The problem was that she was still writing in the 18th-century epistolary form-letters between characters. But with Love & Friendship, because there was source material, you must have ended up leaning on Austen for dialogue. You’re a master of dialogue and don’t need any help in that area. I tend to like authors where you read a paragraph and you like it so much you sort of think about it-so I don’t progress too far in terms of page-turning plot. I was reading her sort of as a palate cleanser while I was trying to write. I remember dipping into Austen while I was writing the Metropolitan script. With each of the pictures you’ve done, do you find yourself going back and looking at certain favorite books by these writers?
And I think it was kind of a gift that Salinger wouldn’t let his books be adapted, because we sort of had to do our own Salinger films without using his stories. There are three fiction writers who were really important for the films-Fitzgerald, Austen, and Salinger.
Until, after college, my sister said, “You better read Pride and Prejudice.” I did, and it changed me. And I would loudly tell people that she was overrated and bad for a long time. So I started, sophomore year, with Northanger Abbey. In college, I made the mistake of reading her too early, with the wrong book. I actually was wrong-footed with Jane Austen. Whit Stillman: Well, I’m sort of with both of them, because I do have the habit of not reading things and of talking about things I haven’t read. _ Vanity Fair: In Metropolitan, there’s an exchange between Audrey and Tom in which she says, “What Jane Austen novels have you read?” And he answers, “None.” I’m guessing you’re with Audrey on that one. about his undying ardor for all things Austen and how Love & Friendship, gearing up for a spring 2016 release, finds fresh comedy amid the corsets and carriages. (In a Last Days of Disco mini-reunion, Chloë Sevigny plays Lady Susan’s conniving American sidekick, Alicia Johnson.) On the eve of the film’s January 23 premiere at Sundance, Stillman-who also has a deal with Little, Brown for a tie-in novel, due out in August-chatted with V.F. The movie is based on a posthumously published, little-read Austen work called Lady Susan, whose heroine, played by Kate Beckinsale, is a Georgian-era mantrap-intelligent, irresistible, and entirely unencumbered by scruples.
With Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman, the director of Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco, and other contemporary (or near contemporary) tales of America’s so-called urban haute bourgeoisie, steps back 200 years, crosses the Atlantic, and takes on a formidable collaborator: Jane Austen.
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