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" I really like working with people again and again, and I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. Because you already know them, and you know how good they are. "

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" 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. "

Whit Stillman

Film

Parents

Realize

" Whether for company or isolation or just to make it a pleasurable experience, I have music in my ears all the time. I tend to listen to the same things, so I don't really pay too much attention to it. But it's there, and it's nice, and I do pay more attention to it than I probably should. I think, 'How can I use this music in something?' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Oddly, in a sense, I still have more confidence as a director than my ability as a writer. Somehow, directing is just really easy. It's just about being really honest about how you feel about what you're seeing. "

" 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. "

" I thought I was going to make bigger films for mass audiences. And I wanted that. I actually had in mind a James-Bondian thriller. "

" What frustrates me a lot about some aspects of filmmaking is people thinking everyone is really dumb and that we have to make everything really obvious. "

Whit Stillman

Thinking

People

" 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. "

" I had, in college, a professor called Walter Jackson Bate, and he taught a course called The Age of Johnson. It's about Samuel Johnson and his period, 18th-century British writing. So we all got to endure Samuel Johnson, and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is now my favorite book. I read it all the time I can; it's great for going to sleep. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" That's why I hate the outlines and treatments, because all you get are cliches. If you put things down on paper as your plan, it's very hard to get those ideas out of your head and do something better. "

" It's a challenge for any writer to write beyond what he knows. You get material, adapt it, and do the best you can with it. "

" 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

" I remember when I was trying to do 'Metropolitan,' in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser. "

" 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

Own

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The worst thing is the blank page at the start. Then the horrible things written on the blank page. Then deciding whether or not to throw out those horrible things: lame scenes, lame characters, bad ideas. "

" 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. "

" I think sometimes it's the things you don't like that give you inspiration. "

Whit Stillman

Think

You

" Producers have a tendency to put you in a pigeonhole: 'What does this white, middle-aged preppy know about 1960s Kingston?' "

" There are bad preppies and bad priests and bad humanitarians. Any group can have its bad apple. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience. "

Whit Stillman

Experience

Live