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" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Year
New
Lucky
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" 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
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" Coming out of university, one of my obsessions was that in the novels I was reading, they seemed to be portraying a world that had a social fabric. People knew each other in 'War and Peace.' They went to all the same balls. These were societies with tightly wound, woven, social textures. "
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World
Reading
People
" 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. "
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Thought
Mind
" 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's so much of this thing now, where you're supposed to do all the work before you get the commission. I think it's really good to try to resist that. If you just have a week to come up with a pitch for something, your ideas aren't going to be very good. Get your income from somewhere else, and keep your writing not tied into these contracts. "
Whit Stillman
Week
Good
Ideas
" 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
" In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience. "
Whit Stillman
Experience
Next
Live
" 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
" 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
" It's really important to have subjects that people all over the world are familiar with, and the Disney films are really great that way. "
Whit Stillman
People
Way
World
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Me
People
" 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
" 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
" 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 fell for a Spanish woman and followed her to Spain. We got married there, and then I got involved in the Spanish film industry and got the material for 'Barcelona.' It was my way of breaking into the film industry. "
Whit Stillman
Film
Got
Her
" 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
Me
Thinking
People
" 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
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Adapt
Best
Beyond
" The only way to end up in the perfect future is to invent it yourself. "
Whit Stillman
Yourself
Way
Up
" I like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical. "
Whit Stillman
Than
Sort
Rather
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
People
Saying
Think
" I'm a late bloomer. Even in high school, everyone else was charging ahead, and I didn't come into my own until very late. I feel that's true in cinema, too. I didn't even start 'Metropolitan' until I was 37. "
Whit Stillman
High School
Late
School
" 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. "
Whit Stillman
Fun
Young
People
" 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
Go
Seem
" 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