In the years when American independent film was
still fighting for its place in theaters, usually only one or two Amerindies a
year broke wide. In 1990, Whit Stillman's Metropolitan was one of them. A
reserved, witty portrait of the New York City debutante-ball season, based on
Stillman's own experiences as an upper-middle-class kid with super-rich
friends, Metropolitan
announced Stillman as a filmmaker with a uniquely positive perspective on class
privilege. But he took four years to follow up his Oscar-nominated debut with
the even-more-mannered Barcelona, and four years after that to complete his
unofficial "yuppie trilogy" with The Last Days Of Disco–both also loosely based
on his own experiences. And while Stillman has been rumored to be working on
several new projects that depart from his first three films, fans are still
waiting. In conjunction with the new Criterion edition of Metropolitan, Stillman
spoke with The
A.V. Club about his sensibility, his influences, and whether he's ever going
to get back to work.
The A.V. Club: When are you going to make
another movie?
Whit Stillman: [Laughs.] I just finished
a script last week that's the first script I've wanted to shoot since Disco. I'm just beginning to
show it to people, and I hope to get it off the ground soon.
AVC:You've been attached to two or three other
projects since your last film, including a Revolutionary War drama and an
adaptation of two unfinished Jane Austen novels.
WS: Yeah, my very slight alibi–though I don't really
have an alibi–is that I've been working on a number of things that I hope at
some point will come through at a faster pace. But it must look pretty
pathetic.
AVC: Isn't there something to be said for just
grinding it out, the way Woody Allen does, putting out a movie a year?
WS: I don't think so. I'm not that smart. Woody Allen
is a genius. He's really funny, and it all just pours out of him in a really
funny way. I feel kind of limited, in that I have to work on things a lot to
get them to a level that I consider respectable. So that's one of the time
factors. Also, I think that the first ideas I get, like a lot of other
people's, are just total clichés.
AVC: Is this all a version of what Taylor
Nichols' character in Barcelona describes as "Maneuver X," to play it coy and get
your fans to come to you?
WS: Exactly. If I couldn't control demand, I could at
least control scarcity.
AVC: You recorded a commentary track for
Criterion's Metropolitan
DVD, which must've made you nostalgic both for the time when you made the
movie, and for the time represented in the movie.
WS: Yeah. The nice thing about it was the chance to
get together with some of the people on the crew, and the actors. I've been
living abroad, but I see the actors quite a bit because I go to the places
where they live, which is Los Angeles and New York. But John Thomas, the
cinematographer, came in to help with the color timing of the transfer, and the
editor, Chris Tellefsen, came in for the commentary. It also gave me a chance
to show them the script for the new film, so it was good that way. It's odd,
after so many years of not doing anything, to be working on the last production
phase of the first film, and also the first phase of what I hope will be the
fourth film.
So, to answer your question, yeah, the experience
of making the movie is covered in the warm glow of nostalgia from 16 years ago,
plus having that backward look on real people and events. I'm still in touch
with the people I was writing about. I got in touch with them again through making Metropolitan. A lot of the women I
went to those parties with, I had lost touch with them before the movie, and we
actually showed them the movie in rough cut to see what they thought of it, and
we've stayed in touch.
AVC: Do you feel like the characters in the
movie would've stayed in touch like that?
WS: Yeah. In fact, I think we did that in Disco. Not necessarily the
characters you'd entirely expect, but the idea was that the Metropolitan crowd would show up at
the disco, because people from my real Metropolitan experience were at those
discos in the period. So I think four of the Metropolitan characters are in The
Last Days Of Disco,
plus a couple of the actual people I knew in the period.
AVC: Those scenes in The Last Days Of Disco
work a lot like the closing scenes in Metropolitan and the closing scenes
in Barcelona,
in that they all introduce a note of hope into movies that are about a golden
era coming to an end.
