The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards

by Whit Stillman

Opposites do attract—but is that really such a good idea?

Whit Stillman has won international acclaim as one of the wittiest, most original filmmakers of his generation—“the Balzac of the ironic class, the Dickens of people with too much inner life,” in the words of Stephen Hunter in The Washington Post. Now, twisting the film novelization genre in an entirely new direction, Stillman has produced something equally fresh and surprising: a novel based on the characters and events touched on in The Last Days of Disco—the movie The New York Times called “deft, funny and improbably touching”—with results that are even defter, funnier, and more improbably poignant.

Jimmy Steinway, the “Dancing Adman” of The Last Days of Disco (and, we later discover, a frustrated, desk-drawer novelist), gets his lucky break when Castle Rock Entertainment, unable to find anyone else to write a novelization of the movie, reluctantly gives the assignment to him. Jimmy struggles to bring to light the true origins of the story at Kate Preston’s party in Sag Harbor and the fast, then slow, then fast again unfolding of his love for Alice Kinnon, the boyfriendless social failure from Hampshire College whose quite charm detonated a bitter rivalry between him and four of his Harvard classmates. (He also sets the record straight about the beautiful, passionate, painfully candid Charlotte Pingree.)

Set primarily in Manhattan in the early 1980s—but spanning two continents and two decades—The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards redresses the wrongs done these characters and this period, while helping to ameliorate the comic novel shortage in the world today.

Genres: Fiction, New York, Film, Novels, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

339 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Whit Stillman (born John Whitney Stillman) is an Academy Award-nominated American writer-director known for his sly depictions of the "urban haute bourgeoisie" (as he terms the upper-class WASPs of the U.S. socio-cultural elite).

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for the diehard fans, who may enjoy seeing Kate Beckinsale’s Charlotte Pingree, master of the backhanded compliment, handled in her own style of sharply qualified praise:

”Who are they? Charlie’s Angels?” a woman in the crowd complained. There was, in fact, a resemblance between the three roommates and the stars of the television show Charlie’s Angels, which featured three beautiful detectives getting into a lot of exciting adventures. Charlotte looked particularly like the actress Jaclyn Smith, though in a more East Coast-Publisher’s Row version – less fit, complexion pastier, hair flatter, more tense – but still great-looking.

The conceit of Stillman’s novelization of his 1998 cult classic is that one of the characters, Jimmy Steinway, Charlotte’s ex, having become something of a writer in the years after the movie’s action (“the very early eighties”), signs a contract with the production company to novelize the screenplay, to which he adds memories and reflections that convey rather elegantly the kind of information fans normally get in a DVD commentary track or other such bonus feature. (This was a decade before Stillman's films got the full Criterion treatment.) In Jimmy’s telling, there’s more exposition, a number of added or extended scenes (all of them surprising or consequential), and amusing digressions on fashion, music, dancing, nightclub acoustics, la forme d’un ville and the manners of the milieu.

I was disappointed, then relieved, that the epilogue did not detail the characters’ afterlife. Beyond a few revelations one could infer from the ending – Josh and Alice marry, the raffish, nocturnal Des makes a career in nightlife, going from a “nightclub flunky” to owner of successful cocktail lounges, and Jimmy stays in advertising, writing mostly for his desk drawer – Stillman keeps his characters on film, in the “very early eighties.” As is right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE2rL...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH9nq...

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of a group of recent college graduates in the early 80s who spend a lot of time dancing to disco and being a bit talky. Sounds terrible when written so plainly like that.

As pretty much everyone who reads this book must be, I am a big fan of Whit Stillman's films and the premise of a novelisation of one of his movies as written by one of the characters from the movie was too much to resist. As a novelisation it is fine, who really needs a novelisation anyway? The concept certainly puts it above your basic "Max Allan Collins cuts a Hollywood script to smithereens and adds some inner monologue padding" fare. As a movie it is witty and poignant and seemingly forgotten already. As a novel I didn't enjoy it so much.

Of course separating the novel from the movie is always a difficult task, and this is made worse by being almost a transcript of the movie with a few new ideas thrown in to make the narrative conceit work. If you haven't seen the movie there's a 50% chance you'll be able to enjoy this novel, if you have seen the movie I can't see what extra you might take from this, apart from getting to interact with all your "friends" once more.

Unnecessary is the word that comes to mind first with this one.

[gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

whit stillman is so funny. loved this completely unnecessary, wildly meta companion to the last days of disco. read on internet archive btw because print copies of this go for over $100, and you have to endure trials the likes of elisabeth sparkle in the substance in order to acquire one.

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, a novel by Whit Stillman. You either love him or hate him, and rarely is a divisive figure so kindly and proper. He is a filmmaker: Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, and Damsels in Distress, all comedies of manners chronicling young, wildly articulate, cerebral East Coast preps and misfits. Despite being a regular old Midwestern girl, I cherish these movies and their neurotic yet joyous protagonists. So it was easy for me to love "The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterward." It is a meta-novelization of his best movie. If this sounds like a good time to you, you're like me and you should read it, too. What a pleasure to spend a few hours in the company of the sweet-natured priggish characters, given to these kinds of sincerely delivered, mundane yet inflated thoughts:

On the origin of love:
"One of the greatest spurs to romance is knowing, or thinking, that someone likes you. Conversely, thinking that they don't like you can be an enormous inhibiting factor." (23)

On starch:
"A can of Niagara Spray Starch rested on the ironing board, and as Josh sat down to his work, he applied it liberally. 'Starchy' is one of those adjectives that has been widely misused in our society. Starch, properly applied, keeps us looking sharp and trim even when, basically, we're not; it has been given an undeserved negative connotation, probably because literature -- and especially social commentary -- tends to be written by the slobs." (p. 238)

[N N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique mix of the feel-good and the heartbreaking. Deeply civilized and literate, this is exactly what the modern novel should be: an extension of the classical tradition while knowingly postmodernist at the same time; obliquely commenting on the state of society without a left-handed axe to grind; delicate and modest but unselfconscious. A work of art.

[Kristopher Jansma · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Days of Disco was the last Whit Stillman film to be made, but it was the very first one I saw - and for years the only one I knew. I saw it at the Avon during a summer writing program at Brown when I was still in high school. Back home, I bought it on VHS the first time I saw it for sale - and good thing too, as it doesn't seem to have stuck around long. In college my roommates all remember a mythical DVD, but no one can agree on who owned it and no one can find it to this day. It was released on DVD (a brand new format back then) but it quickly went out of print and from what I can tell, it's never been re-released. It's not even on Netflix, you can check. The movie is the only reason I still own a VHS player.

My point? As you can no doubt tell, I am obsessed with The Last Days of Disco, as I am with all of Stillman's films. So when an errant Google search for a DVD turned up a novelisation of the book, I more or less lost my mind for several minutes.

It wasn't as difficult as I thought to locate a used copy of the book - nothing compared to my ongoing search for a DVD. When I began to read it, my expectations were actually very low. Few enough people seemed to know of the movie, so I figured the book, some terrible precursor to the film, must have been terrible. I wound up liking it almost more than the film itself.

For one thing, the book is not something Stillman wrote in-between films and then redid as a screenplay. He wrote it after the film had come out, and he actually works the existence of the film into the book itself. In the opening, the narrator Jimmy Steinway (who is a relatively minor character in the film), explains that he and the rest of his old friends had recently been reunited by a screening of Whit's film, based on their days in the early 80s, and that he'd decided to now write this book as a sort of rebuttal of the film and a continuation of the tale. This little post-modern twist sucked me in within the early pages and never stopped being amusing.

Stillman does a great job of using forgettable Jimmy to explain the "real" story, from his perspective on the sidelines. Jimmy becomes a bit of a Nick Carraway character, revolving around the real story that was told in the film. There are scenes, of course, that he has no access to, and Stillman cleverly works around these holes with excerpts or paraphrases from short stories written by one of the other characters, Alice, who later becomes a book editor. Jimmy takes the story back to a Hamptons gathering where the characters met, which is only briefly mentioned in the film. There are scenes that follow which are taken directly from the dialogue in the screenplay, but Jimmy adds his own descriptions and nuance to these moments, making them seem new to a reader like me who has essentially memorized the film over many repeated watchings.

I don't know that I'd recommend the book over the film, exactly, but I see no reason to choose. The book does a lot of work in moments where the film leaves things unsaid. Through exposition and Jimmy's various internal thoughts, much can be done that is not possible on a screen. Still, the film stands on it's own, absolutely - and I'll always think of it before the book. Stillman is a novelist's filmmaker, to be sure, and now I can bemoan his lack of follow-up books as well as films.

PS - Noah Baumbach, it appears, can also write as well as direct! http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/0...

