Whit Stillman: Having a Disco Ball

Whit Stillman, the New York-based writer-director known for his witty, independent films about the follies and foibles of young, upscale urbanites, is back. And in a movie season that so far is mostly about asteroids and gonzo-lizards, Stillman’s latest, “The Last Days of Disco,” may slake the thirst of moviegoers longing for human characters and clever writing.

“Last Days” is set in Manhattan in the early 1980s and centers on a chatty group of friends with Ivy League degrees and entry-level jobs who frequent an unnamed but very happening disco.

The film stars Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale as Alice and Charlotte, Hampshire College grads who work together, live together, go clubbing together and yet have little in common. Alice is intelligent, sincere and a wee bit insecure; Charlotte is cunning, ambitious and self-absorbed.

Their group of male friends (Harvard grads, of course) include Mackenzie Astin, a weak-willed advertising executive; Robert Sean Leonard, a handsome environmental attorney; Matt Keesler, an idealistic, manic-depressive assistant district attorney; and Stillman veteran Chris Eigeman as the hapless “underboss” to the club’s sleazy owner.

Like the characters in Stillman’s previous two films, “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona,” they are probably too smart for their own good yet novices when it comes to love and romance.

Also like “Metropolitan,” which takes place circa 1970, and “Barcelona,” which is set in the mid-1980s, “Last Days” eschews the usual, and overused, period cliches. This is not a disco scene where the men wear wide lapels and the women wear blue eyeshadow.

The natty director, 46, who speaks with the same precise, clipped cadence as his characters, chatted by phone about the film, his actors, future projects . . . and disco.

Question: It says in the press notes that “The Last Days of Disco” is the last in your so-called “Doomed Bourgeois in Love” trilogy. Say it ain’t so.

Answer: It is. My next film is probably going to be an 18th century drama set in the South. Lots of horses.

Q: It was an unexpected bit of casting to give the part of Alice to Chloe Sevigny, who is best known for her work in the controversial films “Kids” and “Gummo.” How did that come about?

A: Christopher Tellefsen, who edited both “Metropolitan” and “Gummo,” told me about Chloe. I met her and saw how good she was and how appropriate for Alice. I saw all her other films, and I think that even in “Kids” there’s a very good indication that she’d be a good Alice [because that character] in a sense carries the film--she’s the one who has to deal with the problems and resolve them--it’s similar to what she has to do in this film.

Q: Another character, Josh--a strait-laced assistant district attorney--is an unlikely but staunch advocate of disco music and the disco lifestyle. Is there a little bit of Whit in him?

A: Yeah, the part of Josh that’s enthusiastic about disco reflects my point of view. He says that he likes the whole idea of disco but he actually hasn’t been [to discos] that much, and is worrying about being able to get in. That was a bit my situation. I liked it in theory.

Q: The twentysomething characters in “Last Days” are the heirs of the sexual revolution and the story takes place in a time that was really just minutes before AIDS becomes a household acronym. There’s almost a naivete there; the word “herpes” is only uttered in hushed tones. That seems almost innocent now.

A: I’m not sure how innocent it was. Maybe it seems innocent now; it didn’t feel innocent at all. I mean it seemed like it was completely the end of time. I guess what we’re covering in the film is the time when things were changing in the moment of sexual liberation and . . . were beginning to calm down and react against that; before herpes and AIDS and everything else came to pressure people even further.

Q: Tell me about the shoot. Did you use a real nightclub?

A: No, it was a converted theater, a beautiful 1920s movie palace but it’s very like the real clubs of the period. In fact, the original spaces for Xenon and Palladium and Studio 54 were all old theaters or music halls. It got complicated when we almost used the old Studio 54 location to make our film because [the club in the film] is a fictional club; it’s a composite of a number of clubs.

Q: A lot of the action takes place in the club. What was it like to eat, breathe and live disco?

A: It was a really great experience because we got to dance during the daytime. The downside of night life is that you’re really tired by the time you get out on the dance floor. We started dancing early in the morning and just kept on going all day long.

Q: Were you concerned at all about Kate Beckinsale doing an American accent?

A: I knew from “Barcelona” that the actresses we cast out of London were great at accents so I was hopeful. And she was so close to the part [of Charlotte] in “Cold Comfort Farm” and in [A&E;’s] “Emma,” that I thought she could do the part. And she has a wonderful quality with language. She actually did a better East Coast college accent than some American actresses who tend to get Valley Girl-sounding when they try to do an accent.

Q: Now a minute ago you said that Kate’s characters in “Cold Comfort Farm” is close to the Charlotte character. But Charlotte is a phony person and a very bad friend to Alice.

A: I thought the character in “Cold Comfort Farm” was like Charlotte without the nastiness. Sometimes funny goes with mean.

Q: Chris Eigeman, who has been in all your films, is very funny. Was he your discovery?

A: Yeah, I’d never worked with any of the actors [in “Metropolitan”] before. But the cast members of “Metropolitan” got the reputation that they had been pals of mine and they were really just playing themselves. But they were really just good actors playing the parts.

Q: Fans of “Metropolitan” will be excited to see Carolyn Farina make a cameo as Audrey Rouget [the Jane Austen-toting deb from “Metropolitan”] in “Last Days.” [The Audrey character, now about 10 years older, makes an appearance as a successful editor with Farrar Strauss.] Taylor Nichols also makes a cameo but I wasn’t sure whether he was playing the Charlie character from “Metropolitan” or the Ted character from “Barcelona.”

A: Well, he’s there twice. He’s in one scene with Audrey as Charlie, and then he’s in another as Ted from “Barcelona” with his girlfriend Betty.

Q: Are you looking forward to “54,” the Miramax film on Studio 54? It seems that your film and “54” will inevitably become a revival house double bill.

A: Oh, yes. I was very high on the idea, in the sense that that film would cover the stuff we weren’t covering. Therefore we get off the hook about being able to just have our film be about what we wanted it to be about, which is a fictional group of characters in a fictional club. We could really focus on these characters and not feel incumbent to cover a particular disco in a documentary way.

Q: I’ve read that you’re a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald; what contemporary American authors do you admire?

A: Well, my favorite living author, before he died, was Isaac Bashevis Singer. His short stories set in New York and Warsaw. And, recently, the most enjoyable contemporary novel was “Memoirs of a Geisha.”

Q: Is there a novel in your future?

A: Yes, there is. In the course of making the film I actually got a contract from Farrar Strauss. I thought it was pretty funny that Audrey’s publisher wanted to do the book.