Floyd Landis lol

"So depressing though how much difficulty he has had getting the money together to make another film, and also confused as to how he actually has made a living over the last 12 years. Living in Paris isn't cheap."

I saw a great interview with a poet where the interviewer said, "This is not a get-rich-quick field, is it." To which the poet replied, "It's not a get-rich-slow field, either." Amazing for example that Kurosawa took ten years to make "Ran" and "Kagemusha" (with five year gaps between each) because he couldn't get funding for them... this must have been twenty years after "Seven Samurai"...

i know this is heresy, mayhaps, but 'Metropolitan' was...like...ugh. i can't watch it at all. 'LDOD,' on the other hand, is probably in my top 20 of the 90s.

Stillman's Criterion top 10.

i've never seen big deal on madonna street. or black orpheus.

man notorious is the best thing ever

heh now i see Lombard as the Chloe Sevigny of My Man Godfrey.

yeah that BJ she gives William Powell at the end of the movie is epic.

"cast of archetypal beauty" otm on notorious

I can watch My Man Godfrey anytime anyplace.

lol @ 'my gosh it's long'

Hmmm:

Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they will release Oscar nominated Whit Stillman’s latest film Violet Wister's DAMSELS IN DISTRESS worldwide. Martin Shafer and Liz Glotzer produced alongside Stillman, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film stars Greta Gerwig (GREENBERG, upcoming ARTHUR remake), Adam Brody (THE ROMANTICS, upcoming SCREAM 4) and Analeigh Tipton (CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE with Steve Carrell, America’s Next Top Model).

Violet Wister's DAMSELS IN DISTRESS is a comedy that follows a trio of beautiful girls who set out to revolutionize life at a grungy East Coast university – the dynamic leader Violet Wister (Gerwig), principled Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and sexy Heather (Carrie MacLemore). They welcome transfer student Lily (Tipton) into their group which seeks to help severely depressed students with a program of good scent and musical dance numbers. The girls become romantically entangled with a series of men --including slick Charlie (Brody), dreamboat Xavier (Hugo Becker) and the mad frat pack of Frank (Ryan Metcalf) and Thor (Billy Magnussen)—who threaten the girls’ friendship and sanity.

sounds like an updated version of The Group.

Damsels premiering at closing night of Venice Film Fest.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/festivals/blog/venice-2011-09-10-eccentricities-american-college-life.php

i only skimmed, to avoid plot, but s&s seems to be digging it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zh8oEU3DdE

i wanna see this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXNEHcyuu80

is that..... a person of color?!?!?!?

i went to a party for this but did not watch it

i wanted to stay true to the spirit of metropolitan

he still wants to make his Jamaica movie at some point, too

xxp

Do people talk like that?

nah, people talk like Henry James characters.

very excited/nervous about this

I like Whit Stillman, but they're speaking even more manneredly than Henry James characters. Here's a random James excerpt:

If there was something serious in Nanda and something blank in their companion, there was, superficially at least, nothing in Mr. Mitchett but his usual flush of gaiety. "Did she really send you off this way alone?" Then while the girl's face met his own with the clear confession of it: "Isn't she too splendid for anything?" he asked with immense enjoyment. "What do you suppose is her idea?" Nanda's eyes had now turned to Mr. Longdon, whom she fixed with her mild straightness; which led to Mitchy's carrying on and repeating the appeal. "Isn't Mrs. Brook charming? What do you suppose is her idea?"

I get that people talk about the kinds of things the Stillman characters are talking about, but the way they're saying them is also very unusual. It's been years since I've seen a Stillman movie. Maybe I've put up a wall since then.

a very small subset of young ppl talk sort of like whit stillman characters irl imo iirc

sort of covering the fact that its usually less fluid and successful irl

the job of movies is not to depict the way people talk irl

Neither is it the job of novels.

It's their job to accurately depict how well the people filmed or written about talk.

mumblecore

person of colour but with ridiculously over-enunciated british toff vowels. he's prob trying to make a point here.

adam brody's in this? of course. of course he is.

no suzy but he totally tried to sleep w/ my friend last night it was p lol

anyway if i can get up early enough i think ill go see this tomorrow

!!!

While doing press for his latest, which closes the Venice Film Festival this weekend, Stillman told Variety that he would still like to make the Jamaica-set “Dancing Mood.” We told you way back in 2008 that he was considering directing this drama, set within the church music scene of Kingston, Jamaica in the years 1962 to 1966, but it seemed as if he was focusing all his attention on ‘Damsels’ at that moment.

Stillman says that if he can’t, “set it up via traditional methods, we’ll use our own resources, do the film on a small budget.” Considering that he hasn’t directed a film since the Criterion-certified “Last Days of Disco” in 1998, we’re guessing that any potential financiers are probably waiting to see how Venice audiences respond to “Damsels” first. Frankly, it’s been so long, we’re hoping the picture, already scooped up by Sony Pictures Classics (a good sign) goes over like gangbusters. On the aforementioned Criterion disc, Stillman said work on “Dancing Mood” began during his discovery of reggae and dub during the making of ‘Disco.’ He called it a spiritual film, but one with fantastical elements as well, that could prove to be expensive. “So the script has angels and demons and it turns out I picked about the hardest film there is to get financed in the world,” he said.

super-excited about Dancing Mood tbh i hope he gets to make it. even if it's terrible.

yeah that sounds amazing

no suzy but he totally tried to sleep w/ my friend last night it was p lol

― Lamp, Tuesday, 13 September 2011 23:20 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

man or woman?

no suzy lol

hear this ends in a musical number

xps well duh, but it's something people talk about and criticize when they talk about movies and books.

