Little Green Men Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While the wonderfully verbose director Whit Stillman is rather elusive, whetting our cinematic appetites with the classic trio (Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco) and then fading away, he hasn't been forgotten. Nor has he stopped working. Rumors have been circling his name in small bursts for years, and now the director has spoken with IFC about the work that has made him an icon of discussion cinema, and the work that is yet to come.

First: While Disco remains an elusive disc to those who didn't grab it all those years ago (it's one of the few DVDs I paid full, exorbitant price for), Metropolitan is now online, for free, over at Hulu (courtesy of Cinetic Rights Management). But if you're looking for more of Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny, Whit says that there have been slow negotiations with Criterion, which may or may not come to light.

But enough about the old. Here's a quick rundown of his upcoming projects (go read the interview to get all the gritty details):

Dancing Mood, the Jamaican Film -- Financing woes have caused delays for the film, which is a love story set mainly in gospel churches. Once they get the money, everything else is set.

Red Azalea -- An adaptation focusing on China's cultural revolution, Whit says that he worked on script drafts, but "it never really got that far along."

Little Green Men -- That wacky movie where a political talkshow host is kidnapped by aliens was once said to have John Malcovich and Peter Sarsgaard attached. Stillman says the script approach hasn't been finalized, but that Greg Kinnear is now interested in the film.

So yeah, financing has been a big pain for Stillman, which is sad. So, will one of you rich readers go invest in the guy already? Please?

What happened to Whit Stillman? I'm not the only one who keeps asking. Cinematical has been posing this question, and trying to answer it, for years. After his deliciously verbose conversational trio, the man pretty much fell off the face of the earth. Instead of delighting in yuppie angst, I've had to pull out my Yuppie Game, get over-dressed and fire up my DVD player to get my fill. However, it seemed like we were on to something in May of last year, when Martha Fischer whetted our appetites with news of Little Green Men, the flick meant to be the return of Stillman. (Without the 80's yuppies.) Then, there was nothing.

Well, what would you say if I told you that Stillman says that John Malcovich and Peter Sarsgaard are attached to the film? After hearing that my beloved Whit was out and about to see a screening of Kind Hearts and Coronets, I decided to see what the deal was with his upcoming alien movie. It seems that Forrest Hartman from the Reno Gazette-Journal had a brief chat with Stillman, who gave lots of info about himself and the all-too-juicy tidbits about the alien movie.

While I'm disappointed that Chris Eigeman won't be bourgeois bitching with the likes of aliens in outer space, at least he's got some meaty male replacements -- and hopefully official word will come on them both soon. And, if you're hoping for more EigeStillman, the director supposedly promises that he has plans for more projects with Chris. That is, if he ever gets them off the ground!

That Whit Stillman is such a kidder. Less then two weeks ago, Sandra reported on a piece he wrote in The Guardian, detailing all the meandering his movie career has done since The Last Days of Disco was released seven years ago. In the article, he discussed two concrete projects, one of which (a film version of Red Azalea, a memoir of the Chinese revolution) was dead, and another (a small film about ... Jamaican churches) that was sort of getting close to happening. Mostly, though, he made it sounds like he had nothing cinematic really going on. Until, that is, the end of the piece, when he snuck in a suggestion that something might actually be percolating, saying "So I now have a project to take to Cannes;" the clear implication was that the project was the Jamaican churches movie.

It turns out, however, that he had a secret up his sleeve: The movie Stillman is talking up at Cannes has nothing to do with churches. Instead, it's a screen version of Christopher Buckley's (he of Thank You for Smoking fame) Little Green Men, a novel I'm now very much regretting never having read. Check out this summary: The book is "a Washington, D.C., insider comedy about a political talkshow host who's plucked off a golf course by aliens after a particularly probing presidential interview concerning America's space program." HA! HAAAA! Yes, please. (And yes, I'm going to now go and buy ANOTHER book because of this damn job.)

According to Stillman, the film's schedule depends entirely on the whims of "Mr. Big Comedy star," a mysterious fellow who is currently being courted to star. The screenplay is done (but not by Stillman -- that's a first for him), though, so if the cast can be brought together with reasonable speed, the hope is that the movie will go into production later this year. (That said, however, Red Azalea was also once announced at Cannes as Stillman's next project, so these are chickens we really shouldn't start counting just yet.)