Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

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?