Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Lisa Brown  0:01  

February 25, 2012. The Harvard Film Archive screened Damsels in Distress. This is the audio recording of the introduction and discussion that followed. Participating are HFA programmer David Pendleton and filmmaker Whit Stillman.

David Pendleton  0:18  

[Thank you] for coming. I thank all of you for getting here early enough that we didn't have to disappoint you by turning you away like some of your more unfortunate counterparts upstairs. Please, if you have anything on you that makes any noise or sheds any light, please turn it off. Pretend like you're on a plane that's taking off or landing, until you leave the theater.

So welcome to the local sneak preview, if you will, of Damsels in Distress, the return of Whit Stillman after an absence of more than a dozen years from filmmaking. Tonight’s screening is the middle night of a three-night retrospective of Stillman’s four films that we're very pleased to be presenting here at the Harvard Film Archive and we're even more pleased that Whit Stillman has joined us for these screenings. He's violently opposed to introducing his films. He said in no uncertain terms as any of the uncertain terms his current characters use. So he's not here now but he will be here afterwards for a conversation with us after the film and to answer your questions.

Stillman’s first three films released at the tail end of the 20th century, I think, made him one of the most influential American filmmakers to emerge during those years, certainly among his fellow American independent filmmakers. Those three films are, of course, Metropolitan from 1989, which we showed last night, Barcelona from 1994, which we're showing tomorrow afternoon, and Last Days of Disco, tomorrow night, originally from 1997. (I should point out that Mr. Stillman will also be here for that screening as well, to answer questions.) These three films are three remarkable films about young people that young people have taken to heart. Long after their initial release, sometimes to relatively small box office returns, the films have taken on a life of their own and found a loyal audience of their own. And like I said, particularly among young people, not just young people, but I can't remember—in the five years that I've been here, this is the most excited that I've ever seen college students here at Harvard about a visiting filmmaker. And it's no surprise that two of the films have been released by Criterion, which is sort of the closest thing we have, I think, to establishing a contemporary film canon. And if you look at a number of the American filmmakers who have emerged since then, they definitely show signs of having been influenced by Whit Stillman and his particular sort of dialogue-heavy observational comedy. I'm thinking of people like Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz and the Safdie brothers. I just named the most obvious ones. Stillman himself sort of falls in a long line of dialogue-driven comedy filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Eric Rohmer, Woody Allen—as well as the filmmaker who's probably closer to Whit Stillman’s heart than any of those, François Truffaut.

His first three films are filled with “bright young things”—to adopt the phrase from Evelyn Waugh—in college or just out of college looking to make their way in the world and seeking to find the way through innumerable lengthy conversations expounding on the meaning of life, love, and going through sort of several roundelays of heterosexual coupling and uncoupling.

And now, Stillman is back with another such film. Like Metropolitan, it involves a group of college students, in this case taking place at the Ivy League school, Seven Oaks University. The film seeks to explain the facts behind the mysterious emergence of an international dance craze from Seven Oaks University, as you'll see. Like all of Stillman’s films, it involves a young ensemble cast, and most mostly like Last Days of Disco, the numerable plot strands in the ensemble cast sort of revolves around two young women who are sort of best frenemies, one brash and bossy, one quieter and more thoughtful, but fully capable of asserting herself. It's a delightful film. It'll be opening theatrically in a couple of weeks, so be sure and tell your friends and in fact, the film is still being finished. The version that you're seeing tonight is not quite the final version. Whit thinks of it as a work-in-progress. It's basically finished, but there remains some color correcting to do, some tiny edits and some sound mixing. As I said before, we'll be here for conversation after the film and to answer your questions. So now, enjoy Damsels in Distress.

[APPLAUSE]

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[AUDIO GLITCH]

David Pendleton

[Please welcome Whit Stillman], ladies and gentlemen!

[APPLAUSE]

Whit Stillman  5:05  

Thank you. Thank you very much. Some clarifying words: what you've seen was actually something from July. It's a blu-ray of our final cut before we did all the sound and music work. So it's sort of very, very rough. And we changed a lot of the music, and did all kinds of things. So thank you for your patience in watching something preliminary. But I think the technology now is so great out of the Avid that you can create something like that and actually show it. But thanks for thanks for seeing and having patience to see it. But it is quite different now. And I hope at some point, you'll get to see the completed film. I apologize to the Film Archive for not having prints ready yet, but we thought it would be sort of interesting, theoretically, to show a work-in-progress of the film and quite a bit of the music will change. For instance, the last song—this is a fun French dance song that I liked, but Mark Suozzo, the composer of each of the films, came up with a dance called the Sambola. And we're just mastering the soundtrack album this weekend and “The Sambola,” the new hit song, sounds great. [LAUGHTER] And this cut includes a lot of Adam Schlesinger's music. Some very good tracks. Adam Schlesinger worked on That Thing You Do. It has some of Mark Suozzo’s music, but there's a lot more Mark Suozzo music in the final film. So thank you for seeing this early, early version.

David Pendleton  6:41  

So before we open it up to questions from the audience, I'll ask just one or two questions to get the conversation started. And since you started by mentioning some of your collaborators, some of your frequent collaborators, I thought maybe I'd start by asking you about the cinematography, because your previous films were shot with cinematographer John Thomas, if I'm not mistaken...

Whit Stillman

Yes.

David Pendleton

This is the first time that you're shooting digitally.

Whit Stillman

Yes.

David Pendleton

And the first time with a new cinematographer.

Whit Stillman

Yes.

David Pendleton

And also, actually I feel like each of your films has had sort of a different look to it, you know, there's a certain like muted palette to Metropolitan versus sort of a more brassy, glittery kind of look for Last Days of Disco. And this seems to have these very vibrant colors to it. I'm just wondering, how conscious are you about changing the look of your films from time to time? How did your working style change shooting digitally? And what was it like working with a new cinematographer?

