It’s been more than 13 years since director Whit Stillman’s last film, 1998’s “The Last Days of Disco.” The maestro of upper middle class malaise is back this month with “Damsels in Distress,” starring rising star Greta Gerwig.
in a new interview with The Washington Times, Stillman explains why he hasn’t been nearly as busy as a director of his caliber ought to be.
Stillman, who once worked at the conservative publication now known as The American Spectator, told The Times his unwillingness to go with the flow cost him professionally:
Mr. Stillman recalls directing an episode of the TV show “Homicide: Life on the Street.” He had a script he liked, but a rewrite turned a yuppie victim — whose family had been murdered — into “this awful, caricatured yuppie villain.”
“We don’t necessarily want to do a PR job for them,” he says of the character type. “But we also don’t want to dehumanize them, either.” He objected to the rewrite and is sure he was “blacklisted” — his explosive and unprompted term — from directing television as a result.
Read the full interview at The Washington Times