Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

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!