Whit Stillman  7:37  

Well, I sort of go slowly backwards on that, because we were up until, I think, 1:00 a.m. yesterday morning at Technicolor, doing the final color timing for the prints that we'll be creating within the next two weeks. And I think that the cinematography, and the final film will look much more like the other films. But I was very happy with what Doug Emmett did. And, he's using the sort of then most advanced red camera. And I really don't understand why people shoot on film anymore after seeing what these cameras can do. And I think the final version of the film will really have a beautiful color. And what happened with this production is I'd been flailing around not being able to get films off the ground, because I’d follow the advice of a lawyer friend that I try to work within the system. So we were trying to get these films set up in sort of standard, what's considered low-budget independent film territory, but that’s sort of 5 million to 10 million. And in this case, when the same backers at Castle Rock wanted to make the film, I said, “You know, these days, you can make film really cheaply. We can go back to Metropolitan-style filmmaking.” And so in this production, a lot of the people came out of this sort of Tiny Furniture Lena Dunham world of no-budget filmmaking, and then we had more money than that, but not much. And so Doug Emmett and his team worked really well within those confines.

David Pendleton  9:07  

That's great. You want to talk a little bit about the cast? I mean, I imagine some people would be expecting Chris Eigeman to show up in this film, for instance.

Whit Stillman  9:15  

Yeah, I'm sad he doesn't. And the two people who really weren't in the film, who couldn't be in it were Chris Eigeman and Lena Dunham. Chris was supposed to be in it in my mind, but not his mind. I wanted him to play Professor Ryan talking about flit lit. I thought that would be a good role for him. But he's very ambivalent about acting now. He's making films. He made a film as a director called Turn the River that got awards, and he's trying to set up a bigger film about Los Alamos and Oppenheimer and all that. And he didn't want to do it. And then Lena was rehearsing for her TV show, which is about to come out.

David Pendleton  9:51  

It seems like a lot of the actors actually in this film, their previous work has been in television. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit how you found the cast that you did.

Whit Stillman  10:00  

I mean, I think mostly they haven't done work. Mostly they've done nothing. And it's true that two the people—Megalyn, who plays Rose, has done some TV, which I was completely unaware of. And I mean, just like if you go on IMDB, she has all these credits, but that sort of doesn't define who she is. And then Adam Brody, I really hadn't seen in The OC; I just met him and really liked him. I mean, we have such a hard time getting the serious romantic leads. The funny guys we found, but the Xavier role and the Charlie/Fred role, were very hard to cast. And I’m incredibly happy with this cast.

David Pendleton  10:47  

Yeah, well, Tom Becker is sort of like a dead–

Whit Stillman

Hugo Becker.

David Pendleton

Hugo Becker. Sorry. He's a dead ringer for like a young Louis Jourdan, actually.

Whit Stillman 10:52  

Yeah, it's really remarkable. Some of the angles, he’s Louis Jourdan. The Xavier role was originally a Tom role. He's supposed to be kind of a surfer, cool, blond longish-haired groovy grad student, sort of, you know, ladykiller grad student who had this religious faith; it was a little different. And I couldn't find any– I mean, I guess a lot of the actors who'd have been right didn't come out because they just thought it was a girls’ project or something. And whatever the reason was, we could not find anyone for that part. The person who read best for it is Max Lodge who plays the ALA pamphleteer. He did a really good job with it, too. But we didn't really find anyone who sort of looked like he might be someone that Lily would end up with but still could talk about the Cathars. And Hugo Becker sent in an audition on video from Europe. He came over and at the same time, he was starting to think about working on our film, he'd got cast for some episodes of Gossip Girl. And so he became Prince Louis Grimaldi in Gossip Girl. And so when we're showing preliminary cuts like this, people say, “Oh, so brilliant casting someone from Gossip Girl in your film. You're getting these stars.” But his visa didn't come through, and we were really kind of up the creek. And you're just kind of terrifying and we were thinking about what to do. And finally, his visa came through, and he did all his part in the last three or four days. In fact, he was so frustrated not being able to shoot, we put him in a mask, and he's one of the barbarians—I hope I don’t get him in trouble with immigration—he is one of the barbarians in the fight with the DU frat boys. Yeah, the fall of Rome.

David Pendleton  12:48  

You mentioned actors thinking of it as a girls project. I mean, it does seem to me that the female characters really come to the fore in the film. And I know that you've talked before about really enjoying writing female characters, even more than male characters. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why that is, if that's something that you still feel….

Whit Stillman  13:12  

This is something that goes back to Metropolitan, which you showed last night. And I'm not sure, how many people were here last night? So okay, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. Thank you. I was writing that and I started realizing that the Tom character in that film—the red-haired guy—was not really the sympathetic character in the story. Really, Audrey's more sympathetic. So I tried to go back and write it from Audrey's point of view. And I really liked working on the Audrey point of view, but I'd sort of done too much of Tom. So it became sort of a divided-point-of-view film. And then I remember getting a lot of knocks with Barcelona that the women characters were not huge in that, and it was just that Barcelona was about essentially these two cousins, and the women were in relation to them and their friendship, and that the next film would be about women, which was Last Days of Disco. And it is true that there's something, I think, if you are writing romantic comedies or films with romantic stories, I find there's something more interesting in the situation of women and romance, where it's more sort of subtle. The guy thing I sort of know and got bored of that already myself so... I found it's more interesting the girl point of view in romantic comedies.

David Pendleton

And what about your interest in writing young characters? I mean, all your films are set either during college or just after college. Do you have any thoughts about why it is particularly you're drawn to characters at that age?

Whit Stillman

Well, as the development executives in Los Angeles will tell you, those are crossroads years. So the college years and just afterwards are crossroad years and people are making decisions about their identities and their lives and their careers. And that's more interesting. And so that's something that interests much older people, such as myself, or even younger people—so twelve-year olds, thirteen-year olds, fourteen-year olds. And actually, you did see the uncensored version. Because the A word, the ALA definition—in the pamphlet it says what the ALA is, and that has been removed, so we’d get a PG-13.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  15:20  

So all the stuff about anal sex [STILLMAN MOCK GASPS] has been taken out? We’re at Harvard; we can say that.