So I saw Damsels in Distress (2011). There's something about the fact that THIS is what we get after 13 years that makes it even funnier, like that bit in The Big Lebowski with the doodle, crossed with Jack Torrence's typewriter. You could find much fault with the the direction, and the film sure does sag badly in places. And ultimately I wanted more of Violet and a bit less of most of the others. But A++ for the laughs from all those things that had made Whit chuckle to himself and scribble down in a notepad. Bear in mind I found Be Kind Rewind the funniest film of 2008.

(I can confirm it ends in a musical number)

bring on the dancing mood

http://www.whitstillman.org/2011/12/28/metropolitan-2/

No objection to the event at all but:

If you want something to remind you of Metropolitan‘s magic, James Wolcott has just written for Vanity Fair about it being “the movie that best captures the mood of Christmas”.

Yeah I'll take my A Christmas Story marathons, thanks.

so did this come out? is it on dvd yet?

i think its only played festivals so far but iirc i got picked up for distro by sony classics so im sure itll be out in 10 months or so

http://www.whitstillman.org/2011/12/28/metropolitan-2/

― buzza, Wednesday, 4 January 2012 22:56 (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kinda unforgivable to tease METROPOLITAN II: ROGUE JUSTICE in the url when in fact it's a webstream of plain ol' metropolitan one

I loved the Wolcott post on Metropolitan actually -- and he's right that the movie's ideal during Xmas time.

schlump otm, I was expecting Metropolitan 2: Revenge of the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie.

starring Rick Von Slonecker and an Uzi.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/damsels-in-distress,69310/

does he have family money? wtf does one do for 13 years? he's like the terrence malick of modest behaviorist indie filmmakers.

i would imagine that would be fairly likely, all things consids

I am too young to have watched this guy's films in the 90s but the Damsels in Distress trailer is somehow intriguing to me despite the fact that I'm not sure exactly what it will be like

90% chance I'm interested because of Greta Gerwig's sad, sad eyes

Hasn't he sometimes claimed he made some money doing various translations? Which would actually fit with the wealthy family thing.

does one actually make money doing translations?

I suppose some do, but anecdotally I associate it with a certain strain of trustafarianism

I sort of doubt Dalkey Archive is paying the big bucks exactly

If only Momus were still around to fill us in on that.

does he translate stuff into WASP?

this movie looks horrible!

did i mention that my brother-in-law edited this movie? hahaha! i did already 5 times. yeah, i've heard mixed stuff about it, but i'm sure there will be stuff in it that i would like. there's gotta be.

i think momus translates into ponce

does he have family money? wtf does one do for 13 years? he's like the terrence malick of modest behaviorist indie filmmakers.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:49 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

a guy who wrote and shot 'metropolitan' probably has family money, yeah

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100382150

cool. did anyone here read it?

skot, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now, how come you always seem to have the inside dope on Whit Stilliman's goings on?

Haven't read it, but not out of animosity towards the author, just that I have a big pile of other Dalkey Archive titles that I haven't got around to reading yet.

i don't really know much about him! i'm just a fan of the first three and my bro-in-law edited two of the four. but he has never really told me anything juicy about him. i'd like to meet him!

andy is married to maria's sister. he's great. i love hanging out with both those guys. we will be staying with them in march during the EMP thing at NYU. he only edits arty things. he did Bully. and Ken Park. and some other arty stuff. but it was kind of a blast when i met him to find out that he worked on last days of disco cuz i love that movie. some people hate it.

Who doesn't like Last Days of Disco? Oh, I see upthread. I liked the first three fine, resisted Barcelona when it came out, now I'm OK with it.

Don't know where I got the translation thing from, maybe misremembered. What he did do was act in Spanish movies and help sell Spanish movies overseas.

I really love the three other Stillmans, but DAMSELS is seriously one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

i thought stillman made a lot of money on wall street or smth

it kinda looks weird enough for me to like. even if its bad. but i could see how it could be bad. and there are people who like his other stuff, but don't like this. i still will see it when i can. i have no idea when! i doubt it will play around here. maybe in amherst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0RrTl3tA1w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1istTQm8hE

Whoa: an old interview with none other than Kathryn Jean Lopez

broken link

nm

Lopez: Your club experience as portrayed in the movie was different than the caricature of it, in other movies like Ice Storm, wasn't it?

Stillman: Yeah, I hated that movie, Ice Storm. I thought that was a typical cliché version of the period. It just didn't ring true to me. I didn't believe it.

Song called "The Last Days of Disco" on the new Saint Etienne album.

he was selling yachts.

I met him when I dj'd an afterparty for a Metropolitan screening but not when I dj'd an afterparty for a Last Days of Disco screening.

