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" A lot of people in the film industry are fatalists who think a worthwhile film will always achieve its destiny, and the films that aren't worthwhile won't. It's all sort of pre-determined, etc. And I don't think that's true at all. "

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" One of the downsides of money is if there's no money, there are very few real jerks who are attached to your project. And if there is money, you do attract some very difficult, unhelpful people. "

Whit Stillman

You

Real

Difficult

" When I'm writing fiction, I read nonfiction or biographies. Now I'm watching very old movies or old foreign films. I don't immerse myself in whatever's going on in whatever area I'm working in. "

" The 'Damsels' crew was low-budget, young people who were doing their first thing almost. A lot of it. It felt like Pied Piper or Rumpelstiltskin or whatever: it was me and people thirty years younger or more. But it was great; it was really fun. "

" My theory in the '90s was that I didn't want to take a Jane Austen book I loved and reduce it to a 90-minute movie. The Emma Thompson-Ang Lee 'Sense and Sensibility' was beautiful, but other ones, I didn't think justice was being done. It's not a slam dunk to adapt these books. "

" I remember going to one party of this preppy, bourgeois crowd, and there was some obnoxious character there, really bad news, and saying, 'Oh my God, so the caricature you always see in films actually exists.' "

" You can be an American or an Englishman or Canadian and be a Parisian. It's a very admirable culture, and people want to identify with it. "

" I always wanted to direct and write a movie, but I thought that I didn't really have it in me. I tried to write fiction and humorous short stories, and some were considered successful, but it was always a huge effort for a small reward. I was always intimidated by the process. "

" I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of. "

" I learned that you have to say that you're a filmmaker. You're not a screenwriter; you're not a director for hire. You've got to take charge. You're a filmmaker, and you're going to make a film. "

" The great thing for me is how Hitchcock uses guilt so well. He implicates the spectator in the character's field, and you really feel it, and there's incredible relief when it comes out right - if it does come out right. "

" My whole career, only one person has stepped up to back me. All these people say they like your films. They say this and they say that, but no one actually does anything. "

Whit Stillman

Say

People

" I love making cheap films. I really do. What I've found is that I work better when it's both a fairly low budget and a short schedule. It focuses the mind, and it's a better atmosphere. "

" You have to constantly work on your script if it needs it. You don't accept, 'Oh, I did a draft and...' No, it's your responsibility to work on the script as much as possible and make it better and better. "

" The usual key to getting films made seems to be a producer's terrier-like determination not to let it go. Unfortunately, such producers often seem prone to sinking their claws into mediocre projects. "

Whit Stillman

Determination

Seem

" I didn't realize how limiting an R rating is. I made 'Disco' as a cautionary tale for 14- and 15-year-old girls, and those girls were not allowed to see the film by their parents. "

" There's the right person, or right people, for each other. There is that order that's searching to be found but, I think, it's not as if everything is going to be automatic. So, people could really be meant for each other and its goes awry; or they could have to learn or develop and grow up together. Grow to be right together. "

" Paris is the destination for brokenhearted American women. I think men go there and have their hearts broken, but women come there with their hearts broken. "

" So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful. "

" At the New York Harvard Club, they've moved the memorial for those who died in World Wars I and II up to an obscure little hallway; they used to be in the main hall, in the most prominent location. The sacrifice of those young people I always found so stunning and so admirable. "

" I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything. "

" One of the reasons it's important to make a new project is it always seems to improve the reputations of the previous one. Whatever you did before is better than what you've just done, apparently. But I've had to follow the first rule of journalism: Never read the comments. "

" I was in Paris for nine years, starting in '98. One of the great things when I was first there were these wonderful CD collections, selling for almost nothing. For ten euros, you'd get three CDs of all the Gershwin songs. "

" Happy is the small business that can hire additional employees besides the proprietor; rare is the indie-film enterprise that can be happy in this way. The norm is an unpaid principal with no employees between productions. "

" I'm very concerned about the countries bordering Russia. But let's stay off that stuff. "

" Some critic complained about how many small films are released in New York... it annoyed me. Those small films that are lucky to get two weeks are often my favorite films of the year. "

" I think that, in terms of mainstream storytelling, the rebel gets off way too easy. We're way too hard on the insiders and way too soft on the outsiders. "

" So much of selling a film in the industry is about creating a fulcrum where all the pressure comes to bear, and something seems suddenly valuable and approved by an audience. It's amazing how people could pick up tons of films on the cheap, but they don't because they wait until everything is laid out for them. "

" There's certain key dance crazes that are just so much fun - wouldn't that be a great thing to do, to invent a dance? "

" My guilty pleasure is watching the Investigation Discovery channel. "

" I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity. "