Whit Stillman 15:24  

In our theory, now, the ALA’s the Ambiguous Love Association. [DAVID LAUGHS]

David Pendleton

So all this stuff about [INAUDIBLE]?

Whit Stillman

No, no, not all the stuff. We describe that the usual form of lovemaking is from the front. But then we go right into “She'll really like the Cathar way.” We don't say “the other side” initially. And I think the punchline now and the laugh line is when Violet, in the girl's room, says that “he just used your body, not even the right side.” [LAUGHS] So that's when it sort of comes clear.

David Pendleton

Oh right, speaking of Violet... So last night, Haden asked you a little bit about Charles Schulz and Peanuts, and you said you wanted to wait until tonight. I'm assuming you're thinking of Violet, the Greta Gerwig character...

Whit Stillman 16:09  

Well, the Violet character is a tiny bit like Lucy, you know, “the psychiatrist is in: five cents.” And there's a bit of that element in her. But I think she's more likable than Lucy. She's also a blonde. She was just on NPR this weekend talking about blondes in film or something like that.

David Pendleton  16:24  

Well, no, she's certainly a much more complex character. Well, that reminds me, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your feelings towards the characters as you're writing them. Because I feel like sometimes, when I watch your films, early on in the film, I think, “Oh, this character is sort of the mouthpiece for the author. And these others are kind of foils.” But in fact, over the course of the film, usually everybody at least has one moment where they say something that seems right or something that you agree with.

Whit Stillman  16:50  

No, I think there's an attempt to be a bit fair. You know, not knowing the colors is a plight. And–

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  16:57  

Wait, what's a plight? I didn’t hear–

Whit Stillman  16:58  

Not knowing the colors. You know, it's a problem.

David Pendleton

It's no joke!

Whit Stillman

It’s no joke. Well, it is a joke, but um…

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  17:04  

But not to the Thors of the world.

Whit Stillman  17:06  

I mean, one of the things that happens is you have a plan, and then you deal with real elements. You have a plan that the characters are one way, and then you do casting, and sometimes it goes in a different direction. And maybe that causes you problems, but within those problems, there are strengths. And so I didn't know any of the actors. We had two groups of casting people: one group mostly in Los Angeles, one group mostly in New York. And they told me about this actress, Greta Gerwig. I saw her pictures. She’s a very pretty blonde. I’d known nothing about her. And I had a meeting with her. And we were seeing her for the Lily part, because the idea was that Lily was just going to be a really good looking knockout, that all the guys like, and that Violet is sort of more interesting, and ultimately, more sympathetic figure, more serious figure and more original. And that it'd be kind of easy not to like Lily, because she just be just really good looking and knocking guys out for that reason. But then you're just looking for good actors to do the parts. And one of the first actresses we saw who really was good was Analeigh Tipton. And she actually read well for three parts. She read well as Violet, she read well as Heather and she read very well as Lily, and she made Lily kind of serious business, you know, pretty likable. And then you're just trying to get someone who can play it well. And then if you get a luxury between someone who could play it well, and someone who could play very well, that's wonderful. And so slowly, the cast filled in, and it was Analeigh as Lily and Greta as Violet. And it's a bit of a problem, because I think a lot of people, you know, we're kind of programmed that, “Oh, they're gonna be the pretty well, overdressed mean girls, and then this is the likeable, identifiable outsider figure.” For instance, one critic, in writing about it, says the film doesn't really get underway until they meet the Lily character. But that is the first scene of the movie! [LAUGHTER] But they’re programmed to say this and think this and it's a real problem for us if people cannot get over the likeability of Analeigh Tipton and the seeming abrasiveness of things Violet is doing. I mean, Violet really is compassionate. She really cares about people, but condescension is not instantly likable. And so there's a lot of condescension. Although for her, it isn't condescension, because she really is looking it in the eye and trying to help them out.

David Pendleton  19:49  

Right. I mean, it seems like a lot of your characters, even in other films, tend to sort of present positions like when they speak, they sort of strike a pose, which in a way, it leads an audience member to be not sure how to react. And yet, I think one of the geniuses of what you do is that over the course of the film, we tend to see all these people as sincere as opposed to seeing them as objects of derision.

Whit Stllman  20:12  

I end up having to look at the projects as commercial enterprises and sort of seeing how people like or don't like, and what is really too hard for them to accept, or hard enough for them to accept. But ultimately, they accept it, and they like it better because they struggle with it. And I think that there's a dynamic between the Nick character—the snobbish Nick character—and the outsider, red-haired Tom character in Metropolitan where, okay, he's an obnoxious, over the top snob type, but he's being really nice to the hero we identify with, so that makes it kind of likable. And then, in Barcelona, Spain is cool, Spain is like a disco that none of us are invited to join. So we're all the outsider Americans. So there's a lot of identification with Barcelona in the United States, and it was pretty well received because of that. Disco is a harder enterprise, because the Charlotte character, which is played by Kate Beckinsale, she really wasn't nice to the identification character. And it's kind of abrasive for people. I really liked the film, but it was sort of harder to get that acceptance.

David Pendleton  21:20  

But she's like the Violet character–

Whit Stillman

That’s true too.

David Pendleton 

Except in this case, Violet has more of what the development executives would call an arc. You know what I mean? The whole experience with ending up in the motel, then having the epiphany with the soap and...

Whit Stllman  21:31  

She doesn't end up in the motel.

David Pendleton  21:32  

No, no, no, no,

Whit Stillman 21:33  

She passes through.

David Pendleton  21:35  

Right. Yes, exactly. She's from the hotel, therefore.

Whit Stllman  21:41  

The soap at the Inn at Harvard is very good. It's very precise.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  21:46  

Thank you for plugging one of our sponsors.

Okay. We'll open it up to questions from the audience. This gentleman raised his hand first and then the woman in the back and then we'll go over here. But if you can wait, we've got microphones coming to you, so we can all hear you. And if you guys could pass the mic down, that'd be great.