I saw him recoil his hand when someone went to shake it and I thought "oh snap!" but then he did it to me and said he had a cold.

I had printed out lists of the songs I brought because I was djing off iPods and he took it from me, grabbed a pen and put stars next to the songs he really approved of.

years ago my wife worked for someone who went to school (probably prep school) with whit and this guy really had disdain for him. i think it was sort of political (stillman is sort of blue blood yankee republican, no?) but maybe also that stillman was just a slacker type, idk. anyway i love metropolitan, think last days is pretty solid, have mixed feelings about barcelona although i need to *rescreen* it since i haven't seen it since its original release. i will seek out his new one for sure, regardless.

Long story in the NYT magazine

going to an advance screening of this tonight (if i can get in). the trailer looks adorable. i am very pro-gerwig, being the one person on ilx who really liked greenberg.

i thought greenberg was fine.

Can't stand Gerwig's line readings, and this looks like a Whit Stillman parody by the woman who wrote Gilmore Girls. Love the last three movies, but will wait for Netflix on this one.

i don't think you can really learn very much about a film by its trailer, no?

you can if that film is 2 Fast 2 Furious.

i really liked greenberg too

i don't think you can really learn very much about a film by its trailer, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3Om9WjgpQ

i really like gerwig in everything shes been in

no strings attached shoulda been about her

can't believe Last Days of Disco is still in the red.

i was thinking the other night that gerwig was born to be in a whit stillman film someday

can't believe Last Days of Disco is still in the red.

― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 1:17 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait waht

can't believe LDoD cost $8 M (I guess Beckinsale, Sevigny & RS Leonard were still 'hot')

i really like gerwig in everything shes been in

wait, max, you watch mumblecore movies?

WAIT

HOLD the PHONE

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RwdH5DTKRas/TO1Wb_ys1WI/AAAAAAAADlo/64A_HcTpWkM/s400/stop+the+presses.jpg

I can see max having LOL or Nights and Weekends on if he's walking around the apartment while his gf makes dinner, maybe

in the nude

malcolmcore

nah just kidding ive never actually seen a movie

... w/ a $72 budget.

no i only watch tv

on my iphone

nice, most convenient way 2 do it!!

waiting to see Joe Swanberg's first film in Farsi on my wristwatch

http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-03-28/film/whit-stillman-in-distress/

He sounds pretty bummed.

I enjoyed this!

whit stillman is a very youthful 60

Yeah, he didn't look that old at all.

nb I had to ditch most of the Q & A tonight but I saw the first bit. I wish I could have stuck around. Utopianism is a good entry point for this film, and that's what he was talking about when I left.

plenty of NY appearances next couple days

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/whit-stillman-in-new-york

I'm going tomorrow, apparently! Me! To a film thing!

I may go too

I'll be there tonight and tomorrow.

I'm guessing Laurel means Brooklyn and VP Astoria?

Ah, laurel should come to bk to see the whit in person. Omg, I just realized Chris Eigeman will be present tonight.

The Siren interviews Stillman

I believe Stillman was in both places, directors work it when stuff opens.

A fan of Big Deal on Madonna Street:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/damsels_in_distress/news/1924873/five_favorite_films_with_whit_stillman/#newsletter

This was pretty good. Loved Greta Gerwig referring to Real McCoy's "Another Night" as a "golden oldie."

i am very pro-gerwig, being the one person on ilx who really liked greenberg.

Nah, I loved Greenberg.

whatever i disliked about greenberg, it had nothing to do w/ gerwig

indeed

i dug gerberg

nyt review is mostly positive.

but its not a rave or anything.

still, it makes you want to see it. if you read movie reviews in the nyt.

same w/ new yorker review. loved greenberg, LOVE gerwig. stoked for this.

Once I got accustomed to its...idiosyncracies...I really liked it.

Even though that scene reminds me of Fat Girl and that's weird.

Even though that scene reminds me of Fat Girl and that's weird.

the one where the girl is raped by the guy who kills her mother and sister?

spoiler alert

http://gothamist.com/2012/04/06/wtf_happened_at_that_lena_dunham_wh.php

well i missed something 'scandalous'

luv that pic, looks like LD was about to go full "g"

I enjoyed watching it in the same way I might enjoy watching Mean Girls and reading Myra Breckenridge at the same time. what most excited me though is the hope that stillman might become active again, which I guess means I didn't think it was great. he introduced the film so that was neat (sadly, he is not quite a whit stillman character himself), and It's definitely fun if you don't work too hard trying to resolve the politics of the thing.

nobody told me duquan from the wire was in damsels!!!

gerwig was great and it was really funny. kind of felt unfinished; my sister said she thought it was more like a bunch of short stories than a full narrative.

agree that it felt unfinished. his films have always had an oddly-paced, episodic feel with lots of plot threads left untied, but this didn't quite meld with Damsel's campy, almost bubblegum sheen. like, when you end a movie with consecutive song-and-dance numbers, you expect this is because everything has suddenly become resolved (ala Hairspray lol).

