Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

"The book was better than the movie" is a rule for which there are many exceptions, most of which are good movies derived from bad books (for instance, Howard Hawks set out to show that he could make a good film from Hemingway's worst novel and made the classic "To Have and Have Not"). Good movies derived from good books are rare (not everyone is in accord with me about either form of "The English Patient"). Good books deriving from good movies is almost inconceivable, though I'd offer the book based on the documentary "Word Is Out" as one possible case. The Last Days of Disco (with Cocktails at the Petrossian Afterwards) has to be the first novelization published by the American publisher with the most literary reputation, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. And the first instance of which I’m aware that the book that is better than the movie is a novelization written after the release of the movie.

The movie "The Last Days of Disco" is the third  of a sort of trilogy written and directed by Whit Stillman, following "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona." All of them are about unease about being part of a group while longing for love and questioning self-worth (not quite the same as having low-esteem, the psychocliché of the last two decades). All of them have sharp, literate dialogue.

My major problem with the movie is that a lot of dialogue occurs in a difficult-to-get-into discothèque inspired by Studio 54, the subject of a bad movie also released in 1998. I went to Studio 54 in its prime, as well as to The Saint, which had balconies as I don’t remember Studio 54 having. In either of them or in the more fugitive gay discos of the moment in NYC (The Garage is the name I recall from the same visit to NYC with my dancing partner of my disco bunny days), the music was very, very loud. Sharp repartee and extended conversation was no more possible in the balcony than on the dance floor. (For that matter, does anyone at any time talk in paragraphs like characters in a Stillman movie? I wish, but don’t think so.)

What I’m saying is that a disco in which one could hear to carry on a conversation would not have drawn crowds, would not have existed, let alone been chic. This provided a major plausibility problem for the movie to me (I didn’t think about it reading the book, but there were disco songs — mostly mediocre ones — playing in the background in the disco scenes in Stillman’s movie (see my epinion review of the soundtrack of Last Days of Disco and the better one of 54 ). Music in discos ca. 1979-80 did not provide background music.

For that matter, I remember Quaaludes and poppers being used more than martinis. (Personally, I tried to keep hydrated and only consumed bottled water.) And cocaine, which one of the characters snorts often.

The players in Stillman's fiction are recent college graduates (the males, like Stillman, from Harvard, the females from Hampshire, an experimental alternative education college in Amherst, MA with the motto “Non satis scire”: To know is not enough). Des (Chris Eigeman, who starred in all three Stillman films) is a manager whose responsibilities are a mystery to me at the disco. His friend Jimmy Steinway (Mackenzie Astin) has a similarly nebulous job at an advertising agency. His primary responsibility seems to be to get clients who are not young or stylish enough to get into the disco into the disco. The real Believer in disco (yeah, for some it was a faith) is an attorney in the district attorney’s office who had a crackup during college, Josh (Matt Keesler).

Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale in her first American film) and Alice (Chlöe Sevingny) work as editorial assistants for a book publisher, want to live the nightlife, and decide to rent a railroad apartment together (a railroad apartment is long and narrow, without hallways, so that one must go through one room to get to another). Their third apartment mate is nebulous.

Alice is uncertain, undermined by Charlotte who delivers statements like I'm only slightly more pretty than you but people don't like you.'' Alice disastrously takes advice form Charlotte that makes corporate lawyer Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) disdain her for being a slut.

Four deleted scenes are presented with optional commentary. There’s a 5-minute making-of featurette from 1998, a stills gallery, and a new commentary track with Stillman, Eigeman and Sevigny, and Stillman reading the epilogue of his novelization (mostly on what became of the characters after what is shown in the movie). This last audio-only feature runs 17 minutes.

© 2009, Stephen O. Murray

Epinions has lost my Feb. 2003 review of the book and the book is out of print and out of the database. (An earlier DVD existed; after waiting almost a year for Blockbuster to send me a copy, one arrived broken...)

Stillman moved to Paris after completing the movie, returning to the US earlier this year, and has long been writing another film, " Dancing Mood, " set in Jamaica in the 1960s and other film projects including adaptations of Red Azalea,  and Little Green Men for which financing has failed  (http://www.ifc.com/news/2008/08/whit-stillman-on-metropolitan.php).

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age