Audience 1  22:04  

Can you hear me? Great. Yes, thank you very much. That was very enjoyable. Just a short question: do the characters get what they deserve in the film? And do they live in a world where desert matters?

Whit Stillman  22:18  

Yeah, I mean... Gosh, this is so far over my head! [LAUGHS/LAUGHTER] Yeah, I think it sort of ends correctly. I mean, everyone gets something fairly nice. Xavier’s given up Catharism and ends up with Lily. I'm not sure about Positive Polly, the pretty Black girl from the hallway who’s ending up dancing with Frank who can't really dance so I'm not sure if she got what she deserved. But...

David Pendleton  22:48  

I thought he was the best. Freak Astaire, you mean?

Whit Stillman  22:50  

No, no, not Freak Astaire. Frank, the DU guy. DU is an actual fraternity at Harvard, which

David Pendleton  22:59  

I thought they only had finals clubs here. I didn't even know they had fraternities.

Whit Stillman  23:01  

Well, in a sense, you have the Roman letter fraternity system in Harvard. My father was in the DU.

David Pendleton

Oh, there you go.

Whit Stillman

They threw it off campus. [DAVID LAUGHS] And now it's the B.

David Pendleton  23:11  

Gotcha, gotcha.

Who was the second person that I pointed out? Yes, the woman in the back.

Audience 2  23:18  

Thank you. That was wonderful. I'm wondering where you got the story idea, and if it's supposed to be based on Dartmouth College at all, because of the green and white coloring and the emphasis on fraternity life.

Whit Stillman  23:31  

Based on which college?

Audience 2  23:32  

Dartmouth College.

Whit Stillman  23:34  

That's a very good call, because it seemed to me that when I was thinking of a fictional college that it would be sort of a Dartmouth situation where a very male, very kind of aggressively boorish [LAUGHTER] male college accepts women. And one of the development people in Los Angeles who really wanted to do the idea was one of the women who was in the first coed classes, and she really liked the storyline. She thought it was great. It's sort of based on an experience I had here. I got out in ‘73. I was sort of young for my class.

David Pendleton  24:11  

From Harvard, I didn't mention that in the intro.

Whit Stillman  24:13  

Yeah, and I came back in ‘74-’75. And everyone was talking about a group of girls who had just sort of changed everything. In my day, it was really depressing here. Really grungy, no social life, just everyone depressed in the rooms. And I'm sure that's changed. [LAUGHTER] And everyone’s talking about this group of girls, and they wore this strong French perfume, and they were called by the name of that perfume plus a numeral—an Arabic numeral—and that they dressed up and gave parties and how great everything was. And then I heard from other people that there were these girls in other recently coed places. And so it is kind of based on the idea of these people, but I didn't buy life rights and I'd never met them. So I want to be careful not to say it’s their story.

David Pendleton

There was there's a gentleman–

Whit Stillman

I'm sorry, she almost has a microphone.

David Pendleton  25:08  

And then we'll come to this guy in the middle who's had his hand up very patiently.

Audience 3  25:10  

My question for you has to do with the wardrobe choice that you chose? It seemed like Lily had a much more modern kind of look, whereas Violet almost looked like she was out of the late 1950s. So I was wondering if you could talk to that?

Whit Stillman  25:24  

Well, I'm glad you got that. That was exactly the plan. We kind of went overboard with it. And one of the things is, when you're making a film, it's like being in a boat with a very, very loose tiller, where you push it this way, and then your ship goes way over there, and then you try to bring it back. And so there was sort of a schematic plan that yes, they was inspired by Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, and it's very late 50s, early 60s, mostly 50s. But then somehow, Greta was dressed in that Sunday school blue dress with the pink sweater. And you know, she's in one scene, you say, “Okay, let's get her out of that!” But then it turns out, there were eight scenes in continuity. So I think I got the sweater off in the complainer scene. There's actually a very late cut where suddenly the first version of that scene where she had worn the sweater got back into the cut, so: “Whoa! Let’s take that out.” So that was a plan. They're kind of trying to recreate a retro utopia. And that's their ambition. But we went too far, so I wanted to get Greta out of those clothes that I think were kind of separating her from audience liking. And so when she gets depressed, we almost had no clothes available, so we just find some male men's shirts. And so when she's depressed and [UNKNOWN] she's in men's shirts,

David Pendleton

Actually–

Whit Stillman

–which I wear all the time.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  26:59  

The interesting thing about your films, too, is the sense of time in which they're set. Because I feel like there is often this sort of looseness, right? I mean, at the beginning of Metropolitan, it says, “Not so long ago.” Last Days of Disco is clearly set in the past. And this is a little bit ambiguous. This is just an observation, I guess, more than a question. I don't know if you have anything to say–

Whit Stillman  27:18  

No, it's an accurate observation. This is one of the first films we've made that is not expressly set in the past. But since the past is entirely in the characters' heads, it seems very much like the past. And so we didn't try to exclude everything from the present. So she talks about people don't write by hand anymore. I think Fred in one of the last scenes has a cell phone. We had laptops in other scenes that were cut. But I actually do not feel that people live in period. When you are alive and existing, you do not feel, I'm in period. And when I see certain overly beautiful, perfect period films, I think, This is fake. It’s supposed to be a film set in 1950, and it's as if every single thing in their life has been made or bought in 1950. When in fact, when you're in your 1950 apartment, almost nothing is from 1950 in your apartment. And so for instance, coming back to this room, I mean, even though they apparently have changed it a lot, it seems like it was like this forty years ago or whenever, it was so...

David Pendleton

Right.

Whit Stillman

I mean, I think we live in our heads and we create the world. You know, there are people running around campus now who think they're in a Fitzgerald film.

[LAUGHTER]

David

In a who film?

Whit Stillman

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. If F. Scott Fitzgerald made films.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  28:40  

Right, no, I get you. I understand. I understand.

Now who is the gentleman who... very patient... Okay, if you look to your left, Kevin's passing a mic down to you.

