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" Sometimes, people who are very fastidious about what they're going to do in their work are not very fastidious in their private life. I'm like that. I love it when people do really nice things around me, but I don't have time to do it for myself. It's very hard for me to even buy a new pair of trousers. "

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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. "

Whit Stillman

Try

Writing

Find

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You can be an American or an Englishman or Canadian and be a Parisian. It's a very admirable culture, and people want to identify with it. "

" Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave. "

" One of the downsides of money is if there's no money, there are very few real jerks who are attached to your project. And if there is money, you do attract some very difficult, unhelpful people. "

" 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. "

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

Whit Stillman

Experience

Live

" Coming out of college, back to New York, where I didn't really know that many people, I thought our world was very atomized. "

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

" 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. "

" A brief experience with a Radcliffe girl got very bad very quickly. I was so destroyed by it that I left and went to Mexico for a semester, where I have cousins. I learned how to speak Spanish, which was really important for my life. It was wonderful going to Mexico, learning another culture and a language. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Categorizing people economically and hating them because you think they're this way is a prejudice. "

" 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. "

" 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

People

" If you're sort of interested in politics but sort of upset about contemporary politics, it's kind of wonderful to read about periods who were very eloquent and admirable - generally. People are articulating ideas you can sympathize with or understand both sides of. Or at least feel like one side is saying the right things. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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 like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical. "

" I always wanted to direct and write a movie, but I thought that I didn't really have it in me. I tried to write fiction and humorous short stories, and some were considered successful, but it was always a huge effort for a small reward. I was always intimidated by the process. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "