“WHEN, UNBEKNOWNST TO Each Other, Two Directors Pursue the Same Subject at the Same Time, Typically Somebody Losses. But WHEN A DIRECTOR AND A Star Just Happen to Be Tracing The Same Viennese Novella from 1895, EveryBody Wins. That’s what happled to Director Kent Jones and Willem Dafoe. IT WAS EARLY 2024, AND JONES HAD”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
That’s what happled to Director Kent Jones and Willem Dafoe.
IT WAS EARLY 2024, AND JONES HAD SIGNED ON TO DIRECT Late Famean adapration of artthur schnitzler’s book about an aging postal worker and onTime poet who is sudenly lionized by a group of idealistic Young Creatives. Jones Had Just Atted the PGA Awards and Was Flying from Los Angles Back to New York, and As Luck Wound Have It, Dafoe Was His Seatmate.
“HE AND I KNEW EACH Other A Bit – I HAD DONE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL STUFF WITH HIM – AND WE JEST TALKED FOR The WHOLE TIME ABOUT ABOLUTELY EVERING BUT Late Fame“Jones Recalls.“ And THEN WHEN IT GOT to the CASTING PROCESS, [he] just seized like not just the right choice, Kind of Like the only Choice. And it turned out that while he was in plane, he had a copy of the novella in his backpack, which is just crazy. So he was already on the trail before he Knew that there was a script. ”
Jones Didn’t Approach Anyone But Dafoe for the Lead Role, and A Year Later they Were Shooting the Film Together.
Written by Samy Burch (2023’s May December), The Script Transplants of the Action from Fin Fin de Siècle Vienna to Modern-Day New York, WHERE DAFOE’S ED SAXBERGER HAS SPENT 37 Years Working at The Post Office, Living Unhappy Life. One Day, A Recent Nyu Grad Named Meyers (Edmund Donovan) Turns Up at His Apartment, Declares Saxberger’s Forgotten Book of Poems and Students, Dubbed the Enthusiasm Society. Surrounded by Well-Heied Young People with Heady Ideas About Art, Saxberger Is Swept Up in A Wirlwind of Adulation and Conflict Struggling Actress.
“There Are Three Stories That Are Happy Simultaneously,” Jones Says of Late FamePremiering in the Orrizonte Section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. “There’s The Story of Willem’s Character, There’s The Story of Greta’s Character, and There’s the Story of the Guys. And the Way that All Interact and Interweave and That Al.”
Approprrialy, The Backdrop for All of That Drama and Growth Is Poetry, From The Film’s Opening Montage of Poets Like Anne Waldman and Ted Berrigan, to Recordings of William Carlos Williams That Saxberger Listers to In His Apartment, to the Terrible But Earnest Poetry of Winn (Luca Padovan), The Youngest Member. IT’s a choice that connecters the Characters to the kind of art that is or was – or that hope will be – Central to Their Lives, Taking A Bitterness Inherent to Schnitzler’s Original.
“I didn’t want anybody in the movie to be just a figure of fun,“ Says Jones. “I WAS INTERESTED IN POPLE WHO DREAMS THATE BUY INTO.”