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Apr 07, 2012 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

Writer/director Whit Stillman lets out a chuckle when he’s asked how Violet Wister, the college student played by Greta Gerwig in his latest film, Damsels in Distress, arrived at the idea that the 1920s dance, the Charleston, was named after a man, not the South Carolina city. Violet, the ringleader of a small group of coeds who run a campus suicide prevention center, is an unreliable protagonist prone to authoritatively stating untruths as if they were facts. Her ambition is to start an international dance craze, but in the meantime, she finds reassurance in dating boys whom she thinks are inferior to her and attempts to help her fellow students combat depression with tap dance and a particular brand of soap.

Like Stillman’s other social satires—Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998)—Damsels in Distress revolves around young, well-spoken, upper-middle-class types who oftentimes are lovably ridiculous and might not be whom they appear to be. Much of the film’s humor derives from the specificity of their language during conversation. At the suicide prevention center, Violet questions a student named Jimbo (Jermaine Crawford) about the viability of his nickname, pointing out that Jimbo doesn’t simplify the name Jim. When Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a transfer student recruited into Violet’s group, proposes that Violet is being hypocritical in calling the editor of the school newspaper arrogant, Violet initially protests (“I don’t see why. We’re all flawed. Must that render us mute to the flaws of others?”) before conceding, “I’d like to thank you for this chastisement.”

It’s striking how, after 14 years of not making a film and spending much of that time in Europe, Stillman’s voice, his singular flair for straight-faced humor, remains intact. As Violet and her cohorts stroll through campus, she delightfully tells them, referring to Lily, “We’ve got a rebel amongst us.” At that moment, you can imagine Nick Smith (Chris Eigeman) from Metropolitan saying the same thing to his group about Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), the hero of that film, as they traverse the winter sidewalks of Manhattan. Yet, with Damsels in Distress, Stillman goes to extremes heretofore unseen in his work, incorporating a full-fledged dance number and embracing broader comedic absurdity. The campus of Seven Oaks, the East Coast liberal arts college portrayed in the film, is notorious for its male students’ b.o., and when one frat boy named Thor (Billy Magnussen) hits the books, it’s to grasp the most basic color identification.

Stillman emerged in 1990 during a flourishing American independent film movement that saw first-time director Steven Soderbergh win the Palme d’Or at Cannes one year earlier for Sex, Lies and Videotape. Stillman’s films, with their idiosyncratic humor and deliberately delivered dialogue, shared somewhat of an affinity with the early films of fellow New York upstart Hal Hartley, but there also was a nostalgic sensibility that, together with Stillman’s satirical depiction of social and cultural elitists, drew comparisons to Woody Allen. Stillman’s original screenplay for Metropolitan earned him an Academy Award nomination, and the modestly budgeted film, cast with unknown actors, proved in limited release to have legs at the box office. Follow-up Barcelona, which starred Metropolitan alums Eigeman and Taylor Nichols, doubled the receipts of its predecessor, but audiences were less enticed by The Last Days of Disco, despite the participation of known actors Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny. Stillman wrote a novel based on the latter film that was published in 2000.

Subsequently, he continued to write scripts, including Dancing Mood, set in 1960s Jamaica, but had trouble getting financial backing for his projects. In the years leading up to Damsels in Distress, Stillman’s hiatus and concurrent relocation to Paris began to assume a Terrence Malick-like air of mystique, while the Criterion releases of Metropolitan in 2006 and The Last Days of Disco in 2009 renewed interest in the filmmaker.

Under the Radar met with Stillman in Beverly Hills last month to discuss, among other topics, how Damsels in Distress got off the ground, why Lena Dunham was instrumental to the film’s production, and whether we can expect a Criterion release of Barcelona soon.

After working on The Last Days of Disco, did you plan on taking a hiatus from filmmaking?

Not at all. No, I didn’t. I did take time off to write a novel, which came out in 2000, and this script, I didn’t have a first draft until the end of 2010. So it’s really 10 years for me of flailing around without a project. I mean, I had projects, but I didn’t have one that went ahead. I have about three or four films that didn’t go ahead.

How did Damsels in Distress separate from the pack?

I had been living over in Europe trying to produce things out of London, and they were far-flung stories. Some of them dramas. And it wasn’t until I came back here and talked to my friends at Castle Rock, who had done the previous two films, with this idea that things started clicking.

Was there something about this script that made people more receptive to it than the others?

Generally, with Castle Rock I had done comedies, and this was a comedy that appealed to them. And so the other films I was involved with were less comic, more dramas. So, drama remains terra incognita for me, ‘cause the ones I’ve tried haven’t gone off the ground.

Violet (Greta Gerwig) and Charlie (Adam Brody) share a dance in Damsels in Distress.

During the interim, did you entertain any offers to direct television? You had done that once before.

No, I wish I had. Yeah, there were some television things that I didn’t do for various reasons, but the kind of television I would have done very happily, I didn’t get offered. It’s an odd situation; if you make one film that’s OK, your job prospects are very good. If you make three films that are very specific in what they are, you’re greatly limiting your job prospects, because people no longer imagine that you’re going to do everything. They think you’re just gonna do that one thing. When, if fact, you still could do anything.

Do you see this film as falling into that specific category?

