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PART 1 |
Stillman has received critical acclaim for his films plus an Academy Award® nomination for the Metropolitan script. The Last Days Of Disco has even brought Stillman commercial success, relative to the limited release of the film.
We interviewed Whit using questions submitted by web site visitors just like you. He provided some very insightful answers. See what he has to say critics, rising star Kate Beckinsale, Whit's own disco days and much more.
Readers supplying the selected questions will receive a picture autographed by Stillman. Stillman's The Last Days Of Disco arrives at on October 13 from Polygram Video.
Hear excerpts of the Whit Stillman interview in RealAudio! Get the free Real player.
What do you draw your
inspiration from when writing a screenplay?
Bobbi Porzel
Roselawn, Indiana
WHIT STILLMAN:
The critic I most admire is Samuel Johnson, Dr. Johnson. He would always say that the best inspiration, the best models for any fiction is lived experience. In addition to that, I think that when you come to write something you fall back in your admiration for other writers. In this film, I think J.D. Salinger was kind of an inspiration and he's mentioned in the course of the film.
Do you have any role
models that inspired you to want to make movies?
Ally Knapp
Indianapolis, Indiana
WHIT STILLMAN:
I went through a period of infatuation with the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was starting my teenage years and subsequently. My father was in politics, so my original ambition was to go into politics like he did. And when I decided that was really his career, not mine, my aspiration was to write novels like Fitzgerald, but I found something about the process of that intimidating. The great thing about movies is when you're making them it's sort of an industrial process. It's group social life when you're making a movie. And then the final product you have can communicate itself much more directly to people in the sense that you have the tools of music and the camera and you can show things.
Is there any particular
story you'd like to do?
John Hendrikson
Hanover, New Hampshire
WHIT STILLMAN:
Now that I've done these three romantic comedies set in a very specific world that are sort of potentially inter-related with Disco, Barcelona and Metropolitan. Now I'd like to go into historical subjects -- adventure films against a historical background. I missed not getting a chance to do a different version of The Last Of The Mohicans, a different version of Zorro, sort of Zorro of the American Revolution that I want to make a film about as the next film.