What it means to reclaim lost genius has always been something that’s interesting to filmmaker Kent Jones, from his days as a film critic to his current days as a working filmmaker. And that idea is all over his latest film, “Late Fame.”
Based on the novella by Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler, “Late Fame” features a screenplay by Samy Burch and stars Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, a post-office worker who lives quietly in Manhattan. Quietly, that is, until a wealthy, odd young man named Meyers (Edmund Donovan) approaches him on the street. It turns out that Meyers is a huge fan of “Way Past Go,” a book of poems that Ed published in the late ‘70s that quickly faded into obscurity. Meyers invites Ed to join his group – they, a little pretentiously, call themselves the Enthusiasm Society – which consists of a group of young, male writers, and an eccentric actress named Gloria (Greta Lee).
What struck me about “Late Fame” was how artfully it explored the idea of trying to resurrect an artistic era long gone – an era that Jones is all too familiar with. Jones arrived in New York City around the same time that the fictional Saxberger would have, and has seen firsthand the way the city has changed over the years – something that’s beautifully reflected in “Late Fame.”
I recently got the chance to speak with Jones ahead of the film’s release this weekend. We talked about everything from how Willem Dafoe came on board, Jones’ connection to poetry, the French New Wave, and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What specifically drew you to Samy Burch’s script and made you want to take it on?
Kent Jones: There were a few different things. One is that I had read the novella before I read the script, and I found myself preferring the script. The situation in the novella I really loved, because I liked the idea of a group of guys of means who have this idea, and they’re a group, but they’re not really a group. I also liked the idea of reclaiming lost genius, because that was something that was very familiar to me from my days as a film critic and in the film festival world. That still is a big part of the energy among certain critics and cinephiles, and it’s something that was built into the way that cinephilia came to be after the war, starting with [Jean Luc] Godard and [François] Truffaut, and all those guys in France, and what it developed into. I could really relate to that.
I also think that as I was reading it, even though it was a little bit different – [Saxberger’s] past was a little earlier. He would have had to have been played by an older actor if we had stuck with that, which seemed odd to me to begin with. It was hard to imagine someone in their mid-80s working in the post office. Then the question became, how many actors are really credible, not only writing but reading poetry. And, you know, there’s Willem. It’s not just a question of reciting it beautifully. It’s a question of embodying it. He is a poet in his acting and in his approach to acting, and in the way that he moves and speaks. I think that it just made sense.
Then, of course, Willem is younger than that, so the time frame shifted for his past. And it was roughly the moment when I came to New York. That became really important to me. But, those were the elements, really, and then once Greta Lee came aboard, that added another element. Because the character of Gloria was certainly interesting, but could have gone in a lot of different directions. With Greta, she and I really got to work right away. She got to work with my wife, Carisa [Kelly], who’s the costume designer. So, we had three intersecting stories – the guys, Saxberger, and Gloria.
I wanted to ask you about the casting. Was Willem in your head when you were reading it, or how did he come to be attached to this project? I think you’re right – his theatrical background in particular, I think, really lends itself to the performance of the poetry.
Jones: No, he wasn’t in my head when I was reading it, because when I was reading it, I was just, you know – reading it. There was the question of an older actor, because the reference points were all walking through the West Village – somebody who had come in the late ‘60s and seen Bob Dylan in coffee houses and stuff. I just thought, I don’t know man.
There’s this story about the two of us. I knew Willem a little bit. The two of us wound up on a flight from Los Angeles to New York sitting next to each other. [Producer] Pam Koffler from Killer [Films] happened to be two rows back. He and I just talked the entire time, had a great time. We were talking about absolutely everything but Arthur Schnitzler’s “Late Fame” – which, as it turned out later, was in his backpack, because he read the novel. He really loved it … Two days later – it might have been a little longer than that, but not much – I called him, and I’m like, “Okay. I’d like to talk to you about ‘Late Fame’ by Arthur Schnitzler.”
It dawned on me only recently that he had played T.S. Eliot in “Tom & Viv,” and he played Pier Paolo Pasolini in Abel Ferrara’s film “Pasolini,” and he had done it beautifully both times. Pasolini was one of the greatest poets in the Italian language. Eliot was one of the greatest poets in the English language. But that aside, I think also – in terms of what you’re saying about his training – he came out of The Wooster Group, and it’s a very particular approach to theater, and a particular approach to acting, and at a particular moment in time. That’s the moment that we’re going into in the film, as he’s walking with Gloria through Soho. That was a very fertile moment for artists in New York. They were living in those lofts and performing in those lofts, and making music, and making theater, and writing poetry.