Glenn Kenny has thoughts on The Last Days of Disco, and how Lena Dunham's assessment of it (and her Tiny Furniture) relates:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/04/disco-mystic-and-the-dunham-variation.html

yeah it was a funny way to phrase dunham's question, given how horrible charlotte is. but i take it to be a big concern of hers, depictions of female friendship, which i dig. stillman's non-response was pretty annoying tbh but i still love him.

Was just telling NY/Buffalo crowd that I'd never seen a Stillman movie, ended up seeing this at the Landmark Sunshine the following night. At first I thought it was clunky and embarrassing and I wasn't sure what it was aiming for, but then it suddenly took off and became a lot of fun.

what a weird movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UCVmNb05Rw

damsels is ok. its really cute and amusing, but maybe not funny. there were parts where i didnt really understand what he was doing. glad hes making stuff again though

yea i didnt think it was funny really at all. kinda thought it was a waste of time for everyone involved including me watching it

i was lollin

I found it deeply strange but also warm and charming.

I walked out of the theater disappointed that it wasn't a masterpiece like Metropolitan or Last Days of Disco, but a few days later I feel very warmly towards it in retrospect -- it is such a rare thing for a movie to be authentically strange! This one was. I am grateful Stillman is in the world and making movies. Like, I saw the Avengers this week too, which is I guess a "better-made" movie in some sense, but Damsels will stay with me longer, for sure.

"authentically strange" sounds about right to me. Apparently that isn't true about the Cathars. Violet's OCD and depression and ambiguous possible aborted suicide attempt were the most effective bits of the movie for me. Don't know if I enjoyed the movie enough though to watch it again and try to follow Violet's thread a little more closely.

Like, I saw the Avengers this week too, which is I guess a "better-made" movie in some sense, but Damsels will stay with me longer, for sure.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, May 20, 2012 9:54 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

thats funny because i was thinking while watching it that it was going to be one of those movies where x years down the line i will be incapable of remembering if i even saw it

yea i didnt think it was funny really at all. kinda thought it was a waste of time for everyone involved including me watching it

― johnny crunch, Sunday, May 20, 2012 8:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this.

i thought it was also kind of poorly made.

like, mistimed reaction shots and awkward framings and actors kind stranded on occasion.

Was the sound mixing bad too or was shit in my theater just going wrong?

'actors stranded' otm - the guy who played frank seemed like he was crying out to be, y'know, directed

i feel that way about his earlier films, too. some great performances but also some ones that are just kind of floating there.

see, and i thought frank was amazing, one of the most note-perfect performances i've seen in any recent movie.

in some ways i think this is stillman's "dazed and confused" (another movie I love much more than most people do) in its commitment to vignettism as a representation of the way it feels to be young and unmoored

I thought most of ILX was cool with D&C.

everyone loves dazed and confused. but yeah, i liked frank and thought damsels was funny. the thing amateurist describes just seems like a stillman movie thing.

all of dude's movies are pretty "poorly made" tbh

or, what everyone else said

i wouldn't go quite that far, but he isn't some filmmaking genius that's for sure. his films have a lot of charm though.

i remember back in the early-mid 1990s when everybody was lumping him in w/ hal hartley (because of... stylized dialogue?) and i was thinking, "um, hal hartley is actually a really really confident and sophisticated filmmaker."

i think he's a total filmmaking genius for sure!

on what level?

i dont know, like i think his movies are perfect. i can see how someone who values different things could see them as lacking but for me he nails everything that counts

i like his movies too, i just don't think he's very accomplished as a visual storyteller or whatever.

yeah i don't know, i guess i don't really know what that means to be accomplished as a visual storyteller. no film is a success when judged by all criteria, but great films succeed on their own terms. whit stillman films aren't visual spectacles and usually look modest, but they are visually appealing (actors & actresses in them are generally attractive, settings are usually nice) enough so as not to distract from the dialogue. i mean, i definitely don't wish that his movies looked more like wes anderson's

I'm with amateurist. I like Manhattan despite missed visual and verbal cues (of which there are plenty). Sometimes his setups are worse than TV.

er, Metropolitan

Ô_o

Metropolitan is really well edited. It moves swiftly toward a fully formed gestalt while remaining more or less plotless until the third act. Christopher Tellefsen pulled off the same thing in Kids, which is otherwise dreadful. (Weird trivia: Tellefsen and Andrew Hafitz, the only other editor Stillman has worked with, have both done two movies with Larry Clark). The visuals are nothing special, but it looks pretty good, the lighting especially, given the constraints. It's hard to argue the formal virtues of Barcelona and Last Days. They're both clunky, but Damsels seems downright incompetent.

He's always had problems with blocking, but I think that most of the performances in the first three are impressive: it's hard to sell all that dialogue in an at least nominally naturalistic fashion. Almost every actor in Damsels seems like they had been directed for different movies.

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/08/trust_me_on_this_abbey_road/

Great article!

“Certainly some things are better than other things, right? And really, yes, I am saying you’re an idiot, that’s true, but it’s for your own good. Cry as much as you like, but you need to know these things.”

Pretty sure this quote could be posted on just about every ilx thread ever.