Audience 4  28:53  

Well, I just wanted to say like the other films of yours I've seen, I really enjoyed it. It was very interesting. I had an interesting point I wanted to make about the ending in kind of relating it—not to spoil tomorrow night's movie Last Days of Disco—but, you know, these are both films that involve kind of this crazy, awesome dance scene where the music– I mean, Last Days of Disco has a lot of music, a lot of pop music from 70s/80s. And this one, you know, it felt like there were a couple of songs that were familiar-ish, but mostly, this soundtrack– I wondered what exactly your intention of breaking convention or having the soundtrack be these characters kind of breaking out of the story and getting into this big dance number, just because I noticed that twice in your films, and I was wondering what your intentions were, what effect you thought it had on the films in question.

Whit Stillman  29:47  

No, that's a very good observation. And I think it's even bigger than that, in the sense that at the end of Last Days of Disco, it goes out of reality. Everyone's dancing in the subway car and on the platform. And I kind of love that scene. It was kind of a culmination. It's “Love Train,” the OJs. It’s a really great song. And I feel that we left reality there, and we didn't really reenter reality in this film. So this film is not really reality. It's a bit of a fantasy. And I found that really liberating. And so there are a lot of similarities between this and the other films, but it's also something different. And I really like working in this area. And I don't want to make every film like this. But I think it's something you can do; you can make a film that's not totally real. And then at the end, it does go– But it'll be much better, I think, in the final version, because we have really beautiful music there. And we have Adam Brody and Greta belting out the song and the cast—some of whom have just terrific voices—belting out the songs. And then we have our new worldwide hit “Sambola Song” [LAUGHTER] which will be released like April... Anyway, very soon. And so it is a very good point.

I mean, the choreographer is a young guy, never done anything on film before, but he's terrific to work with because he just adapted to the limited situation we had. But I think that if the way they're dancing is not perfect, the idea was sort of a college musical. So they're putting on a show, and this is their show, and it's unreal, but it's within the realm of something they could do and you know, Greta really dances beautifully. And we shifted the music. So it looks like in the fountain, she's not really dancing to that. And it's because she isn't, because we shifted it. And then the composers have made it so that she's dancing to the music. So the music caught up with her.

David Pendleton  31:43  

So do you consider the film a musical?

Whit Stillman  31:45  

I consider all the films musicals in a way. They’re sort of talking musicals. And in this case, they actually start having musical stuff.

David Pendleton  31:57  

Right.

Alright, we'll go here and then the gentleman in the middle and then you. Keep coming, James. No, no, no, it's this woman down here. Is there somebody that I called him before that I missed in the middle? We'll get back to you.

Audience 5  32:10  

That was wonderful, thank you. Your style is so unique. I've never been able to compare one of your films to another one, but watching this, I thought of another film that appeals to young people so much so, there's a sequel now, White Hot American Summer, which is largely performed by improv actors. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the tension between the very planned and stylistically precise dialogue in your films with a sort of improvisational feel, perhaps on the level of just making the films themselves?

Whit Stillman  32:43  

Well, I think you're right, that this film has an element of sketch comedy in it, sort of comedy performers doing stuff that is not really on the page. And I need to have things written down. In this film, there was a lot of stuff that came in later, because for instance, the Xavier character was the Tom character, and then we had to rewrite it for Hugo Becker who’s French, so he became the Xavier character. And so as the assistant director was harassing me for correcting pages, the Zorro sequence came very late in the process. And then the Rose-explaining-her-accent scene was written the morning of the last day’s shoot. And so for me, it felt like improv, although there were scenes that could be given last-minute to the actors, but where it was really, I think, more in the area of sketch comedy and performance created by the performer were the people in the DU. Ryan Metcalf, who plays Frank, came into his audition and said, “I have a version that’s very very broad. Do you want to see it?” And we said, “Yeah, yeah, show us.” Wow. It's really funny. And it's even broader than what he did here. And then Billy Magnussen who plays Thor did that. And Caitlin Fitzgerald, who plays Priss, they were all sort of in that. And then there's some people from comedies. Zach Woods has gone on to play in The Office, and he played Rick DeWolfe, and he added little stuff, applauding at the end. And then Aubrey Plaza from Parks and Recreation, she does her own thing. She has her little cigarette butt, all the stuff she's doing and it’s great. You just: “Cool. Just do it.” So you're right that this film edges more towards the David Wayne kind of–

Audience 5  34:38  

Are there ever though any moves that you improv that are so dramatic as say like, was there a version of a script in which Violet ended up with or had a relationship with Rick DeWolfe? Because it seemed like you could take cues from different types of romantic comedies and go there. Do you ever improvise on that dramatic of a scale when you're making films?

Whit Stillman  34:59  

Well, I mean, there's a certain point when it looked like it was going to be a sort of war between Rick DeWolfe and Violet through the whole film. And then there’s something about that that just bored me because it just seemed like that's the way it should be. But we didn't want to do that. So that was kind of a relief. I said, “No, no, none of that.” But Zach had extra time, and I had a replacement assistant director who I could bully and order around. And so we quickly went before lunch and got the shots of Rick DeWolfe walking with his acolytes saying things bad of Violet and so I think it was really helpful having those little bits to keep Rick still in the drama.

David Pendleton  35:44  

Have you ever thought about working in television?

Whit Stillman  35:47  

I’ve thought about it.

[LAUGHTER]

And they said “No.” [LAUGHS]

David Pendleton

Their loss! Cinema’s gain!

Whit Stillman

No, I did. I did one episode of homicide and Chris Eigeman agreed to be in it. And he played a preppy yuppie whose wife is killed and his daughter's carjacked, and cast him in it. And then it was rewritten after we started working on it to make him just a vile, horrible, you know, evil, preppy, although he was the victim in the thing. And I objected to that, because it’s sort of, don't misrepresent, don't fall into the caricature of the–

David Pendleton

The evil preppy?

