Barcelona

[Another recent addition to the collection, backdated for alphabetical goodness.]

Sometimes, you need to see someone do what you love doing.

Barcelona (1994) is a Whit Stillman film that I've only seen one other time, a few years back, but the film left a strong impression on me.

When I started writing screenplays, I tended toward writing navel-gazing dialogue full of introspective observations, examinations, and declarations, along with a ton of inside jokes ripped straight from my interpersonal relationships.

All of that stuff rang true to me. That was how people in my world talked. Granted, my world consisted of a few close friends with which I spent nearly all of my free time in college, but effective dialogue sounds real. To me, all that navel-gazing stuff seemed real.

That's why more than any other style of film, I'm a sucker for a chatty, indie comedy from the 1990s: Kevin Smith, Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, and others. They made what I was trying to do seem okay, despite all the screenwriting textbooks and teachers who tried to tell me differently.

In retrospect, I tend to agree with the books and profs now. I usually fell in love with the sound of my own characters and often forgot what the screenplay was even about, which killed me. I still struggle with this. I can't start a script unless I know the story. I didn't do that before. I just...started writing.

Despite all that inspiration and rationalization derived from '90s independent film, I hadn't heard of Whit Stillman until I was watching the special features on Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming. In one featurette, Baumbach sits down with Chris Eigeman, a character actor who appears in both Baumbach's and Stillman's films (including this one). That crossover is easy for them to discuss.

I rented Stillman's Barcelona and Metropolitan at the time, mostly on the basis of their conversation. I found Stillman's films similar to Baumbach's in pacing and rhythm, but Stillman has a bit more to say about social classes, manners, and mores. His films aren't as funny, but they're just as poignant.

For me, Stillman's work reinforces the notion that yes, I can write a chatty little script, and yeah, people will want to hear those characters talk, even if there's not much of a story holding it all together. That's okay. I can experiment with story structure, focusing on character development and arcs. There's still an audience for that. I'm okay.

Barcelona depicts navel-gazers abroad, contemplating the minutiae of their lives against the backdrop of political unrest in early '80s Spain. They experience the city, find a bit of romance, and ponder ideas such as whether they have been shaving in the wrong direction their whole lives, why they appear to look better in a mirror than in a photograph, or how people at parties always seem to talk about marketing.

I said the film was navel-gazey.

In all, Stillman has made three films: Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco, all of them chatty '90s pictures. He hasn't released a film since 1998.

Sony Classics recently issued a press release announcing Stillman's fourth film, Damsels in Distress. After more than a decade, Stillman is back.

I'm stoked, because now, maybe more than ever, I need a film to come along and remind me that what I like to write still has validity. Noah Baumbach's last couple of films have left me empty, and Wes Anderson's last couple of films have been too childish and didn't resonate as much as his earlier work. Kevin Smith and Ed Burns simply have gone off the reservation, and both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino make blockbusters now.

I'm hopeful that Stillman's new film will have something to say, and that I'll get that same feeling again, that maybe what I like to write isn't so crazy. Sure, I can get validation from friends, relatives, and mentors, but there's nothing quite like seeing someone do what you like doing.