I hadn't realized from skimming reviews of DiD that its style was magical/neo-Shakespearean comedy, especially all the identity-hiding and switching. The scene like the one where Violet passes the soap around at the diner -- it's almost like A Mid-Semester Night's Dream. In the last third it's a little more strained than funny, though.

This is the most polished Gerwig comedy performance I've seen.

Also Adam Brody's character OTM on homosexuality.

my sister said she thought it was more like a bunch of short stories than a full narrative.

oh for sure, and not a problen.

so worth seeing? it was playing at the local theater here for like 5 days and by the time i convinced myself to go despite the poor reviews it was replaced by some jason seigel comedy

The reviews weren't exactly "poor." A little divided, which non-cookiecutter style will draw.

Had no problem w/ the guy playing Frank btw. From Miriam Bale's Slant review:

As noted in the press notes, this is the first film for Ryan Metcalf, who plays Violet's idiotic former beau. ("Do you mind if I try a version that's a little broad?" Stillman remembers Metcalf saying of the moment when the role clicked.) Stillman doesn't get a Chris Eigeman-type to play dumb because that would have been condescending. But the amateur playing broad comedy opens up some breathing room in Stillman's highly enunciated, dense comedy. The clash of styles in this film is bewildering and then disarming.

Yeah, I'm pretty fond of this one in fits and starts.

i didnt think he was bad, but i just felt like he was flailing around in his scenes, which were mostly unfunny

i think thats the directors fault btw.

sorry, I lol'd at him and other stuff

maybe it was more the movie's timing that i was responding to, i dunno

I remembered that 'golden oldie' too! Memorably atrocious even for a dance hit.

Stillman said that the "golden oldie" was going to be Cher's "Believe," but it was too expensive to license.

Would've made for a hysterically incongruous frat party soundtrack, tho.

I had forgotten what a hilarious monster Kate Beckinsale is in Disco. Also maybe the funniest and most pathetic Eigeman character.

Many of the club scenes were shot in the Loews movie palace in Jersey City, which I've been to several times now.

damsels in distress was super!

it's easy to do!

...

do the cha cha cha for two step.

and so on.

ah...cha-cha

<3 A Conversation With Whit Stillman About The Script Of 'Metropolitan'

Just last week listened to the Treatment interview with Stillman--good stuff.

One of the criticisms I get of the film is that all its energy goes out once Nick Smith leaves. I can see how people react that way, because you're getting a lot of the fun and comedy from Nick. A lot of these things, frankly, I did not catch as the writer of the script. People had to bring it to my attention.

I loved DID. Adam Brody fit perfectly in this world.

as did gerwig i thought! my liberal pc self might've blanched at brody on homosexuality if i hadn't heard the same thing for years from some of my older queer friends (see also paris hilton on grinder for that matter). was so happy to see dookie from the wire pop up in this, in some part of my brain it means 'he got out' like w/ michael on 90210 or randy on suburgatory.

and Wallace faked his own death and turned into a high school football star!

haha! as long as that little shit kenard doesn't pop up in anything.

DiD made me laugh a lot more than I thought it would. Pretty uneven, yes, but I think "the clash of styles in this film is bewildering and then disarming" pretty much sums up how I eventually felt. I want to watch it again, too, which is odd for this kind of movie.

The last twenty minutes are bewildering.

I'm not even sure why but i quite liked it too. It's oddly charming

I need to watch again to remember. Iirc it did lose its way and fumbled towards a resolution (which it didn't even really need). I was surprised the musical numbers weren't as effective as I thought they'd be.

Yes "oddly charming" was about how I was going to describe it, too. That, or charmingly surreal.

This is the sort of movie for which adverbs are redundant.

ha i haven't watched the last 20 minutes yet (wife wanted to go to sleep) but i'm loving this so far. really funny.

I loved it.

who can doubt that class and erudition have generally vanished from 'homosexual life'? and I haven't even seen Glee.

The march toward equality takes no prisoners. Except femmes.

Just got done with Metropolitan and now after six or so weeks can call myself a Stillman completest. How A-dorable was Carolyn Farina? "You really think I'm flat-chested?" Easily his least movie tho: as noted upthread the acting is uneven and the transitions suck.

Would Rank: Barcelona>The Last Days of Disco>>Damsels In Distress>>>Metropolitan

that rank cray

you nuts, metropolitan the platonic ideal of which the rest are shadows

ok, maybe that's not quite fair, last days of disco is kind of its own thing which over the years has been creeping ever closer to metropolitan in my estimation

I'm close to thinking DID is his best.

something about whit stillman breeds challops like tulips in may

I haven't seen LDoD since it came out, but with that in mind:

Barcelona > Metropolitan > Damsels In Distress > The Last Days of Disco

Barfelona

Metropolitenoutoften

Chris Eightoutoften

just had a very nice, semi-lengthy conversation with none other than T@ylor Nich0ls (unnece$$@ry g00glepr00fing)

super nice guy, talked a lot about whit and why whit never made it to the "big leagues"

shook my hand when he left and complimented me! A+ barroom chat, would hang with again

i haven't seen DiD but i am glad people are repping for barcelona which i mean i dunno if i was having a weird night or something but i completely loved it, whereas as great as metropolitan is i don't think i've ever had as much fun watching it as i've had reciting lines from it; it is me and writer friends' holy grail. i don't mean holy grail like the object of a quest.

i brought up barcelona and he rates it higher than metropolitan fwiw

dude. awesome.

my inveterate barfly ways finally paid off

he probably rates Barcelona higher cos he's the main character

Did you ask Nich0ls about UHB?

