The story of two American cousins talking their way through romantic and political adventures in early-1980s Barcelona, the film had its inception in 1983, when Stillman was working in Madrid as a sales agent for Spanish movies. Wanting to make his own film, he started writing notes for a script but eventually set them aside to write the New York-set Metropolitan instead, figuring that it would be easier to make his first movie in America than abroad. While editing Metropolitan in 1989, Stillman found himself wanting to see more of the type of WASPY, privileged male characters played in that film by Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman -- so he decided to revisit his Barcelona idea and make it his next film. In 1991, Stillman moved his family to Barcelona and spent fifteen months writing the script from scratch. He later said that Castle Rock gave him a few notes, but otherwise greenlit the film, gave him just under $3 million (relatively low, but a huge increase from Metropolitan), and left him alone to make it the way he wanted.
The film centers on Ted (Nichols), an American sales representative living in Barcelona, and Fred (Eigeman), his Navy officer cousin, who barges in on him unannounced. The guys soon get involved with two wild Spanish girls (Tushka Bergen and, in an early role, Mira Sorvino). Fred is much more extroverted than Ted, but both pale in comparison to the ultra-liberated Spanish women. As Stillman himself described it, "the guys are quite straight, even square. And the girls are quite counter-cultural."
At the same time, Stillman set about exploring the political sentiments of the era. In the early 1980s ("the last decade of the Cold War," as the film puts it), anti-U.S. sentiment was running high in Spain, and NATO membership was a pressing issue. Fred's military apparel and career, and his jingoism, figure prominently. In 1990, before he had even written the script, Stillman told The New York Times that this film would be "sort of about the sexual revolution and after, and about European anti-Americanism and whether we really are imperialists." Later on, to another reporter he joked: "Barcelona is Metropolitan meets Where the Boys Are meets The Year of Living Dangerously."
Production took place in Spain in the spring and summer of 1993. The Spanish peseta was dropping in value during that time, providing a cushion that allowed Stillman to extend his shooting schedule. He captured some beautiful images of the exotic city which had recently hosted the Olympics. Stillman used several of the artists he'd collaborated with on Metropolitan, including cinematographer John Thomas, editor Christopher Tellefsen, and of course actors Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman. Even though they'd worked with him before, the actors had a hard time getting used to his style of dialogue and delivery. They later admitted they didn't even understand the script until they'd been filming for three days and had entered what they called "Whitworld." Like Metropolitan, Barcelona has a distinctly seriocomic, slightly stagey tone, and Stillman's dialogue was designed to be spoken with carefully timed hesitations between words that were already written as slightly "off." The actors found it difficult to get into the right rhythm. "Everyone in his films talks like they've rehearsed everything they say," said Nichols. He added that Stillman's most common piece of directing was: "You know that acting thing you do? Don't do it."
Castle Rock Entertainment had a domestic distribution deal with Columbia Pictures, but only for films budgeted over $7 million. Barcelona fell short of that figure, so Stillman lobbied Castle Rock to go with Fine Line Features, a recently formed subsidiary of New Line Cinema. In fact, it was Metropolitan that had led to the creation of Fine Line; after Stillman's marketing consultant Ira Deutchman struck a deal with New Line to distribute Metropolitan, New Line subsequently bought Deutchman's company and placed him in charge of their new specialty unit, Fine Line Features.
The wryly funny Barcelona was warmly received by critics, if not quite as strongly as Metropolitan. Variety's influential critic Todd McCarthy, however, called it superior to Metropolitan, writing: "the film's most singular achievement is the portrayal of the manifold ways -- from subtle to overt -- in which anti-American sentiments were vented overseas during a certain period in the '70s and '80s. This line of inquiry may be of limited interest to international viewers, and even to domestic audiences, but Stillman is clearly gripped by the subject and integrates it into his dramatic material in an impressively detailed way that feels fresh in a fictional narrative context." McCarthy added that the new film was more fluid, and that "Stillman seems much more comfortable with the visual side of things this time out."
When Barcelona opened, Stillman was already telling reporters about his planned next film, which he saw as the third in a trilogy of a "discontinuous narrative." It would be set in Manhattan, he said, but center more around women than men. It would be called The Last Days of Disco. Four years later, that film came out.
By Jeremy Arnold