PPS - After reading this book I promptly ordered "Doomed Bourgeoisie in Love" - a collection of essays on Stillman's films. Someday I WILL teach a class on them! (Apparently this was the one-line pitch he used when trying to get Metropolitan made).

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whit Stillman is one of America’s great cult filmmakers. In the last 24 years, he has written and directed four indie movies, and published this novel, based on his 1998 film The Last Days of Disco. He’s met with critical acclaim (one Oscar nomination, two films in the Criterion Collection) but has never become widely popular. Several of his films were financial flops*, and the novel is out of print.

Which is really a shame, because it’s a lovely entry in the kinda-pretentious-young-people-coming-of-age-in-the-big-city genre. The setting is Manhattan, circa 1980. The characters work in crappy jobs and live in crappier apartments, but as long as they can dance till dawn at the hottest nightclub in town, everything seems beautiful. They fall in love and break up and overanalyze one another’s motivations and try to figure out the proper way to live in the world as an adult.

Of course one of the major charms of Stillman’s films is his dialogue, and the novel faithfully reproduces classic scenes like the one in which a character argues that Lady and the Tramp “programs women to adore jerks.” But Stillman’s voice shows through even in the more narrative sections. E.g., describing the aftermath of a fight outside the Club: “The cops jumped out, but it was almost all over except for the mercurochrome.” There are also plenty of good moments in the novel that don’t appear in the film – I couldn’t stop laughing when I read the scene where Alice, our modest and virtuous heroine, kicks a dog** while jogging in Central Park.

So you can think of this book as something like the DVD extras or “deleted scenes” from The Last Days of Disco, but I even think it’s good enough to stand on its own. If you didn’t know better, you could almost think that it’s a minor-classic novel that got turned into an indie film, rather than the other way around. I know I said it's a shame this book is out of print, but I also feel like that somehow adds to its mystique. After all, it’s a story about the rare, precious, fleeting moments of one’s young adulthood – so it’s oddly appropriate that this book should be a rare and precious object itself.

*Correction: records show that of Stillman's four films, only "The Last Days of Disco" lost money.

**Correction: this scene actually does appear in the film but (it seems) not as memorably or emphatically as in the novel.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stillman's elegant, innocent, melancholy book adaptation and expansion of his subtle and underrated film is really something to be savored as a work of its own. Vastly enlarging the dimensions of the character of Jimmy Steinway from his relatively supporting role in the film, Stillman weaves a comedy of manners that recalls Forster and Austen at their finest moments, only set in the upper-class apartments of early 1980's New York- a time that now seems almost as removed as Edwardian England or the early 19th century. Between episodes of arch comedy he drops nuggets of poignant wisdom about the nature of romance at various points in one's life and how we all meet and fall in love with somebody who, no matter where our life takes us or theirs takes them, we can't help but remain drawn to, even long past what we know to be the end of our "chance" with them. The characters are deftly but economically drawn, emerging with each page rather than appearing full formed all at once, with minor figures suddenly becoming important and major ones suddenly vanishing to the background, as often happens in real life. Life a fine wine, to be enjoyed with the right people at the right time in your life, it'll make you long for your early twenties, whenever those were, and a moment in time when all you cared about was social politics, having a good time, and trying to be likable to yourself and the one person you always wished you would meet.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up. Admittedly a huge fan of all (now five) Whit Stillman films, I suspect Last Days is my absolute favorite, and the one I have seen the most times. Usually I eschew novelizations of films and put off reading this one; others have complained there is no real reason for this existing, but I humbly disagree. While it follows the film fairly closely, the addition of the narrative portions is as witty, hyper articulate and revealing as the dialogue of his 'urban haute bourgeoisie' (in Whitman's own phraseology) characters. The addition of a few 'deleted scenes', and the final 30 page epilogue are reason enough for spending more time in their company. Although the conceit of this being written BY the character of Jimmy Steinway doesn't always work (a LOT of it just seems related via an omniscient narrator), it is still quite clever when it DOES work.

Interesting side note: I once met the actor who played Jimmy, Mackenzie Astin, at an awards ceremony my company gave honoring his mother, Patty Duke, and told him this was one of my favorite films of all time - he thanked me, but I could tell he was thinking 'You're crazy'! :-)

[Bea Moritz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dashes of JD Salinger and Edith Wharton in a postmodern setting. I don’t understand the mixed reviews of this book. If you like whit stillman you will eat it up, but it is probably best to not have watched the movie recently prior to reading. Thank you Toronto public library for having this impossible to find gem

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book and the movie it was based on. I read the book 30 years ago when it came out and recently re-watched the movie. So I wanted to refresh my memory about what was added in the book. It's such a great critique of the '80s and all in all a good one!

