Metropolitan (1990) is a film about the lives of a group of New York preppies during the debutante season. It’s an ironic and comedic look at a group of young Park Avenue socialites who gather nightly to discuss love, honor and the impending demise of their class.
Metropolitan was writer-director Whit Stillman's first feature, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. Stillman grew up in this setting that inspired the film, and he says it ended up being an advantage that most audiences weren't familiar with debutante parties.
"I originally started preparing a film set in Barcelona about two cousins there that seemed ultimately kind of complicated as a first film and expensive," he recalls. "And I thought: What could I make that would be interesting to some people, if not many people, that could essentially be shot in a room?"
Fewer settings in the film let the dialogue of the group of characters shine, but Stillman says he fortunately learned that, "If you got an insurance policy, you could shoot anywhere on the street of New York, so we opened it up and did a lot of outdoor shooting." The outdoor scenes of New York City during the holidays have also lent Metropolitan to become a popular Christmas movie.
Stillman's career in film started by selling Spanish films worldwide, and he says he learned how to make a film quickly and efficiently from Spanish directors of low-budget comedies. To fund the movie, Stillman sold his own apartment and also collected contributions from friends and relatives, which he recalls seemed "foolhardy" to the contributors at the time.
"I had been in the film business enough to know that no one would really come forward from the serious film business to back my film so that I would have to do it on my own," he notes.
Despite the limitations a tighter budget presented, Stillman notes that "there's a lot of freedom in different ways. I mean, you're sort of struggling with little money, and you think you have all these disadvantages, but in fact some of those are advantages."
One key advantage for Metropolitan was being able to have an ensemble of characters, and in turn introducing nearly an entire cast of new actors, including Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman and more.
"In retrospect, it turns out it [was] exactly the right age to get actors in New York," says Stillman. "People sort of knew who was right for the film. The first 50 people who showed up for our casting — half the cast comes from that group of people."
With a tight schedule and fewer locations Stillman says that it took about 30 days to shoot Metropolitan."I have found actually that when you're tightly constrained in how many shooting days you have, just so you have enough to make something good, it's actually better," he notes.
Another challenge they faced in making the independent film was the production manager initially turning down the job because of the low-budget. Stillman says they only agreed to do the job if Whitman himself secured the locations, which they were able to secure from friends, family and even a family member of one of the actresses.
Stillman does point out one major production victory for the film was being able to film at St. Thomas Church in New York City during their Christmas service that was "such a spectacle."
"We talked to the verger [of the church], and I think his nice way of saying 'no' was saying you can shoot here on Christmas Eve for our service, but you can't have lights. But actually, the cinematographer after this meeting said, 'Oh, that's fine, because I don't need lights. We have really fast films and fast lenses,' and so we shot that scene," says Stillman. "Being able to tell people we'd shot in St. Thomas Episcopal Church was sort of an 'open sesame' for getting permission to shoot in tough locations."
Despite the attention garnered from Metropolitan, Stillman has been very selective in what projects he decides to get involved in and has only directed four other films. When asked if he prefers writing or directing, it's a quick answer: "Everyone prefers to be a director ... everyone wants to be [a] director and no one wants to particularly write, and for good reason. I think there's more anguish in the writing process to get it right," he explains.
"I think it's more that it's rare that there's some story or some script that I feel total confidence in that's worth really making and going through that sort of process," Stillman adds.
You can watch “Metropolitan” and learn more about the film from Whit Stillman himself, who will be at the Oriental Theater on Dec. 8 for a Q&A after the screening. You can find more information and tickets here. He will also be in Madison, Wis. at UW Cinematheque the evening of Dec. 5.