WS: For me, the present is a golden era that's ending
too. That's the greatest golden era. Right now. [Laughs.] I just like pining
for lost times. I can pine for this morning.
AVC: You set Metropolitan "not so
long ago," so viewers could project it onto any era they want to…
WS: It was also a production shortcut, so they don't
say, "Oh, this car is from a different period!"
AVC: To you, what era is it?
WS: In a way, it's not really a true era to me. My
own memories of that period are very specific, but they're bifurcated between
the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '70s. Things are pretty
straitlaced in the first part of the movie and then long-haired and druggy in
the second part, which is what happened while I was involved in that whole
debutante-ball scene. The film suggests that a little bit, with the difference
between before Christmas and after Christmas. There's some drugs after
Christmas, and some wild behavior within the context of the film, whereas
before Christmas is supposed to be the end of the '60s, which came very late
for us. I remember going to those parties in 1968, because I had an extra
ticket from my sister, and from my perspective, it was a continuation of F.
Scott Fitzgerald. Nothing much had changed. And then in the subsequent three
years, things changed a lot.
AVC: In Metropolitan's
opening credits, you share your credit screen with the editor and the
cinematographer, similar to what Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane. Either
you were being very humble, or very presumptuous.
WS: Oh, humble. Absolutely. I actually do that in all
three films. I felt in Metropolitan that I couldn't have done it without John and
Chris. And other people, too. So the credits are not in the usual way, where
the producer credits are way down and the editing, cinematography, and music
credits are way up.
I later had a tough time with the Director's
Guild. I wasn't in the guilds for the first two films. I joined for Disco, and the DGA didn't want
to let me do that with the credits. They protect the director's-credit
solo-card quite firmly, and I think we had to say that our strobe effect in the
credits would hit the director credit last, or something like that. I guess
it's small beer. Not that important.
[pagebreak]
AVC: To extend the Citizen Kane
analogy, you were nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar on your first try, just
like Welles.
WS: I like these analogies. [Laughs.] But my idea was
that The Last Days Of Disco was going to be the Citizen Kane of romantic comedies.
[Laughs.] I like to defend Disco because it got a beating in some corners.
AVC: Why do you think that was? Why didn't
people respond to it?
WS: I think I touched the third rail of popular
culture, which one should never do. The third rail of cliché. A lot of people
had very firm ideas of what disco was. They weren't my ideas, nor what I wanted
to show. And then I later found out that many of the people who were so
authoritative about how our disco period wasn't "real" disco had no information
of their own. They were just going from having seen Saturday Night Fever or something. I imagined
these journalists lambasting us for inaccuracy to all be habitués of Studio 54.
No, not at all. [Laughs.] They would all preface their comments with, "Well, in
that period, I only liked punk music. I hated disco. But this film is not…" Whatever.
Anyway. For me, it was exactly as it was in my head.
AVC: Do you think some of the lukewarm response
was due to the fact that the film's style was similar to that of your first two
films?
WS: I don't know. I feel like the reverse. It seems
like it wasn't enough like the other two. I mean, I shouldn't overstate it,
because there were people who did like it, and we got some support. I thought
it was funny how many times I got accused of cashing in on a commercial trend.
Boy, I really wish I was better at cashing in on commercial trends. [Laughs.]
AVC: When The Last Days Of Disco
was completed, you spoke of it as being the end of a trilogy, and indicated
that you were going to make a real break in style with your next project. Is
that still something you have in mind for your next film?
WS: Almost all the stuff I've been working on
involves a break in certain ways, and yet I find that sometimes the content
might come back and the style might come back. The overt subject matter will
probably be very different, but when you actually get into the long slog of
finishing a script that you like, sometimes things end up back into your usual
sphere.
AVC: Are you conscious of your own style?
WS: I'm getting that way, yeah.
AVC: When you made Metropolitan, did
you have a filmmaking model in mind? A voice you were looking to emulate?