Whit Stillman

The evil preppy and defending our ethnic group. [LAUGHTER] And I don't think the executive producer liked that at all. He didn't like it at all. But he did modify it, and the original writer was grateful that we kept it from being ripped apart. But I never got another job in television, I have to say.

David Pendleton  36:49  

There was somebody in the... Maybe it was you there. Okay, keep your hand up so that James can see you. And then there was somebody up front here who will be next.

Audience 6  37:02  

Hi. Thanks a lot. I had a question. We've talked about how your films are about young people who are in this point of great transformation and kind of unsettling in their lives. And over all of the films, but particularly in this one, it's not that it's just about young people, but it's almost devoid of adults, or particularly adults who can offer any type of guidance or advice. And so I was wondering if that's intentional. I mean, these characters are going through these major, life-changing moments, perhaps, and yet, there's never any mention of parents or parental figures. And so I was wondering if there was an idea behind that, or why you made that decision in your films?

Whit Stillman  37:36  

Well, they were dead. They're all dead. [LAUGHS/LAUGHTER] No, that's a good question. I don't know why it just doesn't interest me that much. I guess someone else can do that movie.

[INAUDIBLE AUDIENCE COMMENT]

David Pendleton  37:50  

Right, that's the Peanuts...

Whit Stillman

Alexander Payne can do that movie. And I don't want to. I don't know, it just doesn't interest me.

David Pendleton  37:57  

I mean, it is true, usually, in a college comedy movie, there's at some point, you know, like, confrontation with the administration or with the faculty or whatever. It's true that there's very little of that.

Whit Stillman

I actually had an idea to do this, you know, back twelve years ago, and a sort of tiny little commission to do it. And in that version, there was sort of boring administration figures from the university, and it was all very boring, so I just didn't go back to that. But also, there's a production reason—like with Metropolitan and other things—that we couldn't have SAG actors in Metropolitan, and so we could get a lot of great young people in the movie, but it was very hard getting adults, but they weren't really in the script, either. But I don't know, who knows why one doesn't do something.

David Pendleton  38:50  

There was somebody up in the front I thought who had her hand up. Maybe that person's gone. Okay, let's get this woman here, and then we'll get you next.

Audience 7  39:00  

I find that so refreshing, the fact that the characters are all working their lives out for themselves. And I don't know where else to go to see a movie like that. And that's what I recall, you know, when I was in college in the 70s, was that people wanted nothing to do with their parents, and they just wanted to forge their way on their own, and I really enjoy seeing that played out in— well, I mean, you've said it's sort of a throwback setting—but really a contemporary setting.

Whit Stillman 39:36  

Yeah, I mean, that was my memory too, that we really were just dealing with each other and our context of contemporaries. Parents might pose problems but… Thank you.

David Pendleton  39:51  

And then there's a woman further in. Yes.

Whit Stillman 39:53  

Should we get–? Are people getting tired? Should we have this towards the end?

David Pendleton  39:57  

People can slip out if they need too. Are you getting tired? We can stop–

Whit Stillman  39:59  

No no. But if you need to slip out–

David Pendleton  40:03  

We won't be offended.

Whit Stillman  40:05  

If your ferry to the island is about to leave.

David Pendleton  40:07  

Right. Or if the sitter has to go home or whatever. Kevin, you want to pass the mic down to this woman? Raise your hand.

Whit Stillman  40:16  

Oh, the ferry is leaving!

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  40:19  

Well, you opened the door!

Whit Stillman

The floodgates!

David Pendleton

But that's alright. The rest of us are still here. So once those people leave, we can get the mic to the person who has a question.

Audience 8  40:32  

So I guess I have a slightly related question to the previous two, but one thing I was really struck by was the choice of the university setting, the college setting, where your characters are doing all of this learning that's not really related to necessarily being in school at all. But the university provides this kind of contained environment for them to sort of discover these things about themselves and each other. And I guess I was wondering what advantage you felt that had for projecting a certain message to your audience and what you want your audiences to learn from these characters who are doing this particular type of [?learning?]?

Whit Stillman  41:17  

Well, that's very good question, too. Thank you. It's also a little bit over my head. I mean, it did seem that sort of depression and suicide loom very large as a subject of conversation. I think Al Alvarez's big book on suicide came out when I was in college, and there was a book about Harry Crosby and all these sort of romanticized Sylvia Plath suicide cases suddenly decided to publish books right around then. And so that's a pretty serious subject. And I think one, perhaps, way of people dealing with it is not to take it that seriously is find something else to do and take a shower and tap dance and hope it goes away. I mean, I think so many problems people face when they're in this age group really are just developmental. And if they can be persuaded or distracted into just getting on with whatever the next thing is, tons of these problems just disappear. I mean, so many of these worries and fraught tensions, you know, if time just passes then you don't care anymore. You just want a drink or a cup of coffee, or you forget all those problems… for the most part. Anyway, thank you.

David Pendleton  42:33  

Other questions? These two up here. Let's start with the woman closer to the aisle. James or Steven or whoever's got that mic, there's a woman right here in the red.

Audience 9  42:43  

I was. I thought that the part about the French actor, the Cathar, was absolutely [INAUDIBLE]. And I wondered whether that was from you or the writer or where–?

Whit Stillman 42:57  

I'm not a Cathar. I am not a Cathar!

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, the question’s about the Cathar love theme.

David Pendleton  43:07  

And he's the writer and the director.

Whit Stillman  43:09  

Yeah, the Cathar love theme. I mean, it's sort of humiliating to admit that to so many things in the film that people think are original, are just because I heard a story about this where a woman I knew, this lovely woman, my generation, when she was in university, there was a professor. He became her boyfriend, and he said he was a Cathar. And this was his way of expressing love. [LAUGHS/LAUGHTER] And I just sort of hated to think of it with this lovely woman, you know, that she had her Cathar period. [LAUGHTER] But you have the benefit, you're the last audience that will see the dirty version because...

David Pendleton  43:53  

Spread the word about the NC-17–

Whit Stillman  43:54  

Don’t tell the MPAA that we showed the dirty version after they gave us the rating.

