With the release of his recent film Damsels in Distress, Whit Stillman has re-entered a world of independent cinema very different from the one he unintentionally left behind after the completion of Last Days of Disco. In the absence of his delightful erudite-core offerings, mumblecore has grown exponentially in popularity; beyond this sphere, the standard budget for indie filmmaking has ballooned so much that the word "independent" almost seems not to mean anything anymore. So how does an auteur like Stillman adapt to such a dramatically-altered landscape? Actually, he doesn't—he simply goes right back to doing what he does best. With Damsels, Stillman once again offers his audience a deliciously articulate and verbose work of social commentary, all palatably presented on the sparkling aluminum platter that his microbudget forced him to have to use in place of real silver. Though Damsels a departure from his previous films, this is certainly not because of any perceived need on his part to "keep up with the times"; indeed, the only concession he has made to the current landscape of the movie biz has to do with the creative types he hired, among them key mumblecore player Greta Gerwig, who heads up Stillman's film in a performance brimming with wit and class. Unsurprisingly, Gerwig and Stillman had a great deal to say about their collaboration—and their admiration for each other.
Greta, I just wanted to get a sense of your comfort level with the stylized approach of the script and the story.
GERWIG: Well, I was a huge, massive fan of Whit’s work before I even read the script, and I, the way the characters speak in his movies, and their ideas, and the way they espouse their ideology was so familiar to me from these other movies and the way these other actors so brilliantly made these ideas their own that one of the struggles for me was actually not imitating the way they sounded in things. Or not hearing the way Chris Eigeman would—
STILLMAN: You did a very good Chris Eigeman impression. It’s very good, yeah. [LAUGHTER] And you sort of look alike.
GERWIG: I know. Chris and I are very close. [LAUGHS] But I love, I love the dialogue, I love the words. I loved how challenging it was because it—and in some ways it’s not even, it’s much less challenging to say really good writing than to say really bad writing. When you say really bad writing you have to turn off your brain and just say it, but when you have great writing you have something to do and you have something to act, so it was wonderful.
What was your own experience in college?
GERWIG: Well, I went to Barnard College, which was the women’s college at Columbia, and I had the most wonderful time. It was literally life-changing. I grew up in Sacramento, California, and Barnard is in New York City, and that was the biggest thing that could have happened to me. Learning about art for the first time in any real way and then being able to see the paintings we were talking about in the Met, or being able to go see opera, or being able to go see theatre… there were more cinemas that were running things like—at FilmForum I got to see things on the big screen some of which I would have had to drive to San Francisco to go see.
STILLMAN: But Sacramento’s the state capital.
GERWIG: …Yes. But it is not the cultural capital. [LAUGHTER] I love Sacramento, but in California, I think because there is Los Angeles and there is San Francisco, it’s almost like the state is like “We’ve taken care of that and now we’re really gonna commit to farming and government.”
Whit, had this film been percolating ever since your last film came out quite some time ago?
STILLMAN: I mean, oddly, that’s pretty much true. It had been percolating all that time. I mean, it’s not as if I was working on this, because I had all these other projects that collapses and fell apart, but I’d actually had this idea initially back in 2000 and didn’t pursue it—but I’d been thinking about it and I’d been taking notes. I actually found out once I started that those notes weren’t so helpful. The main things from the 2000 idea were the Roman-letter fraternities and the four girls with floral names.
It’s definitely a departure from your prior movies, both stylistically and in the fact that it’s your first movie that isn’t autobiographical. I know Greta has also written and directed and is very involved in mumblecore, so was that an influence?
STILLMAN: Yes, it was very helpful to us that almost all the people we were dealing with were makers as well as interpreters, and we tied in friends of Greta’s whom I’d met other ways, like Lena Dunham, who lent us her co-producer. I’m glad you see it as a departure, because many people see it as a “Part 4” when the other three films really have something in common and this film overlaps with the other films but we’re going off in a very stylized direction. All the films have a utopian element, but this one is a full-on utopia. There are different ways of handling autobiographical material, because you write what you know about, so for me it’s often been a particular period. This one has a lot of autobiographical stuff and I feel very close to the characters, but it’s done in a very different way.
Greta, not only have you worked with Whit, but you were directed in Greenberg by Noah Baumbach, who has been very vocal about being inspired by your work. How do you feel about that?
GERWIG: Well, I think a lot of my favorite directors from the nineties, they were part of this model of filmmaking where it took a lot more doing to get it done. There was a lot more money that needed to be invested in things to get it going. And regardless of whether or not—even if people didn’t necessarily like the aesthetic of the films I was making with my friends circa 2006-2007, I think there was something inspirational for a lot of filmmakers about the size of the film and that it could be made for so little.
STILLMAN: Likewise, the people who backed Barcelona and Last Days of Disco originally backed this script in a very tentative way, and then it came around to the idea of doing this as an indie film and they started thinking about the usual budget range of independent films, which is really quite high, and to do this it meant raising money this way and that way. So I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and it’s possible to go back Metropolitan-style and make quite a good-looking film without many resources,” and I mentioned a very low number, and the people at Castle Rock were like, “For that we can get people to write you checks.” And it was a great experience because we had total freedom. We didn’t have much money, but we had enough to do what we wanted.
