You can download the file directly into iTunes (if you use it), which is the best way to avoid the advertising at the start and skip Carol Douglas’s Doctor’s Orders (as good as the track is). Go here, click any ‘View in iTunes’ link, and then, in iTunes click the ‘FREE’ button next to the ‘UHB at the Disco’ track.

Phew. Anyway, worth a listen I’m sure, all 90 minutes of it.

We also have another bit of video from 2010′s Sundance Film Festival at which Metropolitan was screened, twenty years after its first showing. Stillman talks briefly about it and there are also appearances from Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols:

There’s a bit of the sense that then independent cinema was the future and certainly now it’s the past. And there is a kind of golden age that’s left us. And I think there’ll probably be other golden ages or other good things but it’s kind of a great period.

The material seemed pretty rich, almost rank. And perhaps it’s better approaching a subject people feel strongly about, even if that strong feeling is hatred, than something colorless and unspecific. Also, I love anachronism and this was the chance to film, essentially, a costume picture set in the present day or recent past. But a large part of the idea was to disguise our pitifully low budget by filming the most elegant subject available.

Some of it is interesting to look back on, nearly two decades in its future:

I hope I get offered some good scripts, because I’m such a slow writer, I really love the directing job, and feel I can do it. I’d love to be able to do adventure films and historical films, silly comedies.

and:

Right now, I find the project [Barcelona] very boring but I hope that will lead to “catharsis” and “turning point” taking the script in a more interesting direction.

I guess that one worked out happily.

I’d like to add more images to the top of the pages — we currently only have the lovely illustration from the cover of The Last Days of Disco and a not very good scan from Barcelona. I’ve had trouble finding anything of good enough resolution (they’re 940 x 198 pixels). If you have any good images, do let me know!

I’ve also added two new pages, the full credits from the ends of Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco. Since I got rid of my VHS player I no longer have a copy of Barcelona — if you do, and feel like doing a lot of typing, send some credits my way!

• Reviews of the film
  • ‘Metropolitan’ in Variety (1 Jan 1990)
  • ‘Exploring the Upper Class: Stillman’s Work Promising’ by Kelly A.E. Mason for the Harvard Crimson (which Stillman used to write for) (21 Sep 1990)
  • ‘”Metropolitan” defies convention’ by William Arnold for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (14 Sep 1990)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Chris Hicks for Deseret News (23 Oct 1990)
• Blog posts
  • ‘Whit Stillman, the anti-John Hughes’ by Agnostic (1 Jul 2007)
• Reviews of the video
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by David Thomson for Hollywood Life (2003)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ at San Diego NewsNotes (April 2005)
• Reviews of the DVD
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Angie Errigo for Empire (Date unknown)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Nick Pinkerton for Reverse Shot (Winter 2006)
  • ‘Coming of age on the Upper East Side’ by Leighton Klein for the Boston Globe (12 Feb 2006)
  • ‘Whit Stillman and Metropolitan’ at Udolpho.com (19 Feb 2006)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by David Mermelstein for Variety (5 Mar 2006)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Tood Gilchrist for IGN.com (21 Mar 2006)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ at New York Press (10 May 2006)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Neil Young for Tribune magazine (12 May 2006)
  • ‘Metropolitan’ by Anthony Quinn for the Independent (19 May 2006)
  • ‘TODO: “Metropolitan”‘ by Doree Shafrir at Gawker.com (15 Dec 2006)

I also added a link to a review of The Last Days of Disco:

• ‘The Last Days of Disco’ by James Bowman (1 May 1998)

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)

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).

Sorry for the inconvenience but it will make my life easier and hopefully the emails will look nicer too. Thanks.

• The poster illustration for ‘Metropolitan’ by Pierre Le-Tan (accessible from this page.

• A letter by Linda Stillman (scroll to bottom) detailing Stillman’s connection to Penn Law School (where one of The Last Days of Discos characters went). (Jan/Feb 1990)

• Read the first chapter of the 2001 book Doomed Bourgeois in Love, ‘Whit Stillman’s Comic Art’ (PDF) by Mary P. Nichols.

• Metropolitan, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco were at positions 79, 80 and 81 respectively in the ‘Top 100 American Independent Films’ (of the 1990s, provided by the BFI) at Empire (8 Mar 1999)

• List of Oscar nominations for Stillman’s films

• ‘Anderson vs. Stillman’ by Dave Micevic at The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola, recommending Stillman to fans of Wes Anderson’s movies (17 Jul 2006)

• ‘Inside Move: Stillman reports on preem’ by Dan Cox atVariety (11 Aug 2000)

• The Directors. Stillman was apparently the subject of this TV show but no further information is available (1 Dec 2000)

• ‘The Last Days of Disco: Interview with Whit Stillman’ by Prairie Miller for Cinema Syndicate (1998)
• ‘Whit Stillman goes retro in ‘Last Days’ by Michael Okwu at CNN (28 May 1998)
• ‘Whit and Wisdom in “Days”‘ by Michelle Goldberg at MetroActive (4 Jun 1998)
• ‘Whit Stillman does Disco thing’ by Ingrid Randoja at NOW (11 Jun 1998)
• ‘Preview – The Last Days of Disco’ by Cynthia Amsden at SEE magazine (25 Jun 1998)