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:

While I’m here, here’s a new (to me) review of the Last Days of Disco DVD from last year.

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).

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.

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…

‘History is Made at Night – An Interview with Filmmaker Whit Stillman’ an interview with David Zahl at the Mockingbird Blog:

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.

‘Whit Stillman heads back to the dance’ by Stephen Saito at IFC.com:

How have you been since the last time we talked?

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.

‘Whit Stillman Speaks Eleven Years After His Last Film’ an interview with Nick Pinkerton at Village Voice (full transcript here):

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.

‘Whit Stillman, Filmmaker’ an interview with Hugh Merwin at Gothamist:

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.)

• ‘The Last Days of Disco’ by Christopher Long at DVD Town (15 Aug 2009)
• ‘The Last Days of Disco’ by Robert Bell at The Trades (24 Aug 2009)
• ‘The Last Days of Disco’ by Chris Neilson at DVD Talk (25 Aug 2009)
• ‘When Preppies Became Yuppies’ by Troy Patterson at Slate (26 Aug 2009)
• ‘The view: Why class never goes out of fashion on film’ by Danny Leigh at the Guardian (28 Aug 2009)

• 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.

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!

First, Rebecca Tirrell Talbot has written an article on Metropolitan and Barcelona at The Curator, ‘Virtuous Fun in the Films of Whit Stillman’:

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.

Second, Barcelona was recently included in A.V. Club’s ‘Romance minus the schmaltz: 29 falling-in-love movies we actually believe in’:

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).

Luxist has a post discussing the rules, including some comments from Stillman:

“When we were preparing Metropolitan there was a great two page Ralph Lauren ad running in magazines that we clipped and showed around to illustrate the style the film would aspire to.” So, in a way, Stillman notes, “Ralph Lauren influenced the film before it might have inspired Rugby.”

Movie stars of Paul Newman’s stature carry with them not just the actual films they have accomplished but the dreams of films that might have been — hopes that, however unlikely, are extinguished only with their passing.

My Paul Newman film started in Dublin, where the brash young film publicist and distributor Ronan Glennane had fought for our film Barcelona. Rather than “take no prisoners,” Glennane’s style was to take prisoners as needed and torture them until they either recanted their aversion to the film or screamed loudly enough to attract onlookers to the cinema.

The biggest news is that Stillman has released Metropolitan for free viewing online. Unfortunately this only works for those in the United States, but you lucky people can view the movie in full, for free, at Hulu.com. I’m in the UK so if you watch post in the comments how you find the experience.

This event has prompted IFC.com to do a brand new interview with Stillman. He talks about the projects he has at various stages of development such as Little Green Men and the Jamaican movie currently called Dancing Mood, past projects such as Red Azalea, and his occasional writing.

Spout Blog also has a new interview with Stillman in which he talks again about his current projects, about the difficulties of releasing independent films, and says there might be a Criterion release of The Last Days of Disco before too long.

Finally, Eric Burrit sends in a few old goodies:

• A brief clip from CNN in 1994 on the release of Barcelona — some clips and brief snippets of interview with Stillman, Eigeman and Sorvino.
• An interview with Chris Tellefsen, editor of Metropolitan, from MovieMaker magazine in 2007.
• A 1994 review of Barcelona, also from MovieMaker magazine.
• An article about film school, again from MovieMaker, apparently including Whit Stillman, although the page isn’t currently loading for me.