Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

(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.