the Whit Stillman Poll

I like to fantasize about going clubbing with Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, so I picked The Last Days of Disco

...but I do love all three.

first half of metropolitan i guess? i like barcelona for sentimental reasons tho it's not that good... and last days of disco flat out sucks.

Cannot (and I've tried) stay awake through Metropolitan and Barcelona was downright painful(ly embarrassing for everyone involved). So I say Disco for giving Chris Eigerman the perfect role.

barcelona

scrooge mcduck is so sexy

i knew i messed it up
There's something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.

also, Rick von Sloneker

Metropolitan, easily.

and last days of disco flat out sucks.

This is sort of o_O.

o_OTM

I vaguely remember sort of liking Metro. I guess I enjoyed LDOD in spite of, well, a lot of things. I passed straight out about 17 minutes into Barcelona, never tried again.

Barcelona has the best Chris Eigerman schtick so that one.

OMG DISCO PWNS SLOKI GO HOME

ULTIMATE: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qC7aqg7qzSQ !!!

Metropolitan, but I do love Chris Eigemann in Barcelona. I like Last Days of Disco!

"it's a composite. like New York magazine does!"

"it's a composite. like New York magazine does!"
-Nick Sylvester

I keep not-voting and thinking maybe I'll decide later, but ... this is too hard for me. Pure clunky low-budget Stillman (M), assured less-claustrophobic semi-conventional Stillman (LDoD), or a kind of midpoint between the two (B)? I think the answer is some kind of high-budget version of Metropolitan with costumes and disco, called Metro Disco.

Wait, I'm going to vote for Metropolitan, based on it not having that thing where it's 3/4 of the way through and he's not sure how to push the plot along so someone has to go to the hospital

Last Days of Disco (Sevigny, Beckinsale, Keeslar all totally hot)

Ha, one thing I like about LDoD: Sevigny has this particular cute-face that she makes in lots of things, but it's a very conscious cute-face, like a look that is DEPLOYED for specific purposes; this movie is really smart about having her continually use it in that way, where she makes her hard-to-resist cute-face but she is doing it for specific reasons within the plot.

Similarly, it's one of few films to have figured out that no matter how much Hollywood would like Beckinsale to be some kind of cute lovable leading lady and/or action hero, she kinda comes off like a totally awful icy mean-girl, and is most compelling when cast accordingly.

Did I ever ask on ILX how it works when Audrey Rouget is in Last Days of Disco as what appears to be a grown-up publishing person, even though Metropolitan would seem to be set slightly AFTER that time period?

yes you did! i have spent way too much time trying to figure stuff like that out. taylor nichols has a brief cameo in LDoD, also, and I try to figure out whether he's Barcelona-taylor nichols or Metropolitan-Taylor Nichols.

Well but his whole cameo involves talking about great sales opportunities with a company in Spain, doesn't it?

oh fine. shut up it's been a while since i've seen it.

I still say it would have been funnier if he'd said "wow, there's a manager here who looks EXACTLY like my cousin!"

i think i said this on the other thread, but he appears twice - as both characters.

i think he's even credited as such... could be wrong, though.

on imdb he's listed as Charlie Black & Ted Boynton
xp

I feel like I have to bow to Lauren now

I also feel like there is something we're supposed to be getting out of Carlos Jacott's appearance in it (the guy walking the dog), but I have no idea what; the only connection I can imagine being winked at is, like, Kicking and Screaming

"Mansfield Park?! Why, it's a notoriously bad book! Even Lionel Trilling, one of her biggest defenders, says so."

"Well, if Lionel Trilling said that, he's an idiot."

ahaha "I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism."

boy, does my mother enjoy that line (re: trilling).

nabisco, i think that the nichols as ted cameo is way more memorable because he actually has a few lines. as charlie, you just see him solicitously escorted audrey.

Isn't Metropolitan fairly ambiguous about when exactly it takes place, it just says like "Some time in the past" or something like that? It always seemed to me to be taking place in the late 60s/early 70s, so Audrey's age in LDoD worked fine for me.

It says something about the recent past; I've always interpreted it as early-80s. Late 60s never crossed my mind -- if that's the idea, he's asking for a lot of leeway with regard to clothing and car models!

But if Audrey is all grown up and a well-known editor by the disco era, I suppose early-70s it must be ...

....not naming names but i think that somebodies need to rent the criterion editions and listen to the director commentaries...

someone with more free time and a longer attention span than me, clearly

DVD commentaries: what the world never needed

Metropolitan makes me want to vomit. I like Barcelona, but Last Days of Disco has to win. Perfect portrayal of that generation and class, with a killer soundtrack, and lots of amaaaazing one-liners. More than in his other movies, I think.

LDD is great. And it's got to be at least 1978 because of the speech at the end which mentions Travolta and Newton-John. I always assumed it was 1978 for some reason.

pretty sure it is later than that.

i don't really understand how people can have such varying opinions of these movies. they seem of a piece to me.

metropolitan=about girls

barcelona=about boys

ldd = about disco

pretty sure it is later than that.

