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" Oscar Wilde was sort of my first love as a young reader. And then I went on to love Jane Austen's wonderful - this sort of comedy coming from her. I mean, all of her books are comic. "
Whit Stillman
Mean
Young
Comedy
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" 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
" Really, having a show freely available online is like having your book in the library. It's wonderful; it's ideal. "
Whit Stillman
Book
Library
Like
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Amazing
People
Wait
" A very sad moment for me was when my parents separated - a lot of crying, 'It's tragic, we're now a broken family, blah blah blah blah blah' - although my psychological problems stopped. I actually felt healthier. "
Whit Stillman
Moment
Sad
Parents
" I think my favorite two words are 'true blue.' I think those words are really important, and the spirit of them has been lost. "
Whit Stillman
Think
Lost
Important
" I'm the ayatollah of the Jane Austen fan base! I want to lead the fan base, not be attacked and devoured by the fan base. "
Whit Stillman
Lead
Attacked
Base
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Better
Work
You
" I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything. "
Whit Stillman
View
Point Of View
Everything
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Together
Think
Right Person
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Beautiful
Good
Short
" I like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical. "
Whit Stillman
Than
Sort
Rather
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Creating
Creation
Going
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Great
Feel
Guilt
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Paris
Nothing
Years
" Making a show is such a long process. You go through a TV production house that will commission scripts, and if they like what you've written, they take it to a network and sell it to them. It has always felt very far away from something that's actually real. "
Whit Stillman
You
House
Go
" It's intimidating for guys to hear women complain about their boyfriends. Guys imagine that girls are thrilled to have them around, and this is what they really talk about. "
Whit Stillman
Hear
Imagine
Talk
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Out
Year
College
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Changes
Time
Change
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
True
Achieve
Think
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Writing
Cool
Doing
" I don't think there's anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent. "
Whit Stillman
Think
Prince
Her
" I'm totally devoted to '30s cinema. "
Whit Stillman
Cinema
Devoted
Totally
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Think
Easy
Rebel
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Think
Loved
Justice
" 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
" Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave. "
Whit Stillman
Leave
Paris
Plum
" What I like and find liberating in dialogue comedy is that the characters, and what they say, are not me. These are fleeting thoughts and observations and not presented as truths but as something that illuminates the character and the dynamic between the characters. This kind of dialogue is thesis and antithesis - and we never get to a synthesis. "
Whit Stillman
Me
Thoughts
Character
" 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.' "
Whit Stillman
God
You
Character