[Alex Doenau · Rating 2 out of 5]

An exceedingly rare book, this autographed copy (bought at a second hand store for a mere $4) was lent to me by a work colleague, based on his admiration for the film of approximately the same name. I'm no worse for having read it, but he really oughtn't to have bothered.

The Last Days of Disco is a meta-novelisation of the film, written by the character of Jimmy Steinway - "the dancing adman". The strength of the film is its female characters, with all of the men being interchangeable versions of one another. Why we would want to read the account of a faceless person in just another suit is a mystery, and why we would want to read him standing in judgment of the infinitely more interesting women that he frequently others is a mystery.

Dialogue that works on film, like essentially anything that Charlotte says, falls leaden on the page. When the characters have no sense of self-awareness, that's one thing; when the author of the book (or the character that he claims is writing it) lacks that self-awareness, the message is changed entirely. Steinway says that there are many advantages that books have over film, like the author's freedom to describe a character's shoes and what they mean, but he ignores the fact that a film that is at least in part about music can feature the music that a novel can only describe.

Worse for the reader is the lack of detachment from the narrator. Being trapped in Jimmy's head is not fun; Charlotte and Alice are the lifeblood of the story and we can only passively inhale the fumes that we're offered by Steinway.

The Last Days of Disco was, as a film, rescued from obscurity by Criterion - and deservedly so. This novelisation has fallen out of print, and is more fittingly viewed as a curio. This is a high two, but a two nonetheless. Inessential reading that doesn't seem to understand the strengths of its own source material.

[Kit Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big, biiig Whit Stillman fan right here. If you're all, "Metropolitan was kinda cute but I wasn't nuts about Barcelona and I didn't even bother seeing The Last Days of Disco," then you're not going to even think about checking this out. If, however, you're all, "Oh my god, Metropolitan was Woody Allen-esque in its brilliance, Barcelona was extraordinary, and Last Days of Disco, though handicapped by an unfortunately misguided marketing campaign, was equally witty and effervescent," then this is probably already in your queue. What I love about Stillman's films is the constant cascade of great dialogue and highly clever epigrams; that didn't translate into novel-form too well. Like, a character would drop a snappy line, then there'd be several paragraphs of recently interesting descriptions, and then another line--where in the movie version the patter is continuous and fluid. That being said, it'd be great if Whit wrote more--a totally solid first foray--and I can't wait for his new film to drop this year.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

A companion read of the film, while binge watching all Stillman's trilogy - Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco.

Woody Allen's writing may be better received and maturer, but to me it's rather aged and stale, in comparison with Stillman's romantic comedy on youth, coming-of-age, loss of innocence, UHB (urban haute bourgeoisie)...
Both filmmakers excel on dialogue wits, and transforming the trivial into the profound. But the book didn't bring me more satisfaction. The first person(also one of the main characters, Jimmy S)'s narrative style with constant referring to movie and intermittent flash back, it may dig deeper into the inner feelings and chronological background, it also suspends the current story and characters interaction without the benefit of creating suspense and more humor.

Well it's a post-film novelization.

[Amie Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whit Stilman's movies are among the greatest (in my opinion) and The Last Days of Disco is my favorite of the three he made - so naturally the book would be a favorite too, right? Right - except there's a twist to the novel.

The book is written from the perspective of a character in the movie- who actually wrote the movie screenplay based on real events, and it's about how the movie is different from what actually happened, and how all his real-life friends are pissed off about how their characters appeared in the movie.

Confused? I was at first - but this book is simply brilliant. I severely wish Stillman would break out the pen and write more, but he's vowed to never do so again.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whit Stillman is an engaging writer. The premise that this book was written by a main character of the film, who was hired after the success of the film (& narrates the book) is a brilliant touch. As I re-entered the world of Des, Alice, Charlotte & The Club I found myself wishing I could read more of his writing - not just hear it spoken on the screen. As an avowed Stillman aficionado I'm definitely biased in giving this five stars but it was such a pleasure to read both the story (which I knew well) and the additional details & bits of characterization that didn't or couldn't make it into the film.

