Whatever happened to Whit Stillman?

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?

he strikes me as being very defensive about it

ya isn't metropolitan as much an elaborate defense of that class as a stinging pisstake on it?

i think that anxiety actually makes the film more interesting

hmmm, i don't remember it being either, really, but it's been a while. i think i see him pretty much as nabisco does
xpost

i mean there is some "i'm not going to feel guilty about being in this class" but it's sort of matter-of-fact, not overtly defensive

Yeah, I see a difference between class being something the characters/film deal with (at length) and class as something the filmmaker is defensive about or trying to evade. I mean, I guess I find it hard to imagine a guy who's all that defensive about class making a film about upper-class kids sitting around talking about their own class position, or two other films about markedly upper-class people just being markedly upper-class. You know? He seems casually/curiously interested in it, and then at other points just unstressed about presenting this particular world -- this seems like a guy who just knows his own experience and doesn't feel weird about just speaking what he knows.

He seems casually/curiously interested in it,

seeing as it is his SOLE topic I think he's more obsessed with it than casual/curious

dude you just said you'd only seen Metropolitan, so I have no idea what you're talking about with "sole topic"

busted!!!

I am aware of what his other movies are about. I've seen bits of the last days of disco (sucker for Chloe Sevigny *sigh*). Haven't seen Barcelona.

Barcelona is about some Americans in Spain, mostly, which is similar to the class stuff but is now more about culture and politics. Last Days of Disco is far more about the socializing and social organization of young people, though it does include a sorta Marxist publishing peon who gets on people's case about class, mostly amusingly. (One recurring type with him; another's the cool-guy womanizer his main characters tend to obsess over.)

I think my point is this: I would consider him self-conscious about or "obsessed with" class if he, e.g., seemed uncomfortable with the class of his characters, or tried to evade it, or felt a responsibility to caricature or lambaste it, or made big earnest statements about class, or polemics, or avoided the issue entirely and made crime thrillers, or a lot of other things. But it seems to me that he just writes upper-class characters who are meant to be likable or not pretty much as they are. It's not portrayed as aspirational (like Gossip Girl or films about "normal" people with expensive stuff) or as foreign and despicable (like, I dunno, Law & Order episodes about prep-school kids). Class is obviously something the guy and his characters are aware of and interested in, and they talk about it a lot, usually in a sort of wry and funny way; not passionately or earnestly, but like people who know they're in a rarefied position (upper-class, or "Americans in Spain") and are interested in what that means and what they're supposed to do about it. Sometimes it's an anxiety. But it seems like it comes from someone within that world who's comfortable writing about what he knows and thinks about, and isn't neurotic about just letting those characters be who they are. Someone who's very interested in the background of those characters and how that works, yes, but someone who's comfortable having the characters talk that stuff out up-front, pretty casually.

I wrote that this was unusual because it seems to me that it is, just statistically. I think it's a contrast between Stillman and any number of directors who'd probably be nervous about making their characters too obviously privileged, and definitely nervous about acknowledging it or having them discuss it. Between him and any number of writers/directors who might feel weird making films about acknowledged haute-bourgeoisie without having some polemical point to it or calling out its hidden evils or something. Stillman's haute-bourgeoisie don't seem like a point about class, they seem like who he knows and sorta what he's used to, with all the attendant anxieties about class that might come with that.

(Anyway, he strikes me as way more interested in like socializing and how it works than class itself.)

Haha I guess the short version of that is that his films aren't like "here are the distant wealthy and here is the thing about them" -- they feel more, to me, like "here is the world I happen to know well, which happens to be wealthy, and sometimes wonders about that"

Part of my larger problem with Stillman, despite the immense charm of his first two films, is the thinness of their textures. I'm not expecting vicious satire, but I do expect other signifiers of haute bourgeoisie besides tuxes, Averril Harriman allusions, and shots of the Plaza.

http://www.whitstillman.org/2010/06/03/damsels/

:0

crosspost with the "affectations" thread?

My friend went to a fancy banquet and was seated next to him, didn't even know who he was. (Later she was like, "So this guy is...do people know him? I mean his movies? Should I watch them?" So cute.) I think he gave her the script to read(?!?!?).

He is very approachable and friendly; I didn't find him at all standoffish. BUT I HAVE LOST HIS EMAIL ADDRESS. Gah.

yay!

Oh, fuck you: srsly.

I think she might have been saying yay! about a new Whit Stillman movie just FYI

Suzy, I think you've confused horseshoe with someone else. No way she would be yay-ing about you losing an email, and I get the impression that's what you responded to.