Does T4ylor Nich0ls talk like an ordinary guy?

that was the funny part, his voice and slight stutter are so distinctive, I was totally having flashbacks to metropolitan. it was cool how he and the bartenders were talking acting, one of them had done a lot of acting in Chicago and knew the Mamet regulars pretty well. they asked me who he was when he left, one had seen him in Barcelona but the other didn't know who he was.

he was in a "Murder, She Wrote" episode in the early nineties as a museum curator or something.

Good Grief, according to imdb, he was on "Murder, She Wrote" four times in the space of four years, playing a different character each time.

He also played Custer on an episode of "Dr. Quinn".

where the hell is the Barcelona DVD reissue/Criterion treatment

Warner reissued it as a Warner Archive DVDr. I actually just broke down and got the disc for my birthday. It's a straight port of the old oop pressed disc, with all of the extras (commentary, deleted scenes etc) intact.

Supposedly a few years ago Criterion had struck a deal w/Warners to get ahold of some of their indie-type stuff, including Barcelona and Linklater's subURbia, but nothing was ever really confirmed. A poster on the criterionforum sight got to ask Stillman about it during the press tour for Damsels... and he said that he'd tried to persuade Warners to license it out, but no dice and that he'd felt the moment had passed for them to change their mind.

HOWEVER, Kim Hendrickson of the CC recently confirmed a deal of some sorts has finally been struck w/the WB. Badlands is coming, along with "a pre-code" title and possible some other films they can't talk about yet. Add to that a posting on the WB Archive Facebook page re:their reissue of once-pressed titles wherein they said to not count out future pressed bluray editions of those films (which, in addition to the Stillman, include Victor/Victoria & the og Get Carter amongst others), so...

hold out hope?

whoa, barcelona is print-on-demand? thats weird! i guess that's how things go with back catalog these days?

That's how Warner does it.

Shit Stillman.

i like how the whit stillman and hal hartley threads are currently neck and neck. it's like 1992 all over again!

I watched damsels in distress on the plane last night, so funny! I was lolin out loud

Damsels in Distress was great. Very funny. I love how you slowly begin to realize that what you're seeing onscreen may not be objectively portrayed and then you begin to wonder what is real and what is peer-group reality-bubble - much like the experience of adolescent social life itself.

interview with my brother in law about editing and whit and other things:

http://spoileralertradio.libsyn.com/andrew-hafitz

already posted elsewhere -

Absolutely adored DID. A rare example of a movie that got better and better and better the more it went on, to the extent where I'm obsessing over it now. I see very few films that create and sustain their own reality like this - I would even describe it as one of the few genuinely surrealistic American films of recent years. A gentler, more polite, more naively prone to snobbery yes perhaps but more compassionate reality, where the impossibility of all the characters - the nobly dumb fratboys, the perpetually self-possessed (even in despair) damsels, especially Violet, whose brazen, luminous impossibility is allowed to tear through the fabric of our given reality by that glorious ending. So yes - a film with no obligation to fulfil any logic but its own.

remember when that guy didn't know colors?

A rare example of a movie that got better and better and better the more it went on,

I noted the same thing but then realized I had to reacquaint myself with his rhythms.

Whit Stillman ‏@WhitStillman
Yes thx we didn't have a prayer but “@adam_the_k: I hope list of Top 10 Oscar Snubs consoles @WhitStillman: http://nextprojection.com/2013/02/12/top-ten-2012-oscar-snubs/ …”

adam_the_k has a rather stillmanesque surname

just had a very nice, semi-lengthy conversation with none other than T@ylor Nich0ls (unnece$$@ry g00glepr00fing)

ha this just happened again, such a nice guy!

middle-aged dads be *makes drinky-drinky hand gesture*

SO JEALOUS

Ha, I rescreened both Metropolitan & Barcelona in the last couple weeks.

Feel like it is approaching the time for my semi-decadal sighting of Chris Eigeman.

http://www.deadline.com/2014/01/amazon-eyes-comedy-pilot-from-whit-stillman-drama-from-shaun-cassidy/

I thought for a minute the title meant it was the Metropolitan cast decamped to Paris, but then I realised they'd be a bit old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcyGHb53-Fs

I just watched the Metropolitan trailer for the first time in over 20 years. It used to play before every film at my university film society for a while.

I don't understand the TV business well enough to read that link properly -- does it mean there's a 10% chance I get a Whit Stillman sitcom, or a 90% chance I get a Whit Stillman sitcom?

where's suzy when you need her

Can't say I'm still in touch with Whit. But I am friends with someone who'd know a ton about Amazon Studios.

come on you could say you were still in touch with whit

whit's a big armond white fan I found out via his twitter

From the URL, thought Stillman was creating a show about Shaun Cassidy.

