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" I have to embrace the fact people find me divisive, but I find it remarkable. I was very disturbed by the hatred 'Damsels in Distress' received. "
Whit Stillman
Find
People
Me
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" 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? "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I'm very troubled when editors oblige their film critics to read the novel before they see the film. Reading the book right before you see the film will almost certainly ruin the film for you. "
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" I read one Jane Austen in college and didn't like it at all and told everyone how much I disliked it. I read 'Northanger Abbey' sophomore year in college and hated it. I didn't read good Austen until after college, maybe a couple years out. "
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College
" My friends in Paris are writers, or something like that, whereas my friends in New York are doing cool stuff in finance and living very different lives. In writing, it's pretty solitary, so it doesn't really matter who's around. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes. "
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" I feel that if you want to make films, you have to be willing to make it without a fee. You get a deferment, I guess. "
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" There are bad preppies and bad priests and bad humanitarians. Any group can have its bad apple. "
Whit Stillman
Any
Apple
Bad
" I kind of put people from the past up on a pedestal; I don't think, in a lot of ways, that we're at their level. "
Whit Stillman
Level
Past
People
" With all my films, the pace is not very fast, and so people get bored with them and comment that they're just people talking in rooms and all that. "
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Just
Fast
Talking
" I think my favorite two words are 'true blue.' I think those words are really important, and the spirit of them has been lost. "
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Think
Lost
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" I really like the short stories that Melissa Bank writes. I think she's sort of channeling the female version of J.D. Salinger in more recent days. "
Whit Stillman
Think
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" I don't like the word 'perfectionist,' because it's self-flattering. It's tooting your own horn and implies that you actually can achieve perfection. I prefer 'particularist.' "
Whit Stillman
Perfection
Like
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" Producers have a tendency to put you in a pigeonhole: 'What does this white, middle-aged preppy know about 1960s Kingston?' "
Whit Stillman
Middle-Aged
You
White
" I think one of the saving illusions of the film business is everything seems like it's about to happen. It's always about to happen. It's only looking back that you see the wasteland. "
Whit Stillman
Business
Looking
Think
" I think when my parents were together, my family was too prosperous for our psychological health. Not that they were that rich, but I feel that usually inherited wealth causes psychological problems. "
Whit Stillman
Think
Health
Parents
" I like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical. "
Whit Stillman
Than
Sort
Rather
" When you're trying to force things in a script, it seems like it's getting somewhere, but it isn't real or interesting. All the bad material you've written becomes an albatross around your neck. So I really don't like writing a lot of bad stuff, I prefer to just keep narrowing it down to stuff I think is solid. "
Whit Stillman
Interesting
You
Trying
" When people are telling stories on screen, you can show the reactions of people, play it off those reactions, and it can be fun. But when it's someone just giving an opinion on things, even if the opinion is kind of interesting, that is potentially deadly. It has to be really quick. "
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You
Interesting
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" 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. "
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Myself
Watching
Now
" The thing that was most harmful was that there was always something that was about to happen. So I found myself indulging in the writer's luxury of doing another draft, another idea. If this project isn't happening, then I'll shelve one script and start writing another. And in that way, the years go by, and there's very little money coming in. "
Whit Stillman
Start
Luxury
Writing
" Generally, I like people's trunk projects, the things they were working on before anyone knew who they were. I think when people run out of their trunk items and they start doing stuff just to do a film next year, the quality goes down, the interest goes down. Maybe it feels commercial or something. "
Whit Stillman
Start
Run
Quality
" The only way to end up in the perfect future is to invent it yourself. "
Whit Stillman
Yourself
Way
Up
" If you're mostly a writer - if your point of departure is writing something - which for a writer/director is sort of where you start, you're really influenced by the writers you love one way or another. "
Whit Stillman
Start
Point
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" Before, I was writing a script to make a movie. At a certain point, I became A Writer in Film and Television. So I got TV deals to write stuff, film deals to write stuff. But it's dangerous. I got into the WGA, and I became kind of, you know, a slave! They just pay you to write a script, and it's hard to make the movies. "
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You
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" 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. "
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Fun
Young
People
" 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. "
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Great
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