[Joe Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Days Of Disco with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterward, Whit Stillman. This is his 'novelization' of his movie. Although it's truly an interesting approach and fun, for some reason I really hit a wall with this thing. That's more about me than the book, I'd say. If you like his movies, especially the trilogy, you'd probably enjoy this. The author/narrator of the book is one of the characters from the movie and writes about the events of the film as if they really happened. He talks about the way something may have varied 'in the movie' with the way it really happened, essentially breaking the fourth wall a bit. Maybe a fiction of a fiction of a fiction then? Sounds like a big idea, but the subject matter is not so it never really gets lofty like it maybe could. It's been years since I've seen the movie and bought the book when it came out but never read it. Planning to rewatch the trilogy and wanted to read it first. Onward and upward.

[James Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this would have hit different if we weren't in the midst of a nationwide pandemic as well as massive social upheaval focused on Black persecution in the police state we live in. The entire time I read it, it felt like a waste of time to spend any energy on the petty problems of these basic white people, whining about imagined relationships and getting into the all-important Club. The story wasn't even that interesting as it mostly follows these people doing uninteresting things with their uninteresting lives--the lack of wit and genuine comedy only highlights how dull these people are. I saw most of Stillman's films--including the one this book is based on--at a certain point in my mid 20s and loved them. I'm beginning to wonder if I would feel the same way if I saw them today.

[Lukia · Rating 4 out of 5]

i mean it works as a novel, that’s what you want to know right?

the sentences come out really tight and clean. i’m not sure if you haven’t seen the film that it makes sense that jimmy is the narrator. he’s easily the least self-aware and says some of the most baffling things without justification. i don’t think stillman really leaned into his POV as much as required, but otherwise, just as funny as the movie. breezier than most 90s novels of this type. this would be a perfect summer city read.

[Karl Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, not great...I was hoping more of the sensibilities of the movie would find their way into the book, but maybe got a little bit too much of that. I guess my problem is that I love Stillman on the screen, and I do not enjoy his words quite as much in the written format. This is probably a book that would best be read with no knowledge of "Last Days...." the film.

[Michael McNamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice supplement to the movie that clarifies some of the characters' motives.

[Gilles Russeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans le New-york des années 1980, qques mois dans la vie de yuppies sur fond de boite de nuit, amourettes et nostalgie. Léger, drôle et émouvant !

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Days of Disco With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards is certainly the best and most fascinating movie novelization I've ever read, if not the best ever written.

The premise here is that Whit Stillman's film, The Last Days of Disco, is a true story, and that one of the film's characters, Jimmy Steinway, is commissioned to write the accompanying book. This premise opens up the book to not just tell and expand upon the film's story, but to comment on the film itself, which the book does only occasionally, and with enjoyable results.

The book, while, in my opinion, considerably superior to the (very good) film on which it's based, is still a companion piece to the film, and can't really exist independently of it. If you're not a fan of Whit Stillman's movies, I would hesitate to recommend this book, though I will say that Stillman's dialogue, which can admittedly seem stilted at times onscreen (though it's a style I find, for the most part, quite captivating), can seem much more natural on the printed page. I am a fan of Stillman's films, and having just seen Last Days again for the first time in many years (it having just been reintroduced in print on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection), I felt compelled to revisit the novel as well. I'm very glad I did.

Here, aspects that perhaps weren't so successful in the film, due to budget limitations or what have you, are entirely successful. For instance, I don't feel that the Club, as depicted in the film, is quite believable as the all-important New York nightlife hotspot it's made out to be, but in the pages of the novel, the allure of the Club's dance floor and atmosphere are irresistible.

The book's premise also gives it a sense of perspective about the story's events that gives them greater resonance. Without dwelling on events outside the film's scope for very long, the book still gives you a sense of how the lives of Jimmy, Josh and Des were forever changed by their desires for Alice Kinnon, and I found its conclusion, which is entirely different from the film's, very poignant.

Stillman is a fine writer who obviously knows a great deal about what it was like to frequent dance clubs and to work in publishing in the very early 1980s, and he crafts his insights into a vivid, funny, and affecting novel. I enjoyed it tremendously.