David Pendleton  43:57  

When it comes out on DVD, you can brag to all your friends that you've seen it already.

There was a question a little further in. Yes.

Audience 10  44:07  

What do you think will happen with the friends group, or what did you intend in the way that Lily was kind of exposing Violet, like revealing her discomfort with her background? So how do you expect that group to evolve?

Whit Stillman 44:24  

Which group?

Audience 10

The girls.

David Pendleton

The whole circle of…

Whit Stillman  44:26  

Oh, well, I have a very personal feeling about the characters that I don't think anyone else has. I loathe the Lily character. I can't stand her. And she just seems to be that kind of person that you think is gonna be a friend. She sort of looks like a friend. She's in the role of a friend. But she actually is a kind of mediocrity who never transcends her own little things.

David Pendleton  44:49  

That's why I was asking you about your feelings towards your characters. And I thought you said that you sort of saw them all–

Whit Stillman  44:55  

I tried to be fair to her. So in that last debate between her and Violet—with the bad sound—when they're working on the costumes before the musical, Lily says some things that are true. I mean, not everyone can be Violet running around crazily, and that we do need normal people to, you know, run the film archives and–

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  45:25  

[LAUGHING] If only! If only those were the people who ran film archives.

Well, no, this idea, the division of the world into like eccentrics versus normals–

Whit Stillman  45:34  

Essentially, Lily is a feature studio executive. [LAUGHTER] She's the person who wrote the coverage on my Jamaica script, I think, you know, she works at a talent agency writing bad coverage of my scripts.

David Pendleton

What's your Jamaica script?

Whit Stillman  45:50  

Oh, it's this film I never got to make that apparently had a very bad coverage. Someone said, “Oh, I kept it for six months without reading it because I had seen some bad coverage.” And “Oh, I liked it much better. Too bad you have this bad coverage. You're dead.”

David Pendleton  46:04  

Is it something that you'll ever go back to, do you think?

Whit Stillman  46:07  

I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that sort of unrealisticness would suit that project because there are angels in it. So if you're doing a film with angels in it, a little bit of unrealism is probably good.

David Pendleton  46:19  

It kind of comes with the territory.

Whit Stillman

Yeah.

David Pendleton

Other questions? Let's get this gentleman here, and then the person in the back, you'll be next.

Whit Stillman  46:27  

If anyone else has a train, please feel free.

David Pendleton  46:30  

I know there are several.

Audience 11  46:32  

Thank you for the film tonight. It was wonderful. I wonder if you had any particular thoughts as to why nostalgia is such a popular theme. Especially you know, tomorrow night, nostalgia is basically going to get trundled out and celebrated, but all of your films seem to do in a much more subtle way and sort of explore nostalgia as a means of not necessarily, you know, being starry-eyed with the past, but as a means of trying to move yourself forward by seeing what was previously done or something to that effect?

Whit Stillman

Well, I'm just completely pro-nostalgia, so if there's any trend towards it, I'm not going to lament it. I mean, I think one of the good things about it, you can choose the periods and the aspects of the periods that you like to talk about that. So I was talking about, you know, some forms in the past I really like and then a journalist said, “But what about all the oppression that was going on, all the bad things?” “Well, I'm not talking about the bad stuff. I'm talking about the good stuff. I don't wanna bring back the bad stuff!” But that's the great thing about looking backwards, that you can just sort of select the greatest hits. It's like a, yeah, hits album.

David Pendleton  47:44  

Well, you know, there's certain styles that seem very historically tight, but then they still continue to exist, like punk for instance, you know what I mean? Like, it's very time specific. But yeah, one can still look back to the punk era and like, dress like a punk…

Whit Stillman

You can. I’ll leave that to you.

David Pendleton

I mean, I know that’s not a point of reference for you, but I'm just saying–

Whit Stillman  48:03  

It's hard to know which things really are classic and which things just were our youth. So I consider Sixties’ Motown soul music classic and eternal and it’ll always be great, but maybe it's just because that was the music that I happen to have. But I remember there's other music at that time that I also hated. So I don't know what is classic and eternal and what just is your subjective memory?

David Pendleton  48:28  

It was somebody else. There's a gentleman in the back who had his hand up.

Audience 12  48:33  

So a lot of people said your films deal a lot with younger people, and I know that you were a student here. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your experience at Harvard and how it's affected your films and you, kind of as a creative person.

Whit Stillman  48:47  

Well, last night, I got into this a little bit, because Metropolitan was set in freshman year for most of the characters. And I was depressed in my mind sort of irrationally, developmentally, my freshman year. I was really a hopeless case. And the only time that I really came out of it was going to those parties that I sort of happened into and, you know, free booze, and music and food for two weeks and pretty girls in dresses distracted one from depression. And then I was brutally dumped in the middle of my sophomore year, and I left and went to Mexico where I had cousins and I stayed there. I learned Spanish. And that was really great for me, I mean, and my father cut me off. It was like, kind of a bad film. And so when I came back, I worked at a place called Tommy's Lunch—where Tommy's Convenience Store is—there used to be a lunch counter, and it was kind of the place everyone come in the evening to get a Philly steak sandwich which I would cook. And so coming back, and having a job, my aspiration was to write Hasty Pudding shows—I wrote two scripts; the president reluctantly decided to choose his own script rather than mine [LAUGHTER]—but the scripts got a lot of support. And a friend I ran into a couple weeks ago said he still had one of my scripts, and he's gonna give it to me. And then I got on the Crimson, and I found that there were sort of humor roles. I had a fictional character. I wrote columns. And so I found myself a little bit as a writer on the Crimson but then lost it again. And, and didn't come back to it really until I was writing short stories, and then these film scripts, so... But definitely there was a progression where if you have low times in college, you can kind of recover and find aspects of your personality and your career.

David Pendleton  50:54  

And I should point out that there are some columns that Whit wrote for the Crimson–

Whit Stillman  50:59  

Not the good ones.

