Kent Jones on directing Willem Dafoe & Greta Lee in Late Fame
Miss Flicks recently had the pleasure of jumping on Zoom to chat to filmmaker Kent Jones about his second narrative fiction feature, Late Fame, starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee.
In the drama, Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, who published a poetry book called Way Past Go in 1979 and then moved on with his life, living a humble existence as a Post Office worker in New York for the past 37 years. One day, his book is discovered by Meyers (Edmund Donovan), who invites him to join The Enthusiasm Society, a group of poets, essayists, and playwrights. Although initially reluctant, Saxberger is seduced by their admiration and enthusiasm, gets sucked into their world and develops an inflated ego as a ‘rediscovered male genius’. He also finds himself under the spell of the group’s only actress, Gloria (Lee), who is hiding behind her larger-than-life persona.
I really loved Late Fame’s screenplay – written by May December‘s Samy Burch – and the intellectual, deliberately pretentious conversations about art and who decides if something has value or not. Dafoe is as excellent as ever, but I was absolutely floored by Lee, who plays a mysterious character with so many layers.
In our Zoom conversations, we spoke about Burch’s screenplay, working with Dafoe and Lee, and Jones’s longtime collaborator Martin Scorsese‘s involvement as an executive producer.
So Samy Birch wrote a terrific screenplay, in my opinion, adapting Arthur Schnitzler’s novella from Vienna to modern-day New York. Where were you at professionally in your career when this came across your desk, and why do you feel compelled to make that your next feature?
There was another film that I was, right after I made (his 2018 movie) Diane, there was another film that I was working to get made and then there was the one-two punch of Covid followed by the actors’ and writers’ strikes, and so I was, I don’t know, between projects, let’s say.
I got this call from Killer Films and I read the novella and then I read the script. I liked the script very much and then Samy and I met and immediately clicked and Samy wanted me to do it because of Diane. She actually just wrote the notes for the Blu-ray edition that just came out. Then, you know, the whole process of getting the film into gear began and so we were working together (on) different drafts, you know, different things that had to be… scripts never stay frozen in place for very long, except for god movies.
I’ve said this so many times but I preferred the script to the Schnitzler novella simply because I felt that it was warmer; there was less of a savagery in relation to the characters, the ironies weren’t as slam-bang, and so I really liked that. I think that it’s easy to imagine a different kind of movie being made out of the same material, but it’s not my thing. I didn’t want to skewer The Enthusiasm Society and Gloria the way that Schnitzler does.
I had read that Willem had read the novella and had already thought this would be interesting to make into a movie, so it’s quite fortuitous that you thought of him and you met for this. What made him your Saxberger?
You can have discussions about different actors and how good they are and stuff like that, but in his case, it’s a couple things. One is that, you know, it’s very fashionable now to think that the idea of movie stardom is over and that it was a construction and I think that that’s just nonsense, simply because when you look at the face of someone who is a movie star, it’s not just because they’re handsome or they’re beautiful or something like that, it’s because their face takes to the camera in a very particular way. So in Willem’s case, I don’t even need to (explain), it’s kind of obvious.
Then, of course, there’s: who is the person, what is the presence, what is his being. He had a grounding in theatre, in a particular kind of theatre, experimental theatre, and a lot of really intensely physical work, so he came at acting from an interesting kind of viewpoint that a lot of people working in, you know, the kinds of movies that he does have don’t have.
He gives himself to the movie, which means that he works in different registers, which is really interesting because it’s easy to imagine him having a career in horror movies and movies with directors like Robert Eggers or Yorgos Lanthimos, that kind of stylisation and that kind of work. On the other hand, there’s Light Sleeper by Paul Schrader, there’s the work he’s done with Abel Ferrara and a number of films. There’s his performance in The Florida Project (and) The Last Temptation of Christ.
I think his approach to acting is, as a whole, he’s said in a conversation with Marty Scorsese, it happened in the middle of the shoot, he said, ‘When I’m giving a performance, I’m trying to not be an actor.’ Meaning, he’s coming at it doing the preparation, and then when he’s on camera, there’s just the work; you just be.
