Last night Gothamist returned to Williamsburg's Nitehawk Cinema for a special screening of Whit Stillman's absurdly dry comedy Damsels in Distress. The sold-out screening was followed by an amusing Q&A with the director, who was joined by actor Ryan Metcalf, who plays the stolid frat boy Frank, and composer Mark Suozzo, who wrote the music for the film. During the chat, Stillman revealed that he's not surprised the film isn't a hit with college students, who are the focus of the film. Asked who exactly he was making the movie for then, Stillman said:
I make movies that I would like to see, and I hope when they're done other people will also want to see them. And I think I was making this film for people with a sense of humor. When "Damsels" is criticized by someone for being unrealistic, I can only assume we're dealing with someone who is retarded. The intention of this film was obviously not to be realistic... It's a stylized reality, a fantasy world.
Indeed, all of Stillman's films ("Damsels" is his fourth) take place in a stylized fantasy world where earnest elites eloquently debate topics ranging from the hidden significance of Lady and the Tramp to—in "Damsels"—the "decline of decadence," which actor Adam Brody laments with pitch-perfect deadpan. Brody's character is taking a class called "Flit-Lit," which surveys literature's important dandies. “Take the flit movement in literature, or homosexuality,” he expounds at one point. “It’s gone completely downhill […] Before, homosexuality was something refined, hidden, sublimated, aspiring to the highest forms of expression and often achieving them. Now it just seems to be a lot of muscle-bound morons running around in T-shirts."
Touching on the topic of film criticism, Stillman noted that the high school paper at Stuyvesant published one of the most insightful reviews. We're still catching up on our back issues of the Stuyvesant High Spectator, so we hadn't read it yet, but having found it online, we concur that student David Kurkovskiy sums "Damsels" up nicely here: "Taking the dynamism and humor of “Mean Girls” to a higher, wittier level, the film succeeds as a reaction against trashy comedies and disingenuous depictions of college life. Rather, it uses brilliant characterization and story development and clever one-liners to combine cohesively this snarkiness with a portrait of upper-class college life."
Damsels in Distress is screening at Nitehawk only through Thursday night, but it's also still at the Sunshine, which recently called the cops on Michael Wolff for trying to bring in a juice. At Nitehawk, of course, you can booze in the theater. For "Damsels," in addition to their regular menu, they're also offering a "Cosmo in Distress" made with Bulldog Gin, Triple Sec, cranberry and lime; as well as a fitting housemade doughnut with strawberry sauce.