David Pendleton  51:01  

Sorry, some of the worst columns that Whit wrote are in the display case out in the hallway.

Are there other–? Here's another question here. Hang on, we'll get the mic to you.

Audience 13  51:13  

Thank you. It was brilliant. I really enjoyed it. And I just want to know what you're doing next. Are you working on something now? Or what do you hope to do?

Whit Stillman  51:21  

You know, when we were technical at 1am, I was thinking, never again do I want to do this. I want to write novels. I do have a project that I'd like to do soon. And one of the positive things about not having made any film in twelve years was I was writing that whole time. And it was this weird thing where I was a failure in terms of being a producer and getting the films made, but sometimes I felt the scripts were going really well. And I was really more worried about the scripts, because that's the toughest thing. And so I was very happy with a lot of aspects or whole scripts and so now I have trunk items that I hope I'll be able to work on and do.

David Pendleton  51:58  

Do you have any novelists that are inspirations to you when it comes to writing scripts?

Whit Stillman  52:05  

Well, I'm afraid I just look to the past so you know… It's funny because I love Salinger and when Salinger listed the people he loved, it's just all the people I love and I guess it's very cliché. So Salinger, Fitzgerald, Waugh, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde. There's sort of what those people in flit lit and friends of flit lit. So I really like that. I like the dandy tradition and literature and comedy and Max Beerbohn, etc, etc. Thomas Love Peacock who’s mentioned in the film.

David Pendleton  52:44  

Are there other questions? Yes. There's one more question over here. Hang on. If you look to your left, there's a mic on its way to you.

Audience 14  52:55  

Thanks. It was a really wonderful confection. Really great time.

Whit Stillman  52:59  

Thanks. I like that word.

Audience 14  53:00  

I used to work at the Orson Welles cinema here in town, and it would have been fabulous to show it there. It was great fun. I was wondering–

Whit Stillman

My brother was a projectionist there.

Audience 14  53:10  

Oh, terrific! I was wondering if once the film was released, if you would consider rereleasing it in 3D.

[LAUGHTER]

Whit Stillman  53:21  

You know, it's sometimes good to know things you'll never do. But thank you. But I will have a film where everyone is blue. I think I want to do that.

[LAUGHTER]

David Pendleton  53:34  

Ivy League Avatar kind of thing?

Whit Stillman  53:36  

Yeah.

David Pendleton  53:38  

Are there any other questions?

Whit Stillman  53:41  

Last question?

David Pendleton  53:43  

Alright. And then there's a woman in the back and then that'll be it.

Whit Stillman

Okay. Good.

Audience 15  53:47  

It's more of a comment I hadn't heard anybody say and maybe I'm totally off-base and too old for the young audience. But I thought that it seemed to be very much as if it had been played in the South. I thought the sort of naivete of the students—not to speak of the light, and the typography you have; there were a lot of southern plants where they were walking through the paths and things, it just made me feel South, not at all Dartmouth where my father taught.

Whit Stillman  54:25  

Yeah, you're absolutely right. What I had in my mind when I was writing the script was southern Pennsylvania. I'm not sure if that counts. [LAUGHTER]

Audience 15

I was thinking of Mississippi.

Whit Stillman

I think I drove by [?Holland's?] recently and I was thinking, This is real Holland’s, and Dartmouth was—not in the sense of Northern—but in the sense of a male bastion, with a tradition of vomiting all over everyone's doorsteps [LAUGHTER] and things of that kind. But they refer to the South too, because, you know, Violet admires the courtly side and it’s fun for us the fact that when she's talking about maybe Charlie is not a playboy operator, maybe he's a Southern gentleman who's gonna declare his love and propose marriage to Lily. And then Heather has this sort of ecstatic look on her face. And the actress who plays Heather, Carrie Macklemore, who's a Southern belle grew up in both Mississippi and Alabama. And she was, you know, in love with a Southern gentleman who she was about to marry. And so it's sort of tied in with that. But you're right, there is a certain Southern flavor to a lot of that. Thank you.

David Pendleton  55:45  

And then the last question, there's a woman there in the back.

Audience 16  55:48  

Yeah, this is very related, I was just wondering where the film was shot.

Whit Stillman  55:53  

Well, we were incredibly fortunate because as a low-budget production in New York, you really want to be right there and not have a lot of travel time, but we wanted to look like a college. But we didn't want to have troublesome college students running around. And so it was a place called Sailors’ Snug Harbor. And it was a bequest from one of the Revolutionary War era, rich merchant families. Mr. Randall died and left a bequest for worn-out beaten down retired sailors in his bequest. And in 1830, they built this beautiful group of Greek Revival buildings. It's considered by some architectural historians, the finest set of Greek Revival buildings in the United States, and it became a city park after they closed the sailors’ retirement home in the 60s. And they were incredibly helpful to us, and almost everything was shot there. So the motel is a space on this campus faking that. And then we went to local businesses, the diner, the oak bar—which was a confection between two different rooms in a building nearby. It's on Staten Island. And the problem with it, it’s right next to a ship's channel. And enormous, enormous... So when the two girls are in their fancy outfits looking this way, and there's bad sound, the bad sound is because there's an enormous tanker ship going right in front of them, like, you know, eighty yards away. So it wasn't very good from the sound recordist’s point of view, but it was a beautiful set of buildings in Staten Island, New York, so I got to commute on the ferry sometimes which was really fun. Anyway, thank you very much for seeing the film and I hope you'll see the final film. Thank you!

David Pendleton  57:36  

Come back tomorrow for Last Days of Disco!

©Harvard Film Archive

An off-beat, giddy and Laura Ashley colored send-up of smug liberal college Americana, Stillman’s latest film works within a bolder mode of satiric caricature than his earlier trilogy. Starring mumblecore icon Greta Gerwig as the overzealous leader of an all-girl suicide prevention club, Damsels in Distress gleefully skewers dominant college stereotypes, from jock machismo and sorority cattiness, to playfully suggest the inflexible socio-cultural and class hierarchies that hold up academia’s ivory tower. – HG