Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

the characters in his films are very indie.

Supposedly he's independent wealthy so has no need to work on films unless he really wants to.

I decided this coming weekend I will watch all of his films. I wonder if I'll like "Last Days of Disco" as much as when I first saw it...

I heard he was making a reggae movie (!) next.

A writer/director whose light, urbane sensibility launched him to the forefront of the American independent filmmaking movement of the '90s, Whit Stillman was born in New York City in 1952. The son of a member of John F. Kennedy's Presidential administration and an impoverished debutante, he was raised in the upstate New York area of Cornwall, and later attended Harvard University, where he wrote humor pieces for the college daily. Upon graduating in 1973, Stillman relocated to Manhattan and began working as a journalist. While in Spain in 1980 for his wedding, he met a group of film producers and attempted to convince them that he could sell their movies to Spanish-language cable television stations in the U.S. The producers ultimately agreed, and Stillman spent the next several years as an international sales agent for Spanish filmmakers including Fernando Trueba and Fernando Colomo. He also occasionally appeared in motion pictures, including Trueba's 1982 work Sal Gorda and Colomo's 1984 effort La Linea del Cielo. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1984, Stillman began working at an illustration agency. Over the course of the next four years, he spent much of his free time agonizing over the screenplay of Metropolitan, his debut film as a director. To finance the film, Stillman sold his Manhattan apartment for 50,000 dollars, securing the other 175,000 dollars necessary to complete the project from friends and relatives.

(i admit no guilt w/r/t movies.)

Jane Clark: Why should we believe you over Rick? We know you're a hypocrite. We know your "Polly Perkins" story was a fabrication---
Nick Smith: A composite.
Jane Clark: ---that you're completely impossible and out of control, with some sort of drug problem and a fixation on what you consider Rick Von Sloneker's wickedness. You're a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious and tiresome. And lately you've gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?
Nick Smith: I'm not "tiresome."

Fred: They're calling us pigs. That's meant to hurt!

Montserrat: I think you are too sensitive.
Fred: Oh great, now we're too sensitive.
Fred: I think it's well-known that anti-Americanism has its roots in sexual impotence, at least in Europe.

Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and -
Ted: Really?
Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

Seeing Barcelona again is suddenly urgent and in a very real sense, key.

This probably means I should see all the films again, and kind of want to, but I recall them kind of depressing me while watching, and they seem too long because of that, which makes me always reject the idea. It's a conundrum. Maybe if he just made 25 minute shorts? A specialty-channel tv show? Dear Whit, that would be good.

I feel kind of guilty for how much I enjoy Stillman movies, too, but I think Metropolitan is genuinely good.

And Chris Eigmann [sic] is awesome in anything: "I thought the surealists were just a bunch of social climbers."

Will wait for life to settle down and try again in a different mood, since everyone I love loves Whit Stillman.

I've heard about a million different projects he's supposed to be working on, all of them v. diff-sounding--a Thomas Jefferson thing, a Cultural Revoltion one and, most recently, something set in Jamaica.

I mean this, from Variety in 2003:

Five years after his last movie, "The Last Days of Disco," American writer-director Whit Stillman is developing a Jane Austen project with Brit producer Stephen Evans. Paris-based Stillman, who first found fame with his Austen-esque comedies of preppy manners "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona," is adapting two unfinished Austen novels, "The Watsons" and "Sanditon," into a single script, titled "Winchester Races."

His script merges the character of Emma Watson, a girl returning to her family after a long absence being brought up by her aunt, and that of Charlotte Hayward from "Sanditon," an attractive country girl taken up by a family of comically optimistic real-estate speculators.

Chris Eigeman is indeed awesome. I love his Whitman characters' rants about things, esp. in Barcelona on anti-Americanism and shaving.

He reminds me of TOMBOT.

WS: And these internet things like “whatever happened to Whit Stillman?” (laughs) I wonder the same thing myself.

ha ha.

