As a writer in my late 50s, with two books of poetry, minor awards here and there, a few hundred published poems, and a smattering of fiction, essays, and scripts, I’ve come to realize that even world-famous writers are often not world-famous during their lifetimes. As I’ve grown more accepting of pending oblivion, I’ve found myself drawn to director Kent Jones’ drama about aging and artistic relevance, Late Fame.
Ed Saxberger (William Defoe) is a near-retirement US postal worker who published Way Past Go, his one, just one, slim volume of poetry from his youth in late 1970s West Village, Manhattan. While perusing a used book shop in London, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), a very wealthy NYU grad student, found Ed’s one, slim volume of poetry and declared Ed a genius. With some sleuthing that borders on stalking, Meyers tracks Ed down and convinces him to join an informal salon of other highfalutin grad student friends, all dudes, except for one mysterious and sexy woman, of course. Ed joins. That’s the setup. I liked it.
I didn’t have high expectations for Late Fame, so when I read that it ran 93 minutes, I was relieved. Its short length, however, is a problem. Meyers wheedles and blandishes (two words he would use) Ed to the point that Ed begins to think that he is indeed an overlooked genius. Ed becomes an enthusiastic member of “The Enthusiasm Society”, as the group christens itself. The problem is that Ed’s transformation from a US Postal worker of 37 years to someone who thinks he has something in common with a bunch of rich, pretentious kids happens too quickly. The conversion is something like: “You’re a genius.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “Ok, maybe I am.” Ed becomes deeply involved in this slice of these young people’s world.
When movie plots progress too hurriedly, I wonder what was cut. Ed does not begin the story vulnerable. He is stable with his work, his neighbor, his buddies, his bar, his life. He has voicemails from his sister begging him to visit their dying brother. There are half a dozen or so of these voicemails that don’t serve any purpose. Maybe they were supposed to be the fissure in Ed’s world that made him vulnerable to Meyers’ manipulation. Nonetheless, the voicemails could be cut without affecting the story.
An odd encounter with an even more odd Meyers upends Ed’s life for no apparent reason. Ed comes across as the stereotypical gullible old person who gives his bank information to a random caller claiming to represent the government. Defoe’s character doesn’t seem as dumb as he ends up behaving.
Gloria (Greta Lee) might be the character that Late Fame is worth seeing. Gloria is “mysterious”, a word another character uses. We’re told Gloria is older than the boys, but not by how much. She is beautiful. She is unstable. She is flirtatious to the point of being seductive. She is always in character. And she is Asian. When I saw all this in the previews, I thought, oh, no, how many fetishes will this film have? Surprisingly pleasant: none.
Lee plays Gloria so well that when she bats her eyes at another character, you’ll think she is looking at you, and you’ll want to submit. She’s sexy, cruel, funny, enigmatic, vulnerable, and self-aware of her own ambition, which all the other characters fail to notice. Here is a big plus for Jones’ directing. Gloria never sleeps with Ed, though he becomes enamored with her, even when he sees her at her apartment without makeup and with her “roommate”, a rather blah White guy. The implication is that Gloria is doing what she has to do to make it in the Big City; that is, she is not rich.
Gloria sees Ed for what he is: a nice, rather clueless old man whom she lets kiss her once, when they’re high on shrooms and in public. Gloria delivers the truest and most honest line of Late Fame when she says to Ed, “You must have been beautiful when you were young.” I flinched. Ed doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t get it.
Calling Gloria the film’s deuteragonist elevates her beyond a quotidian supporting-role title. Plot-wise, Late Fame has been done many times before: older guy who once had a spark in his younger years has a life crisis, swoons for a younger woman, makes a fool of himself, then comes back to his senses. We’ve all seen this movie and read these novels. A supporting, sometimes minor, almost always female, character is much more interesting.
Gloria is all that and more, yet we know so little about her. She is older than the young men she hangs around with; she has no last name; she’s a performer, not a writer; she’s a woman; and she’s always an over-the-top Hollywood Golden Age starlet, singing Kurt Weill with enough chutzpah to make Lotta Lenya smile.