WS: Well, there were things that helped. The Big
Chill
came out and was good and fun to watch and well-received, which was
encouraging, and that was one of the only scripts I had. They published an
edition of that in screenplay format, and I was a real greenhorn in writing
scripts, so that's what I used as a model for what a script should look like.
And The Big Chill
worked as well as a model for an ensemble nostalgia piece.
AVC: What about the look and tone of the
film?
WS: The look and subject matter of the film is sort
of a tribute to late-'30s films of elegance that I really liked. The kind of
world shown in those social comedies. The idea was to get something similar in
a low-budget film set in more recent times. What if that world could still
exist? It's more naturalistic-realistic in certain ways, but I was trying to
cover that territory a bit.
AVC: Was it hard to get access to those
ritzy locations?
WS: Yes, it was hard, and they weren't inherited
locations, they were locations that we found through friendships or
connections. Casting Dylan Hundley was a great triumph, because after she was
cast, she put us in touch with her father and stepmother, who had a beautiful
townhouse. And Roger Kirby, who played the man at the bar, donated his
apartment. The big breakthrough came through this research foundation in New
York, housed at the Alan J. Lerner mansion. I knew a couple of people who
worked there, and the agenda of that foundation was to improve New York. We
promised to try and do that. [Laughs.]
AVC: A lot of people presume that you're a rich
guy yourself, and you had access to these locations because that's where you
and your friends hung out.
WS: No, there's a big difference between having
relatives who have money and actually having it yourself. Just because you have
a cousin who has a lot of money doesn't mean he shares it with you. [Laughs.]
Or that you'd ask him for a loan.
I've had no money, absolutely, from my family.
They paid for a good education–or schools that purported to be a good
education–but, um, not a dime. Well, okay, some dimes. But I was older
when I made the film. I wasn't just out of college or anything. So by then I
knew people, like the ex-boyfriend of my sister, this person, that person…
that's how it came about.
AVC: In the commentary track, actors Chris
Eigeman and Taylor Nichols imply that they weren't sure they really "got" the
script the first time they read it. Was it difficult trying to explain your
sensibility to people who didn't know you?
WS: Yeah, and I think it was disconcerting to people
on the other films that I'd spend a lot of time working with them and no time
working with Chris. I think some took that badly, but what they didn't take
into consideration is that Chris and I spent a lot of time on Metropolitan. When I met Chris, I
thought, "This guy's a great dramatic actor, but I'm not sure if he's funny." I
wasn't sure if he could do the quicksilver comedy of that character.
AVC: Eigeman seems loose enough with you to
take some shots at you on the Metropolitan commentary, and the Barcelona one too.
WS: Does he do that? I didn't detect it. [Laughs.]
AVC: You obviously have a social relationship
as well as a business one.
WS: Yeah, I've stayed friends with both Chris and
Taylor. You know, Taylor married a Barcelona girl.
[pagebreak]
AVC: Do you watch their other work? Did you
make a point to watch Gilmore Girls when Eigeman was on?
WS: I heard a lot about it. I'd love to see it, but I
haven't. I really liked what he did in the Jennifer Lopez movie [Maid In
Manhattan].
He kind of created his scenes. I've seen some of the independent films he's
made, and some of them, it's amazing, there can be a scene where Chris is on
one side of the scene and someone else is on the other side, and they're like
in two different movies. Chris is in the good movie. [Laughs.]
AVC: Eigeman and Nichols returned in Barcelona, playing
bickering cousins, but their testy foreign-policy discussions seem almost genteel
compared to the angry debates going on today.
WS: That could be more a critique of my film than of
the reality, because at the time, it didn't seem so genteel.
AVC: But even though there are bombs going
off in Barcelona,
and a sense that civilized behavior won't change the violence in the world, at
least there's a value system that people can adhere to. And it matters.
WS: I don't know, though, because we were under a
big-time nuclear threat in the '80s, and there was a lot of hysteria about the
tensions between East and West. Maybe in the film it comes off differently, but
that could be a function of style. I think it was a scarier time in the '80s
than it is now.
