Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee star in Kent Jones’ new drama, Late Fame, which is set to make its world premiere in the Orizzonti sidebar of the Venice Film Festival.
Dafoe delivers a quietly authentic performance as Ed Saxberger, a forgotten New York poet now living a quiet life as a postal worker. His past on the poetry circuit is a distant memory until he is suddenly rediscovered by a group of young, affluent bohemians nostalgic for the downtown New York of the late 1970s and early ’80s.
Past Lives star Greta Lee co-stars as Gloria, another figure embraced by the group as their “tragic heroine.” The film explores the dynamic between Saxberger and Gloria, whose flamboyant, devil-may-care exterior conceals a darker reality.
The supporting cast includes Edmund Donovan as the leader of the young admirers, alongside Clay Singer and Luca Padovan as other members of the group. Jake Lacy appears as a literary agent, with Tom Torn playing Saxberger’s flamboyant neighbor and Clark Johnson as a friend unaware of his poetic past.
Jones directs from a screenplay by Oscar-nominated writer Samy Burch (May December). The script is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler, which was originally set in 1890s Vienna.
Late Fame marks Jones’ second narrative feature, following 2019’s Diana. His acclaimed documentary work includes Hitchcock/Truffaut and A Letter to Elia, which he co-directed with Martin Scorsese.
“The very first time I read Samy’s script, so emotionally varied and knotty, so funny and so bracingly frank, the film started forming in my mind,” Jones stated. “I could see the characters. I could see the New York of now and the New York of a now vanished past, one delicately layered over the other. And I could feel the presence of poetry, forever fragile and at its very best forever free.”
Late Fame is a Killer Films production in association with Fresh Fish Films, Working Barn Productions, and Morning Moon Productions. The Paris-based mk2 Films is also a producer and will handle international sales.