We know nothing more than that she isn’t rich, like the rest of the group. Is she a local NYC kid? Did she move to the city as Ed did? Does she have any income? Who’s the guy she lives with? She has singing chops that suggest formal training. From where? Why does she flirt her way through the members of “The Enthusiasm Society”? Why does she get shitfaced drunk the night she shares that she has a paying gig in a Midwest theater she refuses to name? And why does she gravitate to Ed, even leading him on while keeping him at arm’s length?
I wanted to know Gloria’s story, not Ed’s, which I correctly guessed from the preview. For example, why do Gloria and Ed become friends? Maybe Gloria sees Ed as a manifestation of her future potential. Or maybe Gloria sees that Ed never realized that he never had any artistic future. Gloria and Ed don’t have much in common with each other except that they don’t have much in common with the others. Maybe Gloria likes manipulating Ed, like when she shows up at his apartment uninvited and then pretends to be his lover when one of his friends pops in. Whatever the answer, Gloria is the only character with demonstrated talent in the current moment. Ed’s is past. Some of the writers may or may not have something. Gloria has it.
“The Enthusiasm Society” stages a variety-like literary reading to garner media attention, which they repeatedly purport to disdain. The event goes well, with a few glitches, one being a drunk Gloria, who still gives an excellent performance. The reviews are blah. The group implodes with recrimination. Ed realizes he’s acted like an old fool and has no current writing talent. He goes back to his working-class life and his working-class buddies, but misses saying goodbye to his now-dead brother, which he seems only a bit bummed about.
Gloria gets an acting gig at an unnamed theater in Minneapolis. Oddly, the Wikipedia page for Late Fame uses Gloria’s phrase for the unnamed theater, a “reputable theater”, which in the article is a hot link that clicks through to the page for the Guthrie Theater, as if the Wikipedia editors were reluctant to openly disclose Gloria’s secret. That’s how seductive she is.
If Late Fame‘s plot feels simple, flimsy, and predictable, it is. Ed gets too much of the focus. Like so many stories, the more interesting female character only supports the male main character. Ed has a late-life crisis with his alter ego, personified by Meyers and the other writer dudes, with Gloria there, apparently, just to titillate. We’re not given enough information to know if any of the young men actually have talent. Their fates fade after the group breaks up.
Greta Lee’s Gloria should have been Late Fame‘s focus. She is presented as the only member of the group who clearly has talent and the grit to suffer for her talent. When she tells Ed about her acting gig at the “reputable theater” in Minneapolis, she says, “I am an artist, and I belong to no one, just my art.” The sentence sounds cruel, and it is, but most cruel to herself. Gloria chooses lonely success. It’s pretentious, yes, but she knows she has talent. Ed doesn’t. The others, maybe. What Gloria, like Ed, lacks is money, which may be why they became friends.
Late Fame touches on other aspects of artistic success and fame, too, in particular, how the luck of one good review can make or break a career, or not. Ed received a positive review of Way Past Go in The Village Voice, but his writing career went nowhere. The young members of “The Enthusiasm Society” are obsessed with garnering positive reviews, especially from digital influencers, which they don’t get. The story strongly implies the need for an early win in one’s career.
The reliance on industry connections is explored when Meyers refers Ed to a buddy with a fledgling publishing company, bankrolled by a wealthy father. This publishing buddy wants Ed to work with a ghostwriter on a memoir, given Ed’s connections to late 1970s New York. Ed’s not interested, so that’s that.
All this talk of luck, reviews, and connections is true. Look up who wins literature awards; those rewarded have attended similar schools for degrees and teaching positions, been signed by similar publishing companies with similar editorial boards. Writers at that level write reviews and blurbs for each other. That’s how it is in our publishing world. Of the past ten US Poet Laureates, four have MFAs from Iowa, the oldest and some would say most prestigious writing program, seven are Pulitzer Prize winners, five are National Book or Book Critics winners, and at least one sat on the judging panels for one of these awards.
In Late Fame, Ed quit the game in his 20s. The other characters are just beginning to play and get sorely bruised, with Gloria getting the only win. Late Fame reminds us that as we get older, we forget the dreams of our youth until something, or someone, brushes the dust off an old photo album. As we flip through the cardboard pages of Polaroids, Kodak prints, and photo booth strips…Oh, that gives away my age.