Director WILT
STILLMAN
Interviewed by Nick Leshi
![[IMAGE]](../images/wilts.jpg)
I spoke with Wilt Stillman, the director of THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, a
wonderful little film about a group of young friends in Manhattan during the
waning days of the "disco era."
I caught THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO and it was excellent.
Witty and full of charm. I thought it was great. What inspired you to make this
film? Why disco? Why the early 1980’s?
Why disco? I feel a lot about disco the way Josh , the character in the movie,
does, when he gives the speech about the dancing wasteland of the early
‘70’s and how great it was to have dance music come back, and places for
people to go to and group socialize. So that was my feeling. I liked the period.
We did the tail end -- which is the early ‘80’s. It’s not really this
‘70’s kitsch thing other people do. The idea for it really came in the
course of editing BARCELONA. I’d been planning on going ahead and doing a
completely different kind of film -- a historical adventure film that I now plan
to do, but then I thought of the scenes with Mia Sorvino and the others dancing
in discos in Barcelona, and I thought, “Boy, this is really cinematic, this is
really interesting.” And I remembered that period , and I remembered loving
it. I grafted the story of young people and their first jobs in Manhattan just
coming out of college with the story of a popular nightclub. (The nightclub)
would attract them all and be the fulcrum for the group socializing and the
pairings and all that. So that’s why disco.
I really loved the fact that your focus was on these
people who were not really the full-time disco crowd.
I didn’t want it to be about them. It wasn’t a preachy druggie film.
You also didn’t exclude that. You didn’t whitewash
it.
[The drug culture and the full-time outrageous disco crowd was] there in the
background. You’re not supposed to be really staring at it, but when the girls
are talking in the ladies’ lounge, there are guys [there] smoking grass -- but
that’s in the background.
I also loved your cast. I thought they were very
talented. Their characters were very natural and believable.
They’re really great kids.
Did you have much say in the casting process?
We cast METROPOLITAN on our own. They let us cast this (as well). I think going
in, this wasn’t a cheap film. It actually had quite a bit of money behind it,
because you had the production values of the disco and all that. So normally, at
this budget level, people would want big stars...or established stars. But they
let us go with people who were breaking out, young fresh faces. I think that
(down the road), some of these people will be as big as they could have wanted.
But this film was part of the process of them getting better known.
Like I said, the cast was outstanding. They may not be
Hollywood superstars, but they all were very talented, and they had great
chemistry together. I particularly liked Departmental Dan. I saw him in his
first movie, ED’S NEXT MOVE -- the guy who directed that film graduated from
my high school so I had the pleasure of attending a screening. He really was a
joy to watch on screen.
He was someone who really brought something to the character that was not on the
printed page. He made that character much more fun and interesting than he had
been in the script. He’s great. He’s really funny.
Everybody was great. The girl who played Alice...
Yes, she’s wonderful.
I was looking at your bio and I noticed that a lot of
your personal background was incorporated into your script.
I had worked in publications, like when you sell space to ad agencies. I think
when you do a biography for a film and you have certain biographical experiences
that relate to the subject then you emphasize that, so I emphasized that I
worked in publishing just like the girls did. The publishing house in the film
was very similar to the look of the publishing house where I worked.
You’re a Harvard man, and I noticed a few comments in
your film about Harvard men.
Yeah, and not all positive!
So, what are you working on now?
Well, I had planned on doing a historical adventure film instead of this one,
but I got seduced by the idea of the last days of disco, and now I’m going to
continue (with my original plan). It’s sort of the story of a Zorro character
set in the American Revolution. It’ll be set in 1780, 1781, in the Carolinas.
I’m very excited about it. It’ll be a real change of pace.
You filmed THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO mostly in New York
and around New York?
Absolutely. Everything was in Manhattan except for the interior of the club --
it’s this beautiful theater in Jersey City, the Loews. It made it the ideal
location for that club. It’s very pretty.
It looks like one of those nightclubs, like the
Palladium.
Exactly. A lot of people compared it to the Palladium. A lot of those clubs were
old theaters that had been converted -- Xenon, Studio 54, Palladium. And so that
was a good fit. It’s fun getting out of Manhattan and shooting over there.
Again, you did a very impressive job. I loved it. And
that little soliloquy that one of your characters had at the end, that people
will make fun of disco, but then it’ll come back, I thought was a great moment
in the film. And I don’t think nightclub life ever really went away, just the
music’s changed a little bit. Do you think that sort of disco culture, where
it was so dominant, will come back?
I’d love it if the music would go back in the direction of classic disco. Also
I’ve noticed that nightclubs these days you go in around 10:30 and they’re
playing good old disco stuff, then at midnight it gets into the very percussive
(techno) music. I wish they’d go back to the melody and rhythm of disco. There
are still a lot of pop songs that are evocative of disco. Madonna’s done a lot
of stuff that’s very disco-y.
I know there’s been a lot of nostalgia for the
‘70’s and disco. When you wrote this, was it at that point yet?
We announced the subject in May ‘94. I think the nostalgia was just beginning.
It had already started then. It had been a long time coming.
Copyright © 1999 Nick Leshi, all rights
reserved. Originally appeared in Video Street Date Magazine. Reprinted
with permission.
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