It’s hard to think of another actor off the top of my head who’s credible at reading or writing poetry. I knew people who can recite it beautifully, but that’s something else. It only dawned on me, you know, like last week maybe that I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, he played T.S. Eliot in Tom and Viv and he played (director Pier Paolo) Pasolini for Abel in a really beautiful film and he did it in two languages. So in both instances, he understands the poet. I would quote (Robert) De Niro on (Marlon) Brando, you know, he said it’s with Brando’s acting, it’s the poetry of his whole being. That’s Willem in a nutshell.
Yes, and I love how he gives the reading in the movie. It’s so good, you’re just locked in, fully captivated by it. Can you recall how many takes he did of that?
Let me see, I guess we were shooting with two cameras, I think, but we shot from different distances so that we could get in closer. I guess I’ll just say I think the first take was spectacular, and that’s mostly what we used, but then, of course, we had to cut in closer. I don’t know man, maybe five, possibly.
I can imagine him nailing it on the first go!
Yeah, he did, I mean, he was great. But that was an interesting process getting to that poem because it took a while figuring out what the poem would be, going through the motions and finding a poem by somebody else. The film is dedicated to my friend Peter Gizzi, he is a great poet, we were going to use one of Pete’s poems. It was a great poem; it just wasn’t… poetry is a very delicate thing that it felt like it needed to be coming from Ed, to have a simplicity about it but then also a poetic refrain and to relate to his past and open up something that we didn’t know about him previously.
I noticed that, in addition to Peter, there were loads of poets credited. Were they involved in the project?
(Their work is) throughout the movie. I mean, you know, at the beginning, in the opening credits, you’re seeing images of Bernadette Mayer, Lewis Warsh, Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, so their names are there, and then you hear recordings of, first is Lorine Niedecker, then William Carlos Williams, then H.D., then Ezra Pound, then James Schuyler, so all those people are listed at the end. Unfortunately, I forgot about Catullus; I left him out, but Willem is quoting Catullus at the end when he puts the laurel on his head.
I wanted to talk about Jake Lacy because he was in your previous film Diane, and he makes a brief appearance as a literary agent. Was that a case of calling up a friend for a favour?
Well yeah, I asked him if he was into it, and he was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I love Jake, and I loved working with him in Diane. He did something so delicate, so difficult in Diane; he got the boorishness of the addict. Because a lot of the time we get to tragic, like, you know, he really got that obsessive thing. I think he’s a great actor, and we had fun with that. That character is the closest that the film comes to satire. The shirt that he’s wearing, I got that idea from my agent, so when I showed him the movie, he said, ‘Oh,’ and then he started laughing.
I also want to give a shout-out to Greta Lee because I think she’s mesmerising in this, and Gloria has so many different layers to her, so many different personas. Was there a day on set that Greta blew you away with her performance?
Yeah, that would be every day (laughs). When I saw Past Lives, I really liked the movie, but it’s just like, ‘Oh my god, who’s that actress?’ She just floored me. And then I saw her do some comedy; I looked at some stuff from Russian Doll. Because if you’re coming out of a comedy, that’s a great discipline; that’s an amazing thing.
Much to my surprise, she could sing too, but beyond that, that performance, you know, she’s playing a character who’s playing a character. She’s playing a character who’s playing different variations of a character or perhaps even different characters at different moments and it comes out of a kind of desperation, so everything that happens with her, there’s the exterior expression of something interior that’s very hers. Of the three criss-crossing stories – Meyers, Saxberger and Gloria – hers is the saddest. It’s all basically happening under the surface and bubbling up in different ways.
What she did with that was a great, interesting process that I was very, very careful with and boy, was I thrilled with the result. I mean, she just understood everything about that character, all the nuances that I couldn’t; you know, you just have to let them happen.
You mentioned Martin Scorsese before. He’s credited as an executive producer, and I know you’ve worked together a lot. In what capacity was he involved in the movie?
Looking at cuts, looking at them with me, you know, going through. Two cuts; we did it twice. He did the same thing with Diane. He and I have a very, you know, at this point, it’s been 34-35 years – almost 36. We barely have to say two words to each other sometimes, but fortunately, we both know how to speak and articulate ourselves.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Late Fame is in U.K. cinemas on Friday 4th September