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" 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. "

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" My family was entirely political, all the time, on the left. The opposite of that is not to be political on the right. It's trying not to be - politics is not everything. There's life other than politics. Politics intrudes. "

Whit Stillman

Time

Politics

Political

" The dull externals of the screenwriter's working life are well known: We are the people taking up too much table space at cafes. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't think you change from the time you're 16 until you die. Maybe your body changes, and you have different experiences, but I think you become a fully conscious soul with full abilities. Souls are eternal, and if you keep your marbles until you croak in your 90s or your 100s, you're the same. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The cinema I particularly love is the cinema of the golden age of the studios in the 1930s. One of the really nice things about it was the way teams of actors and directors and crew people worked together again and again. "

" 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. "

" I've gotten to really, really like being back in the States. It's so easy being in your own country, and I really like Americans - typical American towns and provincial college towns are my ideal place to be. "

" My biggest false steps have actually been when I tried to do very different projects. I found I was getting people saying, 'Why does Whit Stillman think he can do a film about blacks in early '60s Jamaica? Or the Chinese and the cultural revolution?' Those were the two biggest failures I had getting off the ground. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Bank

" 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 remember trying to write at 1, 1:30 A.M., and just sort of falling asleep. And I think that was actually a good creative state for weird ideas. I shifted to a morning schedule once I had two kids, and I still found that if I slept badly, I actually had better ideas. "

" 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 think my favorite two words are 'true blue.' I think those words are really important, and the spirit of them has been lost. "

" I've learned that I really want to shoot short films on a short schedule. There can be very good films that run 110 minutes, but 90 minutes is beautiful. "

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

Whit Stillman

Think

You

" 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. "

" I love writing novels, but I'm very fearful about writing something from absolute scratch. I kind of don't have the time to write something from scratch. I think when my knees completely give out, and I can't make films anymore, I would try to write novels from scratch. "

" What I find remarkable is that so much of the 18th century literature that I read is more accessible than reading your alternative weekly from ten years ago. People really aspired to write clearly. "

Whit Stillman

Find

People