No. I see it as being related to the first three films, but it’s something else. If I were really pursuing other directing assignments now, I think this would be a better calling card for different kinds of films, because it has elements of broad comedy in it, but it’s too late for me probably to do other people’s scripts. I’d probably have to just concentrate on my own scripts.

Once you were back on set, was it like riding a bike, or were there new technologies to become acclimated with?

It was even easier than riding a bike. It was more like riding a scooter. It was very easy. There were new technologies, but they were just making our life easier, making everything easier. I love the digital world.

Is the era of the film meant to be ambiguous?

It is. It’s not supposed to be other than contemporary—we’re not saying it’s some other period than now—but the characters are so retro and so nostalgic and so full of the past, and it’s referring to so many past things, that it seems like a period film. And it’s really my kind of utopia of what college would be like, in a certain way. A sort of utopian version, an idealized version, even when the people are very stupid and ridiculous.

There’s a reference to people not writing to each other anymore, so that kind of clued me in that it was present day…

There are tiny little things. Adam Brody in one scene towards the end is using a cell phone. There’s a scene where he’s typing on his laptop that we had to cut out. So we do put some things in there. There’s some cars in the distant background.

...but I couldn’t get an idea based on the music.

Well, again, since the girls are trying to recreate the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the music does too. So we have that kind of Brill Building sound from the early ‘60s.

Taylor Nichols has a small part in the film. Did you write that for him or is that something that fell into place?

I wrote that and then wanted him to do that, and I wanted Chris Eigeman to do Professor Ryan, but Chris wouldn’t be lured into the production.

Apparently, he’s going to appear in Lena Dunham’s show, Girls.

The two actors who I wanted in my film who weren’t in the film: Lena Dunham and Chris Eigeman.

I understand she was kind of important to the pre-production process.

She was very important. She was gonna be in the film in a nice cameo, and she would have been great in it. She was one of the first actors who came in and read really well, the dialogue. And we kind of used her production team to get started, to set the groundwork of the production.

Was she a fan of yours?

I think so. Yeah, she was really incredibly friendly to us and very, very helpful. I really like her, and I think she’s very talented.

Given how important the dialogue is to your films, do you rehearse a lot or shoot a lot of takes?

No. I don’t believe in rehearsal, really. I believe in reading through the script and making sure that people are generally on target, and I like to do it on set.

Carrie MacLemore as Heather and Billy Magnussen as Thor in a scene from Damsels in Distress.

A lot the film’s humor comes from the dialogue, conversations, but there are also some ridiculous ideas, the aspects of broad comedy that you mentioned. To convey Thor’s ignorance, did you play with a lot of ideas before settling on him not knowing colors?

I don’t know where that came from. It just popped out. I was so happy with that. I don’t know, I think my most striking memory of early education was when I answered the teacher’s question correctly about colors in nursery school. How do you get the other colors besides the primary ones? You mix them. I was so proud of myself for that, and I was thinking, “Well, what would happen if you missed that whole course of study?” If you didn’t learn about the colors, you’d be in a real fix.

What about Violet’s idea of how the Charleston originated?

[Laughs.] She’s a card. Violet’s great, because, if she doesn’t have information, she’s not ever at a loss for words.

Have you met anyone like Violet?

Yeah, I’ve met a lot of people like Violet. I really like them. I love characters like that when I meet them. They’re not mean to me, so we make her very nice to everyone.

There are posters of Grand Illusion and Lola Montès visible in the film. Are you a fan of those?

You know, it’s so dangerous when you make a film, because we were just desperate for good decoration for the walls, and everyone was trying to charge money for using their posters, and it was ridiculous, we’re a tiny production with no money. And, they’re making posters to get publicity; why don’t they just give it to us for free? And so, the only people who were friendly enough with is to give us stuff for free were the Criterion Collection and their collaborators, Rialto Films and also my friend at Studio Canal in France. And so, those were the only posters that we could clear. And so, they were there just because they were the posters that we could get. I was worried that they’d seem to have more significance than they should have. It isn’t that bad that we have Grand Illusion for the Xavier character.

Will we see a Criterion release of Barcelona?

Yeah, I think there will be. It hasn’t been set yet, but I think they’re getting close.

Has that not been available on DVD?

It was available. It’s just sort of gone out of print. So, it’s starting to get very expensive. It’s terrible, because for a while it was really cheap, and I should have bought more copies.

I love that film. I’m a guy who has trouble getting a close shave, so that movie lives with me because I try to follow the instructions.

I still think about that. Do you shave with the grain or against it?

Against. I have to.

I shave against the grain. I thought that would make it closer, but I think the razor companies say you should shave with the grain. I don’t see how that works.

I’ve tried to follow that advice, but it doesn’t work for me.

Yeah, I have a terrible problem with that. One of the great things, though, as you get older, your hair starts turning white, and it makes your beard less noticeable. It’s one of the good things to look forward to as you get older.

What’s next for you? Can we expect another film?

Yeah, I hope there’ll be a film sooner than later, but I can’t predict at all. I’m not going to talk about the precise film it’ll be.

Can you say whether it’s a comedy?

Yeah, it’s a comedy. And also, I can talk about the Jamaican film. I hope to make that someday. I just don’t know what day—the Jamaican film I used to talk about.

Does that also revolve around college-age characters, young people?

Yeah, it does, even younger. They’re that age, but they’re not going to college.

www.damselsindistressmovie.com