Isn't there mention of yuppies? I might be wrong. When were yuppies anyway?

yeah, there are 5 billion mentions of yuppies.

metropolitan = don't hate me because i'm rich
barcelona = don't hate me because i'm american
last days of disco = don't hate me because i like clubbing

(this may sound like i'm making fun, but i actually like the way stillman goes at this stuff, which tends to be complicated and aware and worthwhile)

no that seems right. those three are all kind of the same thing.

f scott?

jane austin?

fourier

i'd guess oscar wilde too

he says jane austen & tolstoy and then some other author/novel that i can't make out at 9:40 here

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/3494

can you figure that out?

■The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (unabridged edition)
■Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
■Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy
■Portrait of Max: An Intimate Memoir of Sir Max Beerbohm by S.N. Behrman
■The Price Was High: Fifty Uncollected Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

otm re fitzgerald, his short stories were his best work

can you make out what he's saying in that charlie rose clip, mordy?

i cannot

Salinger!

"Essay on Man" is awesome for its epigrammatic virtues.

lol "The Price is High" I read as a senior year high school Fitz obsessive.

have any of you read his (stillman's) novel?

Bought a ticket to see him introduce The Last Days of Disco on Thursday. He's here Wednesday for Metropolitan, which is probably the better film; just felt like seeing Last Days instead. (I've still never seen Barcelona.) I feel like I should wear a bow tie for some reason.

Baumbach gets points for Carlos Jacott, a Whit Stillman actor who never appeared in a Whit Stillman movie.

I just want to pedantically point out that Carlos Jacott actually does have the tiniest of cameos in Last Days of Disco

that is a pivotal scene

I liked The Last Days of Disco more than the couple of times I saw it when it first came out. I probably liked it as much as I can like a film where every conversation sounds like lines being read. Great music, of course, and excellent Demme-like coda.

The Q&A was an ordeal. First of all the guy running it took up the first half-hour--I just wanted him to shut up and turn it over to the audience. Stillman mumbles and rambles--I could barely understand him. (It wasn't the acoustics; I could hear the other guy fine.) If I did hear one thing correctly--Stillman saying that by 1969, black music had disappeared from the radio--his memory is either extremely faulty, or he was listening to some format other than Top 40 radio. 1970-72 was one of the greatest periods for black music on Top 40 radio ever. If he meant that there were obscure proto-disco records not being played on the radio, then I'm sure he's right about that--even though something like Chakachas' "Jungle Fever" was a big hit.

Watched Barcelona for the first time last night. It has its flaws but I loved it like nothing I've seen in a long time.

despite the fact that someone is shot and there are explosions, it has only the vaguest notion of a plot, just Eigeman and Taylor hanging out 80% of the time.

^This. I guess how compelling this is to you determines whether or not you'll like this...

barcelona is so good.

i recommend this insane collection of rightwing stillman criticism: http://www.amazon.com/Doomed-Bourgeois-Love-Essays-Stillman/dp/1882926706

25th anniv podcast for Metropolitan

http://www.filmlinc.org/daily/the-close-up-whit-stillman-and-cast-talk-metropolitan/

so YOU'RE one of those public transportation snobs!

last days definitely the worst of these three. i still love it but it's stilted in a way the others aren't. maybe the acting isn't as good, obviously he writes the least natural sounding dialogue ever but in metropolitan you can kind of suspend disbelief and just live in the dream, in the flow of precocious & perfectly crafted sentences.

best most LOL thing about last days is how it's the period piece least concerned with being a period piece... not that it was outright anachronistic (altho i feel like some of the dudes had 90's hair and the female leads' dresses were too tasteful for '79, like GIS studio 54 1979) but he just didn't really gaf about evoking the 70's, just wanted to write a movie featuring his favourite songs and some well dressed folk, didn't fuss over set design, just throw on some high-waisted pants

when I saw LDOD a few years ago for the second time I also thought it stilted and the first time his limited visual imagination cramped the film. I didn't buy the discos -- they looked like cheap sets. But I wanna watch it again.

I guess his Amazon pilot didn't get picked up?

I have seen Barcelona and Last Days of Disco. Of these two I enjoyed both, but enjoyed Barcelona more. Neither one was exactly awesome, but they each had their good moments, while their lesser parts were never too long or too bad. Solid B or B+ material, imo.

XP It did not.

man I thought LDOD was so wonderful and Barcelona so dull!

I would recommend watching Metropolitan, Aimless, before you give up on him. It's my favorite.

'damsels in distress' was on film 4 last night. it was hard to know what to make of it. there's an off-putting stilted implausibility to it but greta gerwig plays the part of a daffy snob to perfection. i would have watched it all but it was late and i was too tired.

man, chloe sevigny in last days! i can't even!!

“East Hampton seagulls are complete morons.”

I was chuckling to myself the other day thinking about the railroad apartment stuff in TLDoD.

metropolitan >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

so YOU'RE one of those Criterion edition snobs!

I don’t watch movies. I prefer a good Criterion essay. That way you get both the filmmaker’s ideas as well as the critic’s thinking.

