For Joan's Digest, the new online feminist film quarterly founded by Miriam Bale, the Siren recently found herself interviewing director Whit Stillman, whose Damsels in Distress opens Friday, April 6. Miriam is known around cinephile circles as a curator and critic for the L Magazine, among many other hats. She knew that the Siren is a longtime Stillman devotee, having fallen in love with Metropolitan at an impressionable age and followed him through Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco, and so Miriam arranged this meeting.
About three years ago, Dennis Cozzalio asked his readers which "living film director you most miss seeing on the cultural landscape regularly." Stillman's name was cited by at least a half-dozen of the hardcore cinephiles answering the quiz. Fourteen years have passed since The Last Days of Disco was released and (quite unjustly) failed to make back its money, a hiatus that's always mentioned whenever Stillman's name comes up. The Siren resolutely didn't ask him about that, on the grounds that he's discussed it in many other places, is no doubt heartily tired of the topic and at this point must have little to add to the sum of public knowledge about it.
Plus, to be honest, after seeing Damsels in Distress, the Siren had what she considered much better things to ask him about--like perfume, like Fred Astaire, like musicals. Damsels evokes all sorts of classic-film tropes, while maintaining its own surreal form of modernity.
The Siren thinks Stillman will strike most of her patient readers as a man after their own hearts, and as evidence she offers the following snippet from their conversation. For the rest of Stillman's musings on topics including who was Fred Astaire's best director and how Jean Brodie was ill-used, as well as why Stillman mimed putting a gun to his head when the Siren brought up A Damsel in Distress, you must click through to the article at Joan's.
The Siren thinks Stillman will strike most of her patient readers as a man after their own hearts, and as evidence she offers the following snippet from their conversation. For the rest of Stillman's musings on topics including who was Fred Astaire's best director and how Jean Brodie was ill-used, as well as why Stillman mimed putting a gun to his head when the Siren brought up A Damsel in Distress, you must click through to the article at Joan's.
Whit Stillman: ...The other thing I really love is from the Gold Diggers of 1935, and it's the original version of “Lullaby of Broadway.” It's just mind-boggling. And one of the things I'd like to do is The Gold Diggers of 2015. A Warner Brothers musical review set in the present day.
Joan's Digest: Oh yeah? Would you do wisecracking showgirls?
Whit Stillman: Of course, of course. You don't want any modern. There will be no punk rock.
JD: Wisecracking showgirls are one of my favorite things.
Whit Stillman: Well, I remember when we were getting a lot of grief for our talky films not being cinematic. And I remember favorite films, like Stage Door. And Stage Door is wall-to-wall dialogue.
JD: A lot of 30s movies are. So we have Sandrich, La Cava with Stage Door, probably My Man Godfrey too? Are there any other touchstones you go back to?
Whit Stillman: My Man Godfrey is actually not one of my favorites.
JD: Oh my god really? I love it. I'm so sorry.
Whit Stillman: No, I love the actors. I think they are better than the material. The material is a little subpar compared to other things. I wrote something in the Times in November about favorite holiday films, and I wrote about The Shop Around the Corner. I adore Margaret Sullavan, I like The Good Fairy also. There's so many films, even Three Comrades.
JD: Oh yeah. Margaret Sullavan is very big with the commenters on my blog.
Whit Stillman: Oh my gosh, she's so lovely. She's like a perfume herself.
JD: That voice.
Whit Stillman: Oh, the voice.
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