Are you releasing the actual budget?
STILLMAN: No, there’s been a lot of delightful, humorous fiction about the budget and I don’t want to get in the way of that comedy. [LAUGHTER] I think one of the producers was asked by FactChecker and he said something along the lines of “It’s like asking an actress’s weight: you can’t ask and expect an honest answer.”
Greta, I just wanted to get a sense of your comfort level with the stylized approach of the script and the story.
GERWIG: Well, I was a huge, massive fan of Whit’s work before I even read the script, and I, the way the characters speak in his movies, and their ideas, and the way they espouse their ideology was so familiar to me from these other movies and the way these other actors so brilliantly made these ideas their own that one of the struggles for me was actually not imitating the way they sounded in things. Or not hearing the way Chris Eigeman would—
STILLMAN: You did a very good Chris Eigeman impression. It’s very good, yeah. [LAUGHTER] And you sort of look alike.
GERWIG: I know. Chris and I are very close. [LAUGHS] But I love, I love the dialogue, I love the words. I loved how challenging it was because it—and in some ways it’s not even, it’s much less challenging to say really good writing than to say really bad writing. When you say really bad writing you have to turn off your brain and just say it, but when you have great writing you have something to do and you have something to act, so it was wonderful.
What was your own experience in college?
GERWIG: Well, I went to Barnard College, which was the women’s college at Columbia, and I had the most wonderful time. It was literally life-changing. I grew up in Sacramento, California, and Barnard is in New York City, and that was the biggest thing that could have happened to me. Learning about art for the first time in any real way and then being able to see the paintings we were talking about in the Met, or being able to go see opera, or being able to go see theatre… there were more cinemas that were running things like—at FilmForum I got to see things on the big screen some of which I would have had to drive to San Francisco to go see.
STILLMAN: But Sacramento’s the state capital.
GERWIG: …Yes. But it is not the cultural capital. [LAUGHTER] I love Sacramento, but in California, I think because there is Los Angeles and there is San Francisco, it’s almost like the state is like “We’ve taken care of that and now we’re really gonna commit to farming and government.”
Whit, had this film been percolating ever since your last film came out quite some time ago?
STILLMAN: I mean, oddly, that’s pretty much true. It had been percolating all that time. I mean, it’s not as if I was working on this, because I had all these other projects that collapses and fell apart, but I’d actually had this idea initially back in 2000 and didn’t pursue it—but I’d been thinking about it and I’d been taking notes. I actually found out once I started that those notes weren’t so helpful. The main things from the 2000 idea were the Roman-letter fraternities and the four girls with floral names.
It’s definitely a departure from your prior movies, both stylistically and in the fact that it’s your first movie that isn’t autobiographical. I know Greta has also written and directed and is very involved in mumblecore, so was that an influence?
STILLMAN: Yes, it was very helpful to us that almost all the people we were dealing with were makers as well as interpreters, and we tied in friends of Greta’s whom I’d met other ways, like Lena Dunham, who lent us her co-producer. I’m glad you see it as a departure, because many people see it as a “Part 4” when the other three films really have something in common and this film overlaps with the other films but we’re going off in a very stylized direction. All the films have a utopian element, but this one is a full-on utopia. There are different ways of handling autobiographical material, because you write what you know about, so for me it’s often been a particular period. This one has a lot of autobiographical stuff and I feel very close to the characters, but it’s done in a very different way.
Greta, not only have you worked with Whit, but you were directed in Greenberg by Noah Baumbach, who has been very vocal about being inspired by your work. How do you feel about that?
GERWIG: Well, I think a lot of my favorite directors from the nineties, they were part of this model of filmmaking where it took a lot more doing to get it done. There was a lot more money that needed to be invested in things to get it going. And regardless of whether or not—even if people didn’t necessarily like the aesthetic of the films I was making with my friends circa 2006-2007, I think there was something inspirational for a lot of filmmakers about the size of the film and that it could be made for so little.
STILLMAN: Likewise, the people who backed Barcelona and Last Days of Disco originally backed this script in a very tentative way, and then it came around to the idea of doing this as an indie film and they started thinking about the usual budget range of independent films, which is really quite high, and to do this it meant raising money this way and that way. So I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and it’s possible to go back Metropolitan-style and make quite a good-looking film without many resources,” and I mentioned a very low number, and the people at Castle Rock were like, “For that we can get people to write you checks.” And it was a great experience because we had total freedom. We didn’t have much money, but we had enough to do what we wanted.
Are you releasing the actual budget?
STILLMAN: No, there’s been a lot of delightful, humorous fiction about the budget and I don’t want to get in the way of that comedy. [LAUGHTER] I think one of the producers was asked by FactChecker and he said something along the lines of “It’s like asking an actress’s weight: you can’t ask and expect an honest answer.”
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