On the one hand, [Willem’s] face is a very delicate instrument that he can work in a lot of different ways for the camera. It takes to the camera in an amazing way. He gives himself to the movie instead of waiting for the movie to give itself to him. He gets himself into the register of Robert Eggers, or Yorgos Lanthimos, on the one hand, and then this performance in this movie calls for something very different. I suppose you could look to Paul Schrader’s movie “Light Sleeper” as another example, or the performance he gives in “The Florida Project.” I think he’s just a great actor.
Yeah, simply put.
Jones: Yeah, and he knows the world that we are dealing with in the movie.
You said a bunch of things I want to touch on, but you brought up a bunch of poets – and this is admittedly an art form I don’t have a ton of experience with. I read that you wrote the poem that Saxberger reads at the end of the film. I’d love to hear you talk about your connection to poetry and trying to craft something that felt particular to something that type of poet at that time would have written.
Jones: The film is dedicated to Peter Gizzi, who’s one of my oldest friends. He and I talk almost everyday, and he’s a great poet. He teaches at UMass Amherst, and he’s published a lot of work – he just won the T.S. Eliot Prize last year.
Pete came to New York at the same time I did. We pretty much came down together from the Berkshires, and we shared a lot. I shared cinema with him. He shared poetry with me. There were very long nights when we would sit and we would listen to these recordings, which were then records that we would play. Ezra Pound reading from “The Cantos,” William Carlos Williams reading, Wallace Stevens reading – those were the people that he and his generation were listening to. Most of them were gone at that point, but they were real inspirations for what I would loosely refer to as the New York school of poetry.
The thing about poetry is, one, there are a lot of different schools and different moments, and a lot of different groups and types of poetry and approaches to it. Second, the thing about writing poetry is – writing novels is the same, painting is close to it – it’s an art form that requires absolutely nothing besides a paper and pencil, or a keyboard. And nobody makes a living off of it. That’s just not what it is about. So it speaks from a place that’s quite unique, because if you’re going to make a living as a poet, you’ve got to be doing something else. Wallace Stevens was an insurance man. T. S. Eliot, as Saxberger says, was a banker. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Pound, you know, found a way to make a living somehow. To speak from that vantage point as opposed to a vantage point of some kind of power position is always a beautiful thing.
The New York School of Poetry is very close to the ground. We were thinking of using a real poem [for the end of the film], a poem that existed beforehand by Pete. But that just wouldn’t have worked. We needed something that was related to the character, but that was a real poem. So I did write it.
It’s interesting talking about the idea of poetry as an art form that doesn’t necessarily provide you with the opportunity to make a living. I’ve heard you talk about coming to NYU and being like, “I’m gonna work with Nicholas Ray!” and having this grand, romanticized view of what it means to come to New York as an artist. As recently as when I was growing up, I still had that vision of New York in my head. And now, most everyone I know who moved to New York is a lawyer, or a consultant.
Jones: It’s ruinously expensive.
There’s this sort of lost idea of New York. I want to talk about Edmund Donovan, because I hadn’t really seen him before and I thought he was quite wonderful. That character, there’s this representation of privilege, but he’s also a little sympathetic, in genuinely wanting to recapture that vision and having the means to do so. I’d love to hear you talk about that contradiction and tension, and how New York has changed over the years, and trying to capture that with this film.
Jones: Simply put, it just got more and more and more expensive. When I came, if you moved from an apartment, you could pretty much figure it out and move into another apartment. You could find apartments that were affordable everywhere. As I remember it – and I’m sure this isn’t quite accurate – Soho was in the process of transforming, probably from the inside out, by the time I got here in 1980. Even by the time Willem got here, a little earlier. The thing is, wherever there’s real estate in New York, obviously things are going to change – or the possibility of real estate.
As I remember it, it was the world of artists when I came down. And then, around 1984 or so, that was just over. In the music scene, we were all very into music, and suddenly Blondie became this more corporate version of themselves. Talking Heads got bigger and bigger and bigger – it was fine, they were still good. Those are interesting examples. But you started to see consumer versions of things that had previously just been grown from the ground up. I think a lot of apartments that had been available were suddenly turned into co-ops, and got to be more and more expensive. The city certainly got cleaned up. Times Square got turned into something out of “Blade Runner,” which it still is.
On the one hand, my sons, my older children, are both grown men now. Raising them in the ‘90s in New York was certainly better than raising them in the ‘80s. It was a much safer city. But on the other hand, everything became kind of quiet, placid, sedate. It all kind of happened as it always does happen – gradually, and then you notice it only after it’s really changed.
