The Last Days of Disco

The Last Days of Disco
Two women dancing back to back.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWhit Stillman
Written byWhit Stillman
Produced byWhit Stillman
Starring
CinematographyJohn Thomas
Edited by
Music byMark Suozzo
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • June 12, 1998 (1998-06-12)
Running time
113 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8 million[2]
Box office$3 million[3]

The Last Days of Disco is a 1998 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Whit Stillman, and loosely based on his travels and experiences in various nightclubs in Manhattan, including Studio 54. Starring Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, the film follows a group of Ivy League and Hampshire College graduates falling in and out of love in the disco scene of New York City in the early 1980s.

The Last Days of Disco is the third film (following Metropolitan and Barcelona) in what Stillman calls his "Doomed-Bourgeois-in-Love series". The three films are independent of each other except for cameo appearances of some common characters. According to Stillman, the idea for Disco was originally conceived after the shooting of Barcelona's disco scenes. In 2000, Stillman published a novelization of the film.

The film was released theatrically in the United States on June 12, 1998; its DVD and video releases followed in 1999.[4] The DVD releases eventually went out of print, and the film was widely unavailable for home video purchase until it was picked up by The Criterion Collection and released in a director-approved special edition on August 25, 2009.[5] Along with Metropolitan and Barcelona, a print of The Last Days of Disco resides in the permanent film library of the Museum of Modern Art.[6]

  1. ^ "The Last Days of Disco (15)". British Board of Film Classification. August 3, 1998. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  2. ^ Brown, Chip (March 16, 2012). "Whit Stillman and the Song of the Preppy". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 30, 2015.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference mojo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Seibert, Perry. "The Last Days of Disco – Overview". AllMovie. Archived from the original on September 14, 2009. Retrieved May 22, 2009.
  5. ^ "The Last Days of Disco (1998) – The Criterion Collection". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved May 22, 2009.
  6. ^ "MoMA: Last Days of Disco". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved September 1, 2009.