Perhaps he should have challenged himself by adapting and filming criticism of Jane Austen instead.

https://mobile.twitter.com/WhitStillman/status/649332929194233858

https://www.criterion.com/films/28691-barcelona

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MaSK3POHI0

get hype motherfuckers

beckinsale 4ever

The Last Days of Disco prequel we always wanted.

I don't see Chris Eigemann in there anywhere. I don't know about this.

stephen fry :(

Stilton doing an Austen riff in period-appropriate drag feels a bit too on the nose to me, as his films were already covert Austen adaptations.

This does remind me, though, that I still need to see Damsels in Distress.

*Stillman

stillman's really scraping the bottom of the austen barrel here.

beckinsale 4ever

― scott seward, Wednesday, March 23, 2016 2:56 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone on ILX once expressed a postulate that as the movies she was in got more and more lowbrow, kate beckinsale got hotter and hotter. wonder how this film reflects that.

someone should re-score that trailer to li'l jon

Love & Friendship was really wonderful!

A Thread for Whit Stillman's "Love & Friendship"

I finally saw DAMSELS IN DISTRESS.

Naturally it is quite good, maybe it's even very good compared to other films? - but I couldn't really it was that good compared to other WS films, which is a high standard.

It was possibly a bit too light for its own good. Or are they all pretty much equally light?

The incidental music seemed too intrusive and repetitive. The whole film seemed somewhat cheap. But then METROPOLITAN looks cheap, at least once you've watched the director's commentary, and is one of my favourite films of all.

I think if I had seen it in a cinema full of WS fans (which I didn't), it would have made me laugh along with them.

The above are probably standard views. Here is one slightly newer thought:

Has anyone remarked on how its musical ending pre-empts LA LA LAND?

I love Love and Friendship! I've watched it several times, as it feels like the most comforting movie in a long time

One of the things that amazed me (in a bad way) about DiD was the awful sound mixing/recording in some of the outdoor scenes. You'd think for a studio-distributed film, they could have gotten a few extra thou to fix that.

But I liked the film a lot anyway.

"Damsels In Distress" was good. Refreshing to see a depressive person imbued with a mean streak (Gerwig). Not always the usual fare in movies.

Tend to agree with Aerosmith - the sound balance in this film was not the best - whether this was about recording or the mix with the music.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP I think is superior and very good. DID seems more like a stepping stone back to that level.

Love & Friendship was superior in every way, yeah. Especially like how it opens with a nod to Kubrick with the scoring.

DiD made me laugh about five times as hard as L&F, which counts for something in a comedy, I suppose.

I enjoyed DiD more than L&F too. I think it would be easy to pick it apart, but I laughed hard and thought Gerwig was utterly charming.

I've avoided seeing it precisely because of Gerwig.

I don't love her in everything, but I thought it was kind of a perfect part for her.

Gerwig was perfect yeah

The Amazon pilot is getting rebooted into a spy series.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/whit-stillman-the-cosmopolitans.html

This is great to hear! I really liked The Cosmopolitans pilot.

His commitment to making the series happen puts me in mind of the Sambola!

And he's still hoping to make his Jamaican film.

Haven't made it through the whole interview, but having not really known a lot about Stillman himself previously, I'm amazed how autobiographical his early movies were (worked in publishing in the late '70s, moved to Barcelona afterwards etc.).

I'd been fearing just this. pic.twitter.com/dLLH5HVkfC

— Whit Stillman (@WhitStillman) June 24, 2020

Stillman on Twitter is really leaning into "lifetime white-shoe Republican repulsed at what his party has become"

Despite the Gerwigmania gripping our nation, not only is Damsels In Distress OOP on both DVD & Blu, it's also not streaming except as a rental from Direct TV (or as a purchased download from the usual suspects).

Somebody should get on that.

and the Cosmopolitans pilot while they're at it.

Oh yeah, that's not officially available<anywhere>

Except there's a epk promo on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Il8Xc8UYPA