A Doofi Orientation: Whit Stillman on Damsels in Distress

William Bibbiani at Crave Online interviews Stillman:

CraveOnline: I still remember the first time I saw Barcelona, and discovered that you can make films about smart people.

Whit Stillman: Okay, good! [Laughs] Thanks for saying that!

You tend to make movies about people who are intellectuals, who have actually read books. Why is that so rare?

Well, I think Jennifer Aniston’s characters, in her movies, have read books. [Laughs] Here they talk about them. I don’t know. I remember when my friends at Castle Rock saw the cut of Last Days of Disco, with the scene of the Matthew Ross character and the Chloë Sevigny character debating J.D. Salinger short stories, they said, “There goes a million dollars of the gross.” [Laughs] I guess they feel that it limits the audience.