In December, Metropolitan was shown selected to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival as one of three films chosen for The Sundance Collection at UCLA, which exists to “preserve and restore documentaries, narratives, shorts, festival films, and commercially released independent films” according to this report on the Sundance site.
They also have a quick blog post about the film’s January screening, and you can currently see a bunch of photos from the event at Life magazine.
Best of all, here’s a (slightly squashed) video of Whit Stillman introducing the film plus interviews with Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman:
Three items today. First, if you ever wondered what Ed Clements — Tom Townsend in Metropolitan — is up to these days, there’s an interview on YouTube (in two parts, 1, 2) in which he talks about the film and, around the same time, becoming a Christian. He’s now working for a few religious organisations.
On a similar note, there’s also an interview with Isabel Gillies — Metropolitan’s Cynthia McLean — talking about her memoirs, Happens Every Day. She’s still a film and TV actor.
Finally, a brief New York Post interview with Whit Stillman from August in which he mentions the two TV comedy pilots he is/was working on (also mentioned in interviews posted here previously).
There’s another interview with Whit Stillman over at Flavorwire, off the back of the Last Days of Disco Criterion DVD. Some good questions, and well worth a read:
Maybe it’s not deserved, but as a director I feel that I’ve lost out on paying industry jobs by being inextricably linked to this screenwriter who’s only ostensibly done one sort of material. As such I’d have a hard time convincing the powers that be that I could do anything else. Directing your own material is great, when it’s happening, but would Steven Soderbergh have had such a good career as a director if he’d become overly identified with the material he’d written? It gets to be a major barrier to having the chance to go off in new directions.
I picked a bad week to go on holiday… I’ve just been catching up with the bumper crop of Whit Stillman interviews and reviews of the Criterion release of The Last Days of Disco DVD. Apologies for the delay in getting this together.
Set aside some time because there are plenty of long and interesting interviews. I’ve taken a few quotes about current and future plans from the bigger interviews, but there is a lot, lot more worth reading in them, as Stillman looks back on Disco…
Can we expect any more novels from you?
Yes, I think so. At a certain point, it becomes impossible to make films and you have to head in another way.
Is there any hope for Barcelona on Criterion?
There’s a lot of hope. The more noise we can make the better. They’re negotiating with Warners. It’d be great because then we could have the boxed set.
Is there anything you can tell me about upcoming projects? I keep hearing about Jamaican Gospel churches? Do you have any comment?
Well, that’s the one that I hope will happen. But there’s another one that’s in pretty good shape too.
I’ve since relocated to the States, as of June. Things have been going very well. There are two new TV projects I’ve just been signed up for, so I have to slightly delay the feature I was hoping to do.
I looked at the imdb, they tell me Little Green Men is in pre-production, is that true?
No, definitely not, not to my knowledge, not with me as director. I’m not involved in that anymore, and haven’t been in a long time. Things continue on the internet long after they’re no longer true. It might be a dark horse candidate, something’s that’s never been mentioned, that I’ve kept under wraps, and that might actually be the thing that goes ahead.
Is it remaining under wraps?
Yeah. Yeah. I think until… I’ve made that mistake, talking about things before they actually happen and… don’t want to get more into that game. The Jamaica film (Note: Dancing Mood) will happen, I’m sure it will, and it’ll be good, but um—well, we’ll attempt to make it very good, but—it’s very hard to detail.
I found reference to this adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and then a movie you’re writing called Dancing Mood. Can you tell me about those?
I don’t think Little Green Men is happening, at least with me. That’s been true for a long time. Things stick around on the internet, though. Dancing Mood is a way serious project I’ve been working on for a long time but there’s all sorts of steps that have to happen so it may get postponed again. But I can’t wait to make that film.
Plus you can watch a video of Stillman in an interview at WNYC (follow the link to download the MP3 too):
Plus there are several straight reviews, some with a few technical details about the Criterion release. (I’ve ignored some of the single-paragraph weekly DVD round-up type reviews.)
I’ve belatedly got round to collating links to some old reviews of Metropolitan that reader Eric Burritt kindly sent in. I’ve added them to the appropriate page, but here’s a summary of all the new additions:
The Last Days of Disco is due to be released on DVD in August 2009 as part of the Criterion Collection. Here are the details of the “Director Approved Special Edition” from the Criterion website:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Whit Stillman
Audio commentary featuring Stillman and actors Chloë Sevigny and Chris Eigeman
Four deleted scenes with commentary by Stillman, Eigeman, and Sevigny
Stills gallery with production notes by Stillman
Stillman reading a chapter from The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, his novelization of the movie
Behind-the-scenes featurette
Original theatrical trailer
PLUS: An essay by novelist David Schickler
Sounds good! Thanks to Jonathan Takagi, Larry and James for the news, and apologies for taking so long to get around to posting it.
On a (seemingly random) previous post, “zelda” points out that The Last Days of Disco on Hulu.com is currently suffering from several very poor, very brief, reviews. Look back a page or two under the ‘Reviews’ tab to see them in their dismal one- and two-star glory.
But what’s the point of having a site about a director if you can’t encourage fans to boost him up!? So head on over and write your own review of the film to encourage people to watch!
In a comment “John” kindly pointed out that you can watch Siskel and Ebert’s review of Metropolitan. Thumbs up from Ebert, down from Siskel.
Second, a recent article at National Review lists Metropolitan as number three in its Best Conservative Movies, with this from Mark Henrie (editor of the book Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman (US, UK):
Whit Stillman’s Oscar-nominated debut takes a red-headed outsider into the luxurious drawing rooms and debutante balls of New York’s Upper East Side elite. One character, a committed socialist, falls for the discreet charm of the urban haute bourgeoisie. Another plaintively theorizes the inevitable doom of his class. A reader of Jane Austen wonders what’s wrong with a novel’s having a virtuous heroine. And a roguish defender of standards and detachable collars delivers more sophisticated conservative one-liners than a year’s worth of Yale Party of the Right debates. With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America’s upper class.
UPDATE: Thanks to those who pointed this out: Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco were mentioned as two of the 25 “also rans” at the end of the National Review article. (15 Feb 2009)
I’ll tell you candidly — I love dark, cynical, yes, even nihilistic films. The macabre side of human experience is fascinating, and there has been a strong run of artistic, bleak films lately. I propose, however, that it’s equally important to examine another side of life: experiences of virtue. Whit Stillman’s three films Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and Last Days of Disco (1998) show virtue as fun, not fusty.
The Spanish girls that Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols date in Whit Stillman’s culture-clash comedy Barcelona don’t care for the Americans’ limited sense of culture or their inadvertent imperialism, but they’re still open-minded enough to sleep with them. Yet the rigidly ethical Nichols — a firm believer in the healing power of American business — is looking for something more than just a fling, and finds it only after Eigeman gets shot, and Nichols is joined in his bedside vigil by a woman as faithful as he is. Discovering true love in the revelation of shared ideals: That’s a happy ending in Stillman-world.
Finally, I just added the trailers for Metropolitan and Barcelona from YouTube to their respective pages (the Last Days of Disco trailer has been removed from YouTube unfortunately).
I’m moving the mailing list for this site — which sends out the content of every new post on the weblog — away from Yahoo! Groups. If you want to continue receiving email updates (or start receiving them) then you’ll need to re-subscribe by going here or using this form:
Sorry for the inconvenience but it will make my life easier and hopefully the emails will look nicer too. Thanks.