AVC: One of the hallmarks of your style is that
you often cut to the aftermath of a conflict rather than showing the conflict
itself.
WS: Yeah, because I'm not a very good director at
showing conflict. [Laughs.] I tried to show the horrible bomb in Barcelona, but it looked so
terrible I cut it out.
AVC: What do you make of the varying political
interpretations of your films? Some have read them as being deeply
conservative.
WS: I don't know. I try to stay away from any
characterization of the films, because it just gets in the way of other people
enjoying them. I try not to delve into why people might dislike or like them,
and it's one reason why I'll really think hard about doing any more commentary
tracks. I sort of like the idea that you make the film and people can do with
it whatever they want. You want them to like it and get something out of it,
but I don't really like commenting on the films. Peter Becker, who worked on
the Criterion DVD of Metropolitan, told me, "You know, we don't have to do a
commentary track." That's an interesting thought, that maybe it's better not to
do them. They can just get in people's way, and hurt you if there's too much
visible thought or analysis.
By the way, there's a publication, I think it's
called First Of The Month, that did a rebuttal to the conservative
interpretation of the films. It was pretty funny. I'm glad people can approach
the films from any ideological point of view.
AVC: So as far as you're concerned, you're
happy whether people want to think of your films as conservative or liberal?
WS: Just so long as they don't hate them too much.
[Laughs.]
AVC: You live in Paris, correct?
WS: Yeah.
AVC: When you first moved there several years
ago, you mentioned that the stereotype that French hate Americans wasn't true.
Has that changed at all in the last four or five years?
WS: I think they really hate us in London. I don't
think they hate us in Paris, actually. You can't go by what the governments say
or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred
of Americans in Britain than in France.
AVC: Were you in Paris during the riots this
past fall?
WS: I was, but you wouldn't have known about them
except that train service to the airport was affected at one point. I'd like to
know whether crime in Paris actually declined in that period, because, you know,
it was as if it was happening in Yonkers. It was pretty far out of town. I
think some of the vehicle-torching got into Paris itself, but I didn't see it.
The transit strike in New York [this past
Christmas], I can tell you, really affected everyone. My friends blamed me for
bringing the strikes in from Paris.
AVC: In the past, you've been very outspoken
about movies and styles of movies that you don't care for…
WS: Oh really? I try to stay away from that. I was
outspoken?
AVC: To an extent. You weren't running down
your colleagues, but you certainly weren't too happy with The Patriot during
the time you were working on your own Revolutionary War movie.
WS: Oh man, yeah.
AVC: In general, you've spoken about
disliking the trend toward more cynical and violent Hollywood and indie films.
Is that still a problem, or do you see some encouraging trends?
WS: It's kind of odd. It's as if pedophilia didn't
exist until 20 years ago, and now it's the only thing we can talk about.
[Laughs.] Five millennia, not a word about it, and then every film… Anyway. I
don't know. I do feel out of swing. I guess a lot of people do. And I think
it's helpful to aspire to make films if you feel that other people are not
doing what you want to do.
AVC: Can you think of anything recently
that's on the right track?
WS: Oh yeah, I love Chris Guest's films. I actually
like a lot of individual films by different people, but I guess I don't always
feel that I like every film by a lot of people.
AVC: You're not an auteurist?
WS: It makes sense, the idea of auteurism, but I
guess maybe with all these people rate-busting and making too many films too
quickly, not everyone gets to wear their auteur band.
Then there are certain years where I just like
every film, and I wonder, was I just in a good mood in 1995? [Laughs.]
AVC: What's rate-busting?
WS: That's when you're doing, say, piecework in a
factory, and you're all getting paid for doing five sweaters an hour, and then
someone comes in and does 15 sweaters an hour. They bust your rate. I feel like
I'm trying to keep the rate high by not overproducing. [Laughs.]