Stillman
If, like us, you've been wondering what on earth Whit Stillman has been doing since 1998, and when he might direct another movie, check out his interview with Karina Longworth at Spoutblog. The director of urbane and beloved nineties indie comedies Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco says that he's finally preparing to shoot a movie set in Jamaica in the sixties called Dancing Mood. (He described the movie to "Page Six" last year as being "about the gospel church and the music scene from pre-reggae days, including ska," which sounds, um, awesome.) Here's hoping this actually turns out to be true!
But Stillman also has something pretty interesting to say about a recent favorite Vulture topic, the August Movie � and how the crappiness of other August movies has both helped his films and (in the case of August anti-classic 54) hurt them.
Stillman points out that August has been a fertile time for his diminutive movies to be released, since they stand out well against the tote up crap that's out in that location most previous summers:
Metropolitan came out the first weekend in August. It was just a wonderful clock time to follow out. We got a lot of good attention. Barcelona was the final weekend in July. So, that had always been a great time for us.
But when The Last Days of Disco, Stillman's delightful comedy starring Chlo� Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, and Robert Sean Leonard came out in 1998, it was released earlier in the summer, in order to stave off disco-related contest from � the notoriously Augustine 54. "It was just a disaster," Stillman says now:
Normally, if you are an independent film coming kayoed against be big studio blockbusters, you are the �good� kind of programming. Normally, [your competition] are just sort of stupid action movies or �shoot-them-ups� or whatever. But, in our case, the big summer movies were as well critical favorites and Oscar favorites. So, we came out against Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan. The independent films were likewise very substantial - The Opposite of Sex, Henry Fool. There were just so many things just at the same time. Even the Soderbergh cinema, I think, it was Out of Sight? Everything that came out was not exclusively a dear film, simply a critical favorite � We just got run over. I mean, it initially did well. We had great weekends in the cities. But, we were steamrolled.
The good news show? There's password a Criterion edition of Disco power be coming out shortly, which would make a nifty double feature with a moonshine copy of the Pansexual Ryan Phillippe edit of 54.
Anti-Populism and Indie Antiquity: Interview with Whit Stillman [Spoutblog]
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