AVC: To extend the Citizen Kane analogy, you were nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar on your first try, just like Welles.
WS: I like these analogies. [Laughs.] But my idea was that The Last Days Of Disco was going to be the Citizen Kane of romantic comedies. [Laughs.] I like to defend Disco because it got a beating in some corners.
AVC: Why do you think that was? Why didn't people respond to it?
WS: I think I touched the third rail of popular culture, which one should never do. The third rail of cliché. A lot of people had very firm ideas of what disco was. They weren't my ideas, nor what I wanted to show. And then I later found out that many of the people who were so authoritative about how our disco period wasn't "real" disco had no information of their own. They were just going from having seen Saturday Night Fever or something. I imagined these journalists lambasting us for inaccuracy to all be habitués of Studio 54. No, not at all. [Laughs.] They would all preface their comments with, "Well, in that period, I only liked punk music. I hated disco. But this film is not…" Whatever. Anyway. For me, it was exactly as it was in my head.
AVC: Do you think some of the lukewarm response was due to the fact that the film's style was similar to that of your first two films?
WS: I don't know. I feel like the reverse. It seems like it wasn't enough like the other two. I mean, I shouldn't overstate it, because there were people who did like it, and we got some support. I thought it was funny how many times I got accused of cashing in on a commercial trend. Boy, I really wish I was better at cashing in on commercial trends. [Laughs.]
AVC: When The Last Days Of Disco was completed, you spoke of it as being the end of a trilogy, and indicated that you were going to make a real break in style with your next project. Is that still something you have in mind for your next film?
WS: Almost all the stuff I've been working on involves a break in certain ways, and yet I find that sometimes the content might come back and the style might come back. The overt subject matter will probably be very different, but when you actually get into the long slog of finishing a script that you like, sometimes things end up back into your usual sphere.
AVC: Are you conscious of your own style?
WS: I'm getting that way, yeah.
AVC: When you made Metropolitan, did you have a filmmaking model in mind? A voice you were looking to emulate?
WS: Well, there were things that helped. The Big Chill came out and was good and fun to watch and well-received, which was encouraging, and that was one of the only scripts I had. They published an edition of that in screenplay format, and I was a real greenhorn in writing scripts, so that's what I used as a model for what a script should look like. And The Big Chill worked as well as a model for an ensemble nostalgia piece.
AVC: What about the look and tone of the film?
WS: The look and subject matter of the film is sort of a tribute to late-'30s films of elegance that I really liked. The kind of world shown in those social comedies. The idea was to get something similar in a low-budget film set in more recent times. What if that world could still exist? It's more naturalistic-realistic in certain ways, but I was trying to cover that territory a bit.
AVC: Was it hard to get access to those ritzy locations?
WS: Yes, it was hard, and they weren't inherited locations, they were locations that we found through friendships or connections. Casting Dylan Hundley was a great triumph, because after she was cast, she put us in touch with her father and stepmother, who had a beautiful townhouse. And Roger Kirby, who played the man at the bar, donated his apartment. The big breakthrough came through this research foundation in New York, housed at the Alan J. Lerner mansion. I knew a couple of people who worked there, and the agenda of that foundation was to improve New York. We promised to try and do that. [Laughs.]
AVC: A lot of people presume that you're a rich guy yourself, and you had access to these locations because that's where you and your friends hung out.
WS: No, there's a big difference between having relatives who have money and actually having it yourself. Just because you have a cousin who has a lot of money doesn't mean he shares it with you. [Laughs.] Or that you'd ask him for a loan.
I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education—or schools that purported to be a good education—but, um, not a dime. Well, okay, some dimes. But I was older when I made the film. I wasn't just out of college or anything. So by then I knew people, like the ex-boyfriend of my sister, this person, that person… that's how it came about.
AVC: In the commentary track, actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols imply that they weren't sure they really "got" the script the first time they read it. Was it difficult trying to explain your sensibility to people who didn't know you?
WS: Yeah, and I think it was disconcerting to people on the other films that I'd spend a lot of time working with them and no time working with Chris. I think some took that badly, but what they didn't take into consideration is that Chris and I spent a lot of time on Metropolitan. When I met Chris, I thought, "This guy's a great dramatic actor, but I'm not sure if he's funny." I wasn't sure if he could do the quicksilver comedy of that character.
AVC: Eigeman seems loose enough with you to take some shots at you on the Metropolitan commentary, and the Barcelona one too.
WS: Does he do that? I didn't detect it. [Laughs.]
AVC: You obviously have a social relationship as well as a business one.
WS: Yeah, I've stayed friends with both Chris and Taylor. You know, Taylor married a Barcelona girl.
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