Director Whit Stillman was in town recently as part of the USA Film Festival to promote his latest film, the romantic period piece, “Love & Friendship,” starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny. I had the chance to sit down with him and talk to him about his latest endeavor.
Julian Butler
What made you change your mind about how you felt about Jane Austen stories? You were at a point where you didn’t like them all, and the you did. What happened?
Whit Stillman
It was just that one book (‘Northanger Abbey’) that I didn’t like, and then the moment I read ‘Sense & Sensibility,’ I liked it and I loved ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and loved everything else. I think I was too young to cop on to what she was doing but I did read other things like “War & peace” and Salinger.
Julian Butler
It makes me wonder, what Jane Austen would have thought about (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”), would she have thought it was funny, or would she be offended?
Whit Stillman
I hope she’d be offended.
Julian Butler
Is “Love & Friendship” geared towards all audiences or a female audience, and what do you feel about that?
Whit Stillman
I have very strong feelings about it because we’ve been dealing with this British poster that is very, down market, exclusively female audience and it really bothers me because I’ve never had a poster I haven’t liked. Our poster I kinda like, the one in the United States. This one (signalling the British poster), it just looks like a schlocky, romantic, low-end, sorta Jane Austen “Dynasty” episode.
Julian Butler
What kind of things do you consider when you’re blocking the scene and setting it up to portray the visual comedy?
Whit Stillman
That’s a good question. There are a couple of moments when we were able to do something along those lines, and there are other things too. The cinematographer, I don’t think he realized we were going to be moving the camera so much and towards the end of the shoot, I kept looking at this beautiful ceiling, in the main location, an incredibly lavish ceiling and in our film we wouldn’t normally see the ceiling so I said let’s do a take where we have the camera up here and then just tilt down and he said “What? What are we doing? What is happening?” And then in the same scene, Frederica is reading her letter and I wanted to push in on her in a dolly shot and he said “What? Again? What is happening?” (laughs).
Julian Butler
How did you end up deciding that you would use that one location to portray the different areas?
Whit Stillman
I really love in location scouting to find a hero location, or several hero locations, where you can just do tons of work and you don’t have to spend all your time, reinventing the wheel, as far as moving all the trucks and re-establishing yourself, and that’s how we can get away with doing films, with reasonable budgets without stressing everyone out with company moves.
Julian Butler
It was all very believable, I didn’t think “Oh, it looks like the same place,” I mean, it made sense.
Whit Stillman
It made sense for that house because each part looked so different.
Julian Butler
Is it fun for you to hear different audience responses from different places? How does it differ?
Whit Stillman
Last night was pretty good, it’s always been good, it’s interesting to see the difference between the 9:45pm crowd at Sundance and the 9am crowd at Sundance, and then the same day, the 6pm crowd, so, it was considered a very good screening the first one, but I think it was better the other two, they were more relaxed and better rested. Then the Rotterdam screening, that was our foreign premiere and I’ve always had people walk out of my films in Rotterdam so I was a little leery and stated “Under no circumstances are we going to Rotterdam” and then we ended up going to Rotterdam. But it was sensational, no one walked out, they laughed it up and it was the first time I’ve had a film get cinema distribution.
“Love & Friendship” opens in Dallas May 20th
