Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

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