I'd think closer to 90% than 10%

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

has a novel coming... Love & Friendship: An Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Unfinished Novella Concerning the Beautiful Lady Susan Vernon, Her Loves and Friendships, and the Strange Antagonism of the DeCourcy Family

http://www.thewrap.com/whit-stillman-writing-jane-austen-inspired-novel

and now it's a movie, set to shoot this summer so this looks like it's actually happening - http://www.screendaily.com/news/austen-comedy-lands-at-efm/5066432.article

:D

A letter Whit Stillman wrote to the New York Times in 1974.

http://i.imgur.com/Gvz0431.png

The most Whit Stillman-esque Whit Stillman letter ever

That post, like the tiny record shop thread and geeshie wiley discussion before it, made my day.

It's great, isn't it? It's as if it comes straight from one of his scripts.

Good job there, guy

https://twitter.com/WhitStillman/status/472040503522127872

A$AP Chris L ‏@brittonlowe 10m

“@WhitStillman: Death to Hip-hop” Aw c'mon, Stillmatic.

404

yeah whatever that was it's gone now. ned, care to fill us in?

Stillman tweeted "Death To Hip Hop", and several ilxors hard sonned him (kudos to JBR for "The Notorious U.H.B.")

For some reason I can still see the tweet minus the responses on my phone.

Twit Stillman

Chloë Sevigny and Whit Stillman on Their Amazon Pilot The Cosmopolitans

omg

IKR! Psyched!

Whoa!!!

!!!!

oh of fucking course whit stillman's too aspirational for netflix

(!!!)

It's live! It's free! Everyone go watch it!!!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MR9WT7Y

did anyone watch it

So even a free first episode can't be watched in Europe? Fuck that.

Milksops, pipsqueaks, oh this is the stuff. <3

So even a free first episode can't be watched in Europe? Fuck that.

Free version of VPNReactor gave me the 30 mins of US proxy time I needed.

Finally remembered to watch "The Cosmopolitans" pilot. Liked it alot and sent positive feedback. Nice to hear Stillman loading the soundtrack with Uptown Soul. He's kind of underrated as a soundtrack director.

I love this man very much, thats all

i loved the pilot. i will watch this show faithfully.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/15/whit_stillman_if_racism_is_not_socially_acceptable_why_is_class_prejudice/

Trying to imagine what a Stillman-authored ep of Sanford & Son would look like.

It’s a problem, of course, because I think racism is not acceptable, but having class prejudice, people can pat themselves on the back for. It’s reverse class prejudice. Millions of people have been killed for being bourgeois. Should there be consciousness about that? How much of the hatred of anti-Semitism was a class thing, because the Jews of Germany were successful economically? Categorizing people economically and hating them because you think they’re this way is a prejudice.

:/ :\

Millions of people have been killed for being bourgeois.

if Whit's keeping score he seems to have missed a salient point here

“They’re not embarrassed about being prejudiced if they’re being prejudiced upward,” Stillman said. “You should be embarrassed if you’re bigoted, no matter which way the bigotry runs.”

lol this guy

How much of the hatred of anti-Semitism was a class thing, because the Jews of Germany were successful economically?

and this man I can't even

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wveW9Tw2JKE

I've only seen one of his movies

I am completely unsurprised by that pullquote

i love his films and the dialogue of his characters

i don't have a lot invested in either his political or historical opinions

I like the movies I've seen (Metropolitan and the Last Days of Disco) okay, he does write funny dialogue

but yeah this is totally unsurprising

He's always been a relatively conservative guy fighting for the rights of the rich. That's what Metropolitan is all about! It mourns the tragic passing of American aristocracy. Doesn't mean I don't love it, though.

Although it's not the point he's making necessarily, I do think that the wealthy have a perspective and stories to tell etc..., and that a film or show or whatnot is not intrinsically bad because it's about the problems of people of the upper class.

The Surrealists were just a buncha social climbers.

I think he had a point when he was talking about people just lazily assuming the characters are "aimless" because they're shown in a single day of leisure.

for a "smart" guy whit stillman is awfully dumb

unless he's aspiring to lars van trier-like levels of trolling

I do think that the wealthy have a perspective and stories to tell etc..., and that a film or show or whatnot is not intrinsically bad because it's about the problems of people of the upper class.

yes, sure, absolutely. the interview is silly because the aristocracy shd never whine.

still witless

all whit, no wit

TBF I enjoyed Metropolitan (which is what I watched) but on the whole it was like a John Hughes movie with less humor and slapstick

whoa

anyway this episode is basically redolent of john irving losing it at the rich being discriminated against. good artists can say dumb things when fighting perceived inverse discrimination

anyone who's ever paid attention to his movies can not possibly be surprised by this

his movies, tbf, while set in bourgie milieux, are more imo about universals of fellowship & empathy, and espouse what is often a subversively surreal methodology

this is coming from someone with a hair-trigger response to unexamined bourgie presumptuousness

for reasons of lamentable overexposure obv before u all start zinging

*doesn't comment*

Amazon orders scripts, not episodes for Cosmopolitans

I've made it deeper into Cosmopolitans than I did Metropolitan, but I think that might just be that I like Chloe Sevigny and the guy from the OC.
Still kind of awful.

