Metropolitan: Conversation with Author and Director Whit Stillman
Channel: Department of English, Arizona State University
Date: 2017-03-31

Department of English faculty Devoney Looser and Kevin Sandler moderated a conversation with writer-director Whit Stillman after a screening of his 1990 film Metropolitan. 

Audiences may be most familiar with Stillman's award-winning, Jane Austen-inspired 2016 film, Love and Friendship, which starred Kate Beckinsdale as the deliciously awful widow, Lady Susan. Stillman has had a long, fruitful relationship with reimagining Austen for contemporary audiences. He describes himself as a long-time Austenite ("among the most fervent") and had previously revisited Austen material in his Mansfield Park-influenced Metropolitan. Shot on location in Manhattan and Long Island, the film depicts the lives of young, well-educated upper-class New Yorkers (or, as one character calls them, the "urban haute bourgeoisie") home on winter break from their first year of college during debutante ball season. Stillman, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the film, is also the writer-director of three other films, including Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, and Damsels in Distress.
Part of the ASU Film and Media Studies Guest Speaker Series, Stillman's visit was sponsored by the Department of English and the Division of Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU.

Harkins Valley Art Theatre
Mar. 28, 2017