Director Kent Jones and stars Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee touched down at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday with Late Fame.
Dafoe stars as forgotten 1970s New York poet Ed Saxberger who is rediscovered by a group of well-heeled young admirers, while Lee plays Gloria, a talented but emotionally complex actress who is connected to the group.
The wry drama received a rapturous reception from a 1,400-strong audience as it world premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section with the Jones, Dafoe and Lee taking to the stage for a short Q&A after the screening.
Jones said the film tapped into his and Dafoe’s relationship with downtown New York and their memories of the artistic community that thrived in SoHo in the 1970s and 80s and was then swept away by gentrification in the mid-1980s
“It’s a movie that reflects New York as people live it,” said Jones. “It’s an interesting thing in New York because so much changes so constantly, and there’s so many things that one remembers from earlier times that are gone, and yet things stay the same visually, so you’re haunted by them, and in SoHo, that’s particularly present.”
Jones originally moved to New York in 1980, while Dafoe experienced SoHo at the height of its time as a haven for artists, through his involvement in the experimental theater company, The Wooster Group.
“Ed’s past, the moment when he came to New York, is very close to the moment that I came to New York and the moment that Willem came to New York and so that was very, very important, really crucial to the project,” said Jones.
Dafoe said watching the film on the big screen – having previously viewed it on a screening link on a laptop – had reinforced his sense of personal connection with the story.
“I was surprised because something that I say all the time in interviews is in the dialogue and I didn’t remember. I used to be the youngest one in every group and then one day I became the oldest one. There was a lot of personal connection,” said the actor.
“This is not my life, but how I feel about New York, really being formed by my early days there, and having that be a very romantic, ambitious time… Of course, the comparison ends there, but this was very rich material for me.”
He said his relationship with the younger cast members playing Saxberger’s admirers – including Edmund Donovan as the group’s foppish leader Meyer as well as Clay Singer, Luca Padovan, Arthur Langlie and Graham Campbell – sometimes veered into similar territory as the poets with
“They would seduce me into telling war stories about things that have happened, you know, way back when and what was it like to work with so and so… I would get puffed up and hold court… so I had lots of connection to this.”
Past Times and The Studio actress Lee said she fell for the character of Gloria from the minute she read the screenplay, by Oscar-nominated May December screenwriter Samy Burch and adapted from late Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler’s eponymous novel set in 1890s Vienna.
“It was one of those moments, when I thought, ‘Oh, God, I have to play her’. Then when I was lucky enough to get the chance to, I couldn’t believe it,” said Lee.
“From the very beginning, our first conversations that we had about her with Kent, we were speaking about the kind of woman who perhaps doesn’t exist anymore. The kind of woman who I loved and is the reason why I’m here today,” she continued.
“The kind of woman who is incredibly nostalgic and romantic and looking to the past, looking to women like Marlene Dietrich. We watched Shanghai Express thinking about Sally Bowles, Liza Minnelli, incredible women and artists who I hold so dear to myself so it’s very personal.
“And just thinking about what it means to be an artist and to be in pursuit of the thing you love, which is art and the search for beauty and that sense of purpose, what it can bring to you in your life. Those were a few of the things we tried to incorporate into the character.”
Late Famous is the second fiction feature from after Jones after 2018 drama Diane, starring Mary Kay Place as a selfless woman navigating a toxic relationship with her heroin addict son.
Former New York Film Festival director Jones is also known for his documentaries on filmmakers, including Hitchcock Truffaut and collaborations with Martin Scorsese, including Elia Kazan tribute A Letter To Elia and My Voyage To Italy and most recently, Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints. Scorsese, takes an executive producer credit Late Fame.
Jones’ other close collaborators over the years also include French director Arnaud Desplechin, taking co-writing credits on the latter’s English-language drama Jimmy P. starring Benicio Del Toro.
It is the first time the director has directed from a screenplay which is not his own.
“I got a call from Pam Koffler at Killer Films, and she asked me if I read other people’s screenplays. I liked May December. I said send it to me and let me see what I think. I was taken with it and ended up liking the screenplay more than the novella.”
“It’s not so much a reflection on fame as much as a reflection on how people are lured by things… a bunch of young guys, who pretend hey know more about poetry than they really do, turn up and say, ‘You’re a master. We all love your book.’ … Saxberger might have known better on one level, but then on another level, who could resist,” he adds.
“Once I was on board, I was involved in everything. Killer is great because they really do feel like the director has the last word,” he continues. “They’re very, very supportive. I can’t say enough good things about Pam, Christine [Vachon] and Mason [Plotts].”
Once Dafoe was also on board, Jones and Burch worked together to tweak the screenplay to align it with the actor’s real-life New York timeline.
“It’s almost like it was written for him. In the original draft of the script, the reference points were for someone who was older, so we worked on getting it to where Willem came to the city, which was more or less when I came to the city,” he said.
Anatomy of a Fall and Zone Of Interest actress Sandra Hüller had been originally set for the role of Gloria but had to pull out due to a scheduling clash.
“Somebody said to me, I think that Greta Lee would be somebody who could work,” recalls Jones of the search for a replacement.
“I kind of closed my eyes, and thought, ‘Why didn’t somebody say that to me like five months ago’,” he continues, adding that unbeknownst to him at the time, they both shared the same agent.
Jones says Lee’s versatility – ranging from her quietly powerful performance in Past Lives to more comedic roles in Russian Doll more recently The Studio – shines through in her performance as Gloria, whose outward flamboyance hides a darker reality.
One of Lee’s key scenes in the film is Gloria’s rendition of Surabaya Johnny, the tragic 1929 musical song by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Its lyrics about a woman in love with a man who treats her badly, chimes with Gloria’s character, says Jones.
“When we first started talking in the script, there was an indication in the first draft that she might do a strip tease. I was like, “I don’t really want to do that. I I’m thinking of maybe having her sing, and Surabaya Johnny might be a good,” recalls Jones.
“She said, ‘You shouldn’t have said that, because now you can’t not do it’. She just immediately got to work on it. She was just a joy to work with.”
Following its buzzy Venice premiere, Late Fame heads to Jones’ former home of the New York Film Festival where it will screen with Q&As on September 28 and 29.
Late Fame is a a Killer Films production in association with Fresh Fish Films, Working Barn Productions, Morning Moon Productions and France’s mk2 Films, which also handles international sales.
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