I posted about Last Days above, eight years ago, when I saw Whit Stillman introduce it. I watched it today in advance of a Zoomcast on disco movies.

"I probably liked it as much as I can like a film where every conversation sounds like lines being read." I should narrow that down. Chloe Sevigny's good; she seems like an actual person. Kate Beckinsdale and most of the others are okay--not anybody I know in real life, but they work in the context of the film. The guy I can't stand is the Des character. Not just the character, who I realize isn't supposed to be likeable--I mean the performance, too. Everything. The film would immediately be improved by a performance with a little shading there.

"Great music, of course, and excellent Demme-like coda." The soundtrack is often great, even if it's like a Time-Life disco collection--other than the absence of Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and a couple of others, it's the Most Famous Mainstream Disco Songs throughout. The two really great musical bits for me are, again, the coda (even though he inserts a cut I don't really get) and Chic's "Everybody Dance."

It's weird how all the gay and black and outlandish Studio-54 characters are relegated to the edge of the frame, while these Whit Stillman types work out their Whit Stillman dramas in the midst of it all. But I guess better that he films what he knows than fake his way through something else. Josh's big disco-will-never-die speech at the end is funny, even if it's nestled in so many layers of irony I'm not sure how to take it.

I was going to post Kate Beckinsdale/Parker Posey on the I-get-them-mixed-up thread, till I was reminded that that's about name confusion.

I never saw Barcelona, but I would say his 2010s films are more amusing than the ones from the 90s. He's stopped pretending to be a realist, and the colourful art direction helps me swallow the archness. He can't direct anything other than people talking to one another, though; he's like the patrician Kevin Smith.

Metropolitan is a movie I can watch over and over and over.

― windy = white, carl = black (polyphonic)

especially at this time of year

I watched Metropolitan for the first time since (maybe?) when it first came out (I've been revisiting some '80s / early '90s movies). It was cute and enjoyable – the dialogue is funny, without being too overbearing or precious (not an easy feat, considering the specifics). There are a few real laughs, and the screenplay was clearly polished.

It does have a few issues, though – the movie begins with a brief scene that suggests the rest of the story is a flashback, but the "framing narrative" doesn't come back up at the end(?). Also, the most interesting character disappears 2/3 of the way through. The movie ends somewhat abruptly, and feels like it needed at least one more scene to wrap up both these loose ends. Maybe it was an artistic choice (on both counts), but it leaves the impression that maybe they just ran out of money...

Also, the direction and "tech specs" are mighty ruff; just a few notches above a student film (that's a true indie, I guess). I assume Stillman's directing got better – I think I saw his next two films, but don't remember much about them. He does get good (if somewhat stilted) performances out of this cast, who seem to have been mostly amateurs.

You need to watch his last two films.

What is it with Stillman's dialogue where specific scenes finally become hilarious the 10th or 11th time you hear them? The one from Barcelona is my current fave:

Ted Boynton: There's a lot of anti-NATO feeling here.

Fred: Anti what?

Ted Boynton: Anti-NATO.

Fred: ANTI-NATO?

Ted Boynton: Yeah... Well, actually here it's OTAN.

Fred: They're AGAINST OTAN?

A friend of mine mildly admired Metropolitan until I told him that it is intended to be a period piece. He preferred it as the story of an anachronistic group of sheltered, cultured young people in the late 80s.
Though I suspect Stillman is sloppy about chronology, the mention of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie would have to make it at least 1972.

isn't there a boombox in one of the final scenes in metropolitan?

Stillman wanted to set the film in the past, possibly in the pre-Woodstock 1960s, but the budget did not allow for a strict period film to be made. Instead, he added period details to give the film an "aura of the past", like vintage Checker Cabs, and generally excluded anything too specific to the present day.

that period ambiguity elevates the film to a classic, and also adds a surreal element that, for example, Damsels In Distress intentionally heightens

(which is also mandatory viewing)

Were there car-rental chains in the '60s?

There may be one or two vintage cabs (which I think were still on the road anyway?), but also regular, late-model taxis... nothing in the movie struck me as ambiguous in terms of time period. Also, the characters' central concerns – decline of their social status, changing social norms – seemed specific to the late '80s, and sync up well with the end of the Reagan era (recession is mentioned). But maybe people like that, to the extent they "really exist," would have had the same anxiety in the '60s. Maybe they still do today!

They're obviously a weird, cloistered sect but (IMO) it's almost more "fun" to imagine them existing like that in the '80s than it would be if Stillman had the $$$ to achieve a period setting.

There have been car rental chains for about as long as there have been cars. Hertz goes back to the 20s, at least.

idk I took the timeline seriously. If the film came out in 1990, then the film is set in the early to mid '80s. The anachronism of deb balls coincides with the Reagan era's sudden interest in silly costumed customs.

i put it (anachronisms aside) in the late 60s or so, to jibe with audrey rouget's appearance in the last days of disco. obviously the taylor nichols character in tldod and barcelona is a time traveler or djinn of some sort. this is now WSCU (whit stillman cinematic universe) canon.