Just saw Taylor Nichols on an ep of Newsradio playing the representative from Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor.

adapting Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as Love and Friendship, with Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny:

“Beckinsale will portray the widow Lady Susan Vernon, who has come to the estate of her in-laws to wait out rumors about her dalliances circulating through polite society. She decides to secure a husband for herself and her rather reluctant debutante daughter. The cast includes Xavier Samuel and Stephen Fry, the long-suffering husband to Lady Susan’s friend and confidante, portrayed by Sevigny. Filming begins in Ireland this month.”

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/kate-beckinsale-chloe-sevigny-reunite-in-love-and-friendship-1201421435/

zzzzzzz

WELL!

Stillman doing a Jane Austen... next thing Tarantino will be doing a snuff film and Chris Nolan a 3D IMAX adap of the phone book.

yeah, white on white, so to speak.

Perhaps he should have challenged himself by adapting and filming criticism of Jane Austen instead.

https://mobile.twitter.com/WhitStillman/status/649332929194233858

https://www.criterion.com/films/28691-barcelona

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MaSK3POHI0

get hype motherfuckers

beckinsale 4ever

The Last Days of Disco prequel we always wanted.

I don't see Chris Eigemann in there anywhere. I don't know about this.

stephen fry :(

Stilton doing an Austen riff in period-appropriate drag feels a bit too on the nose to me, as his films were already covert Austen adaptations.

This does remind me, though, that I still need to see Damsels in Distress.

*Stillman

stillman's really scraping the bottom of the austen barrel here.

beckinsale 4ever

― scott seward, Wednesday, March 23, 2016 2:56 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone on ILX once expressed a postulate that as the movies she was in got more and more lowbrow, kate beckinsale got hotter and hotter. wonder how this film reflects that.

someone should re-score that trailer to li'l jon

Love & Friendship was really wonderful!

A Thread for Whit Stillman's "Love & Friendship"

I finally saw DAMSELS IN DISTRESS.

Naturally it is quite good, maybe it's even very good compared to other films? - but I couldn't really it was that good compared to other WS films, which is a high standard.

It was possibly a bit too light for its own good. Or are they all pretty much equally light?

The incidental music seemed too intrusive and repetitive. The whole film seemed somewhat cheap. But then METROPOLITAN looks cheap, at least once you've watched the director's commentary, and is one of my favourite films of all.

I think if I had seen it in a cinema full of WS fans (which I didn't), it would have made me laugh along with them.

The above are probably standard views. Here is one slightly newer thought:

Has anyone remarked on how its musical ending pre-empts LA LA LAND?

I love Love and Friendship! I've watched it several times, as it feels like the most comforting movie in a long time

One of the things that amazed me (in a bad way) about DiD was the awful sound mixing/recording in some of the outdoor scenes. You'd think for a studio-distributed film, they could have gotten a few extra thou to fix that.

But I liked the film a lot anyway.

"Damsels In Distress" was good. Refreshing to see a depressive person imbued with a mean streak (Gerwig). Not always the usual fare in movies.

Tend to agree with Aerosmith - the sound balance in this film was not the best - whether this was about recording or the mix with the music.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP I think is superior and very good. DID seems more like a stepping stone back to that level.

Love & Friendship was superior in every way, yeah. Especially like how it opens with a nod to Kubrick with the scoring.

DiD made me laugh about five times as hard as L&F, which counts for something in a comedy, I suppose.

I enjoyed DiD more than L&F too. I think it would be easy to pick it apart, but I laughed hard and thought Gerwig was utterly charming.

I've avoided seeing it precisely because of Gerwig.

I don't love her in everything, but I thought it was kind of a perfect part for her.

Gerwig was perfect yeah

The Amazon pilot is getting rebooted into a spy series.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/whit-stillman-the-cosmopolitans.html

This is great to hear! I really liked The Cosmopolitans pilot.

His commitment to making the series happen puts me in mind of the Sambola!

And he's still hoping to make his Jamaican film.

Haven't made it through the whole interview, but having not really known a lot about Stillman himself previously, I'm amazed how autobiographical his early movies were (worked in publishing in the late '70s, moved to Barcelona afterwards etc.).

I'd been fearing just this. pic.twitter.com/dLLH5HVkfC

— Whit Stillman (@WhitStillman) June 24, 2020

Stillman on Twitter is really leaning into "lifetime white-shoe Republican repulsed at what his party has become"

Despite the Gerwigmania gripping our nation, not only is Damsels In Distress OOP on both DVD & Blu, it's also not streaming except as a rental from Direct TV (or as a purchased download from the usual suspects).

Somebody should get on that.

and the Cosmopolitans pilot while they're at it.

Oh yeah, that's not officially available<anywhere>

Except there's a epk promo on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Il8Xc8UYPA

He's Got An eBay Store!

https://www.ebay.com/usr/westfilm2012

I don't like to buy original items, I prefer to look at ebay listings, that way I get the content of the original item *and* the viewpoint of the seller who wrote the ebay listing

y'all I just rewatched "Damsels" recently and it's GREAT, completely preposterous in the absolute best way, get this shit back in print