Late Fame is the story of a poet, Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe), who published a book of poetry in 1979, but since then has led a quiet, uneventful life as a postal worker.
He’s discovered by a group of young artist-wannabes who have dubbed themselves The Enthusiasm Society and is invited by them to take part in a reading they are planning.
One of the group’s members is an older, mysterious Asian actress named Gloria (a fabulous Greta Lee) who develops a crush on Saxberger.
Maybe I’m flattering myself by saying this, but I so identified with the character played by Willem Dafoe that I practically burst into tears.
Like his character, my “career” peaked in 1979 (the year I graduated high school) and I moved to New York City in 1981, four years after his character does.
There are many nice touches in this movie that rang true to me.
The self-described groups of artists turns out to be a bunch of trust fund babies, most of whom haven’t actually read Saxberger’s work. The most pretentious of the bunch, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), points out that his sleek Soho apartment was purchased for him by his father as an investment. “It was cheaper than the dorms at NYU,” he says.
Saxberger’s friends are a group of working-class men whom Saxberger refuses to invite to his poetry reading because he doesn’t think they’d appreciate it, and who mock him when they discover his creative past.
There’s a moment in the movie when Saxberger and Gloria are walking through Soho and Saxberger describes living in Soho in the ’70s like “living on the Moon.”
At the end of the movie, Saxberger reconciles with his working-class buddies, perhaps as a result of discovering the phoniness of his new group of admirers.
This weekend, I also caught Shoot the Moon on TCM (which I hadn’t seen before), one of the most explosive depictions of a marriage falling apart I’ve ever seen, with amazing performances from Diane Keaton and Albert Finney as the divorcing couple. The ending of this movie is particularly shocking, but there are shocking moments throughout, as well as a surprisingly touching performance by Peter Weller (the future star of Robocop).
