Whit Stillman has written and directed three motion pictures:
Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. His first
novel, The Last Days of Disco: with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, is a
novelization of the film, purportedly written by one of the characters, Jimmy
Steinway, who takes the opportunity the film's producers have given him to
look back at the "real-life" events of the narrative and fill in some areas that
Stillman hadn't explored previously. I spoke with Stillman by telephone a few
days after his first public reading, at Manhattan's Temple Bar.
RH: Why wait three years to publish the novelization of
the film?
WS: Well, actually, I was just doing the films in order to get
a higher profile so when I finally wrote a novel, I could get some
attention. (beat) I always wanted to write a novel. I did have a
conventional idea of just doing a novel that would accompany the
film out into the marketplace, where maybe I could say more stuff
than I could say in the film, do it in a different way. But it would be
a rush job. There wasn't enough time; the film was being rushed [into
release] to come out ahead of the other disco film, I forget what it
was called [54 --RH]. Although it was very well received by
every house we sent [the proposal] to, they were thinking along the
same lines, too.
There was one editor who reacted in a different way. Jonathan
Galassi was the most enthusiastic; he thought there was something, a
novel, happening already in the screenplay, and he said he didn't
want it to come out with the movie at all. He didn't want it to be a
novelization. He wanted it to just be a novel about the same subject.
So we did the deal with him, and he gave me permission to take
longer with it, do it in a different way.
I guess the thing I really regret about it is the title. I don't think [the
book] should be called The Last Days of Disco. We've been
getting good reviews, but one thing that the sales force is concerned
with is that they've been sometimes very, very positive, but very
small. (There was one that was not positive, which was The New
York Times Book Review, but no one reads that anymore.) I think
if we didn't have the title of The Last Days of Disco, if we didn't
have that phrase in the first half of the title, I think we'd get more
serious attention. I refer to the book by its subtitle, Cocktails at
Petrossian... frankly, The Last Days of Disco was a bad title
for the movie, for the book, for everything except the soundtrack.
RH: Who are some of the writers that you found either
influential or inspirational?
WS: For this book, the big inspiration was a novel by John
Marquand, The Late George Apley. It's in the form of a
biography written by Apley's best friend after his death. The best
friend is kind of dim, so there's a filter of the sensibility of this dim
friend who doesn't quite get everything. The reader can figure out
what's happening, though the "writer" hasn't quite figured it out.
There's an element of that with Jimmy Steinway... I mean, he's pretty
close to a reliable narrator within his limits, but there is that filter of
sensibility that might be defective occasionally. The fact that he
writes awkward first novelist purple patches, too... my faults as a
first-timer could be masked, or made amusing, by having this other
first-time would-be novelist be responsible.
Otherwise, the works of fiction I most admire, most suggestive, are
War and Peace and other works of Tolstoy, Jane Austen,
Salinger. I was terribly affected by Fitzgerald when I was very
young and I still admire Fitzgerald, although I found the novels that
I liked when I was in my twenties, I don't go back to very much any
more.
RH: How early on did you hit upon the idea of having the
book narrated from a different perspective, that of Jimmy
Steinway?
WS: It came surprisingly late, and for me, it was the thing
that really unlocked the whole project. It just solved so many
problems and made it flow and made it fun. What's kept me from
writing novels for about 20 years is my aversion to description. It
just bored me to tears doing descriptions. So now, when I had to
write a scene I knew all too well, I'd have to describe things to give
the dialogue a context. But once it's Jimmy Steinway describing
things, it's kind of interesting because it wasn't just about
description. It was about Jimmy Steinway describing things, what he
noticed. He would come and unlock different insights and sideshows
and background stuff.
Occasionally, I'd have to find a novelistic substitute for something
missing without the actors. The actors--with their reactions, with
expressions, et cetera--bring a lot of meaning and pathos and
sympathy to certain scenes that might not be fully communicated
simply by the dialogue. One example is the misunderstanding
between Alice and Jimmy early in the movie. He's going on about
how stupid he was to have done something that he thinks might
have insulted his boss. And Alice is going, "No, it's really
understandable. I don't think it's stupid." He insists, "No, really it
was stupid." So, finally, to sort of please him, she says, "Well, I
guess it was stupid." And he flies off the handle because he really
doesn't want her to say it was stupid. He wants her to reassure him
that it wasn't. He's drunk and kind of weirded out and reacts really
badly, gets up as if he's going to leave her, then reconsiders and says,
"Can I get you a drink?" I really couldn't communicate all the pathos
of this guy making such a fool of himself with just the dialogue. And
I had to find a novelistic equivalent for that.
RH: When you hit upon the idea of Jimmy as the narrator,
was that how the "cocktails at Petrossian afterwards" idea
emerged?
WS: Yeah. I really like the idea of these fictional worlds
being real; in the film The Last Days of Disco itself, that's made
manifest by characters from the other two films appearing. It would
be logical for some people from Metropolitan or even from
Barcelona, when they're in Manhattan, to be attracted to this
very popular club, to show up in other corners while the main
characters are doing their own thing--and from there, the idea that
these were real people, that the filmmakers had just done a
reconstruction of their real experiences. And eventually, they were
going to see a rough cut of the film and react. There's not that much
they could do at that point because they already shot the scenes, but
the filmmakers would want to know, is this pretty much the way it
was?
It's very interesting for me when friends whose experiences were
filtered into the story see the thing and I get their reaction. One of
the funniest reactions I had was from Metropolitan. There's a
fellow portrayed in that as sleeping through all these after-parties.
He came to one of our first screenings, and at the end, he said
nothing to me. I was weirded-out that there was no reaction, and
then I found out that he slept through the screening, too.
RH: In choosing to tell the story this way, you also get in
some sly digs at critics who panned the film when it came
out. David Denby in particular.
WS: I think he's the only one named. I found no one has said,
"Oh, how could you have said that about my poor friend, David
Denby?" Actually, it's been just the opposite. "Oh, that guy is so
mean. Oh, he's such a bastard. Oh, he really . . ." There's this extra
dimension of meanness in his comments, this personal, vindictive
quality about what he writes. I think it's fine that people write
positive or negative or mixed reviews of movies. They react as they
want to react. There are plenty of people who, my defensive posture
would be to say, they don't get the film, but it doesn't enrage me that
they give the film a pan. There's something about what Denby
writes... you feel that the knife has been sharpened. He says that
these characters are so uninteresting and unlikable; well, I notice
that when people say that these people are so disagreeable and
unlikable, it's usually very cantankerous, disagreeable, unlikable
people who are making that observation. People who are nicer and
more generous are also nicer and more generous about the
characters. You know, we all have our faults, we all have our stupid
sides, but it doesn't mean that we are intrinsically unlikable.
(beat) Except for David Denby.
