The influences behind The Last Days of Disco

1998

The Last Days of Disco

Film by Whit Stillman

American independent cinema. United States. In English.

Whit Stillman's 1998 comedy of manners follows two young Manhattan publishing assistants, Alice and Charlotte, and the men around them at an exclusive disco in the early 1980s as the scene collapses. It completes the loose trilogy begun with Metropolitan and Barcelona and joins Austen-style social comedy to an elegy for a vanished nightlife.

Where it came from

Where to watch

Rent Amazon $3.99, Apple TV $3.99, Fandango at Home $3.99
Buy Amazon $14.99, Apple TV $14.99, Fandango at Home $14.99

In the US, as of October 18. Prices and services change.

Find “The Last Days of Disco” on Amazon

1977

Saturday Night Fever

Film by John Badham

New Hollywood. United States. In English.

Drama about a Brooklyn paint-store clerk who lives for weekend nights at a local disco.

What it handed down

To The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Saturday Night Fever fixed the popular image of disco on screen, a working-class Brooklyn version Stillman's film answers with the Manhattan elite club of yuppies and admen. Last Days takes up the earlier film's idea of the dance floor as the center of young lives, then stages that world's end.

Where it came from

Where to watch

Stream MGM Plus Roku Premium Channel
Free Pluto TV, YouTube, Hoopla
Rent Amazon $3.99, Fandango at Home $3.99, Apple TV $5.99
Buy Amazon $4.99, Apple TV $14.99, Fandango at Home $14.99

In the US, as of October 18. Prices and services change.

Find “Saturday Night Fever” on Amazon

Tribal Rites of the New Saturday NightNik Cohn

1976

Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night

Nik Cohn

New Journalism. United States. Written in English.

New York magazine article on Brooklyn disco-goers, later admitted by Cohn to be largely invented.

What it handed down

To Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Direct source, well documented.

Producer Robert Stigwood bought the rights to Cohn's New York magazine article, and the film's Tony Manero is based on its central figure, Vincent, a Bay Ridge youth who lives for Saturday nights at the disco. The article's portrait of dead-end jobs redeemed by the dance floor became the film's premise.

Where it came from

The line stops here: cohn said he based the central figure on a London mod he had known, not on a literary source.

Find “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Where it came from

Share this