[Lindsay Heller · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way I came about reading this was sort of convoluted. With the release of Whit Stillman's latest movie, Love & Friendship, I found myself interested in reading the post-mortem, epistolary story "Lady Susan" by Jane Austen which the movie was based on. In my search for it I discovered that the director had written a novelization of that movie and was thus reminded of the novelization of this movie, The Last Days of Disco. It had been awhile since I saw that film and was interested, so I decided to read this book. Phew. I told you it was complicated.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, because I enjoyed the movie. This book doesn't really add all that much to the story, except a few before and afters by Jimmy Steinway, the narrator of this story and the "writer" of this book. It's very self aware as a novelization. It brings the movie up all the time. Which actually sort of works because it seems like something Jimmy Steinway would do, even though it was sometimes annoying. Just like Jimmy Steinway. And a lot of the other characters.

Many of the characters in this story are not nice. They're selfish, lazy, condescending, snobby, and self-aggrandizing in the face of their own mediocrity. Alice, the sort of main characters, is constantly derided by them while being one of the only decent human beings of the bunch. But, for me it works. I can see how the parade of terrible people would really turn someone off, but luckily for me I have never needed characters to be good people to find them interesting and this parade is nothing if not amusing in their self-congratulations.

[Tyler McGaughey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the movie that preceded it, this book tells a story that's both highly specific to and immersive in its particular time/social milieu while being, I think, quite universal to any young adult who is just coming to understand what it means to actually be an adult and a person in the world and the various entanglements that follow along the way. The movie has the advantage of actually showing those divine and joyful dancing sequences and letting you hear that great music; the book has the added glow of a 'twenty years later' frame story sort of thing, which adds a layer of poignancy that I found nearly unbearable and simultaneously highly enjoyable, on both aesthetic and emotional levels. If I sound maudlin or like I'm tripping over myself to praise this book, then so be it. The Last Days Of Disco is one of the best movies, and now one of the best books, I've experienced in a long time - I would call them essential viewing and reading for any recently educated person trying to navigate the metropolitan world while retaining some modicum of romance and wit.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

an unusual novelization of a film after its theatrical release, that also happens to be written by its director/writer. by telling the story of the movie from the point of view of one of its characters -- who knows about the movie, its script, and various other background materials -- The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards actually improves upon what was an excellent, enjoyable film to begin with. but don't be concerned that this is some trite post-modern, deconstructionist gobbledygook, because stillman is just as talented a novelist as he is a filmmaker (the bastard!), and he allows the wonderful, affecting story about a group of young people finding their way in the world hold center stage. set against his marvelous descriptions of NYC at night, and its early 1980s club scene, along with the great dialogue stillman's films are known for, stillman's novelization of his own film succeeds on its own.

[Nicole Iovino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this was kind of going to be hit or miss for me. I love the movie and Stillman, but a director writing the novelization of his own movie seemed a little bit arrogant to me. Luckily it was much better than I expected. There were, however, some things I didn’t like about it. For instance, Jimmy Steinway was the most boring, irritating character in the movie, so I thought it was a strange choice to pick him to be the narrator. All of his asides would have been much more appropriate coming from Des or Charlotte, which may have made for a much more interesting book. Regardless, though, it was a lot of fun to read. Just as funny as the movie, the characters were just as awful, and the epilogue was insightful and a nice bonus.

[adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

What exactly was the point of this book? A writer-director decides to make a novelization of his own film, as told from the perspective of one of its supporting characters. Oh, and by the way, the film is THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, one of the best movies I know of. Anyway, this book could have been an interesting exercise, but instead its mostly a slapdash cut-and-paste job from the screenplay. I don't know why Whit Stillman wanted to revisit the movie if he was not going to expand on its story and give more insight to its characters; given the quality of his films, I am surprised that he did not take more care with this. The catch is that the THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO was so good, I enjoyed reading the excerpted dialogue, even if it was in the context of an unnecessary novelization.

[Steve Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stillman's movies are gems, mostly featuring talky young people trying to figure it all out. This novel is a different look at his most recent movie. The conceit is that relatively minor character Jimmy Steinway is the author of the book, which acknowledges the existence of the movie as a dramatization of events which happened to real people. So for instance, Stillman/Steinway talk about how the real Alice related to the actress Chloe Sevigny who played her.

You'll find all this either too precious or very engaging. I'm in the latter camp.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an imperfect book, granted, but sometimes it's just the style of the book that really grabs you. As with his films, I really go for the vibe of these posturing, weary, literati types congregating over dated cocktails to discuss stuff like lady and the tramp. I could read about these characters watching daytime TV or playing call of duty. Not that they ever would. The books kind of meanders, drops in and out and leaves you feeling a little short-changed. I'm recommending it though. Snarky wasps bitching in manhattan bars about what was and wasn't gauche thirty years ago is to my taste!