At a certain point, maybe 10 years ago, Patti Smith said – if you’re young, if you’re an artist, if you want to make art and have a life, don’t come to New York. It’s just not the place to go anymore. Go to Detroit, you know, or some place like that. I think that opens the door to someone like Edmund’s character, Meyers. It’s true, there’s a sympathetic aspect to his portrayal, simply because I have no interest in skewering anybody. When I observe younger people that I know, I see them caught in this social media, iPhone, self-promotion, self-branding thing that is not something that I’ve ever had to deal with, because I just come from a different generation. I don’t find it – it’s not a subject for satire.
Well, I think it’s really difficult to deal with.
Jones: Yeah, it is. That’s why the [influencer] group that’s across the way from [Meyers’ Enthusiasm Society], I didn’t really particularly want to make fun of them … In [Meyers’] character, I really wanted to feel, on the one hand, the grandeur of his dream, delusion – his idea of likening himself in this review that he postwrites to [Sergei] Diaghilev. And for the rest of the guys, they’re kind of committed, and kind of not. It’s just this loose affiliation, and so loose that they just come apart. I really loved exploring that, and I really loved putting that group together. Those guys, all five of those guys, man – having them work together as people, as friends … that was joy. And putting them together with Willem, and they way that their relationship with him echoed the relationship of the characters with Saxberger.
There’s a line in the film: “Rediscovery is better than discovery.”
Jones: Yeah, it’s Jake Lacy’s.
Which, his version of that as an agent is probably a little cynical. But you’ve worked as a critic, and I would love to hear your thoughts on that. I feel like in my own work as a critic, there has been a resurgence of retrospective criticism. And that was happening with Cahier du Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague – there was a similar reevaluation of Hollywood directors. I’d love to hear your take on that, having worked as a critic, and how that factors into your own belief system.
Jones: Well, I mean, Jake’s character is an agent. So, you know, of all the characters in the movie, he’s the one that’s probably the closest to purely satirical. But he handles it so beautifully.
He’s a great actor. I love it when he pops up.
Jones: Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s the second time we’ve worked together, and he’s just – man is he great.
To go back in time, right after World War II came Italian neorealism. Italian neorealism was a remarkable event, not just in the history of cinema, but in the history of art and the way that it responds to the conditions of the world. Here’s this cataclysmic event, and these films came that invented a new – for lack of a better word – a new kind of humanism. But it’s direct, because it’s a response to what had happened – not just in Italy, but all over Europe, and by extension, all over the world.
At the same time in France, because it’s the occupation, all these American films were unavailable until the late ‘40s. Suddenly, you had these young men going to see these movies and being bowled over by them, and the energy that they brought to responding to them was transmuted into the energy that they brought to making films. You can feel in their writing – particularly in Jean Luc Godard’s writing, I would say. In Truffaut’s as well, [Éric] Rohmer too. But you can feel, in their writing, their orientation towards making films. Godard is practically making films on the page when he’s writing about other people’s films.
The French New Wave was and is one of the great turning points of the art form, and inspired on the one hand, lots of filmmakers for years and years and years, and on the other hand, lots and lots of critics for years and years and years. I always wanted to make films, but I started as being one of those critics. I knew that there would come a point where the cord would be cut. Cahier du Cinéma, for many many years, you had this regular stream of writers. That only ended like, 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more. Olivier Assayas started as a critic there. André Téchiné started as a critic … Not everyone. Chantal Akerman wasn’t a critic, Claire Denis wasn’t a critic. But the bond between the critics and the filmmakers was very, very real.
I was very involved with the French scene and still am. They’re some of my closest friends. I think I knew that it would end, in some way. Then it did come to an end, and along with it, so did the idea of remembering the Shoah as a ground zero in humanity … The ethical response to that was at the forefront of what powered cinema for such a long time. What is it to film someone from this angle as opposed to that? What is it to film this action? From what vantage point do you do it? For any filmmakers that I care about, that’s still present and always will be in some way. It’s important to rediscover the past. You know, the old Faulkner quote: “[The past] is never dead. It’s not even past.” The past is always with us, whatever we may think. We happen to be in this moment now that’s kind of like, let’s return to zero. But I think it’s inevitable that it comes to an end.
Well, that’s what I took away from this film in particular. Eras end, and it’s hard to recapture them.
Jones: Yeah, you can’t. All that you can do is know about them if you’re interested in them. You can read about them, and they can come alive for you. But you have to respond to the present.
