{"id":187581,"date":"2025-08-30T16:25:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187581\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T16:25:17","slug":"kent-jones-samy-burch-on-casting-willem-dafoe-nyc-art-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187581\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent Jones, Samy Burch on Casting Willem Dafoe, NYC Art Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor Kent Jones<\/a> and Samy Burch<\/a>, nearly everything about making their new Venice-premiering drama, \u201cLate Fame<\/a>,\u201d was kismet.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two had never met before discussing the film \u2014 an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler\u2019s 1895 novella about a civil servant who suddenly gains acclaim for his past poetry from a group of up-and-coming writers \u2014 but helmer Jones\u2019 name was top of mind for the \u201cMay December\u201d scribe. Having seen many of his documentaries and 2018 debut narrative feature \u201cDiane,\u201d Burch felt he was the man for the job.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI remember thinking, \u2018This would be really good for Kent Jones.\u2019 I still have that Notes app in my phone,\u201d Burch tells Variety over Zoom, citing Jones\u2019 \u201ceye for humanity.\u201d The two grabbed a coffee in New York and \u201cjust felt this immediate click,\u201d as Burch tells it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTruly, the knowledge of all of cinema is in his pocket,\u201d Burch says. \u201cAnd he\u2019s so New York. He\u2019s lived in so many New Yorks and recognizes these people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBurch\u2019s adaptation of \u201cLate Fame\u201d changes the setting from 19th century Vienna to present-day New York City and modernizes the characters, including retired poet Ed Saxberger (played by Willem Dafoe), the glamorous yet mysterious actress Gloria (Greta Lee) and the group of wannabe starving artists who lift Saxberger up as their new hero, led by the generationally wealthy Meyers (Edmund Donovan). NYC itself is also a character in the movie, as the group attempts to recreate the West Village art scene that Saxberger came up in during the \u201970s.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Jones typically works from his own scripts, he was on board as soon as he read Burch\u2019s adaptation \u2014 in fact, he saw himself in it. Jones is something of a New York cinema legend himself, having worked at New Video in Manhattan before beginning his career as a film critic, eventually collaborating on several documentaries with Martin Scorsese and heading up the New York Film Festival from 2013 to 2019. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was very involved in the film scene and the avant-garde film world,\u201d Jones tells Variety of his early days in New York. \u201cIt\u2019s a world that was there and then it was gone, so I wanted to reflect that. And in the extreme cinephilia world, there\u2019s nothing that anybody likes more than rediscovering a forgotten master.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDafoe also came up in New York City\u2019s experimental theater community, helping to found the Wooster Group in the 1970s. Though Jones and Dafoe had crossed paths before, it wasn\u2019t until a stroke of fate on a plane last year that they really got to talking.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI get on the plane, and who am I seated next to but Willem,\u201d Jones recalls. \u201cWe just basically talked for five hours, about everything but \u2018Late Fame.\u2019 When he was sent the script, he realized that as we were speaking on the plane, he had a copy of the novella in his backpack. He was in the middle of reading it. It was just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDafoe\u2019s performance as Saxberger is understated yet powerful as viewers see his humble post office worker change when tempted by the possibility of literary glory. \u201cHe\u2019s just lightning,\u201d Burch says. \u201cWhat he brings to this character, there\u2019s such a sensitivity and such a vulnerability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso tempting him is the group\u2019s muse Gloria, who revels in the attention while masking the reality of her life and career. Though Sandra H\u00fcller was initially attached to the project, she had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts \u2014 but getting Lee happened seamlessly.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen it got to Greta it was like, wait a minute, why didn\u2019t we have this discussion six months ago? If I knew that Greta Lee\u2026\u201d Jones says. \u201cAnd so I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to pray that she wants to do it.\u2019 The funny thing was, she immediately jumped on it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOf Lee, Jones says: \u201cEverything in her performance counts. She did something extremely difficult because there\u2019s a flamboyance in her performance, but the flamboyance is more the property of her character. So that differentiation was crucial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film culminates in the group of artists throwing a showcase where they get Saxberger to read one of his poems for the first time in decades. Jones and Burch went back and forth on the source material for the poem that he reads, with the director considering asking one of his poet friends to write it. But at the end of the day, the answer was right in front of them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKent was like, \u2018Oh, I wrote it. I just wrote a poem.\u2019 And then it\u2019s like that amazing poem,\u201d Burch says. \u201cThat\u2019s just so funny to me. I was like, \u2018Wait where did you find this, what poem is this?\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I wrote it today.\u2019 There\u2019s something that\u2019s undeniably moving about it and very relatable in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLate Fame\u201d premieres in Venice\u2019s Horizons section on Saturday, marking Burch\u2019s first time on the Lido and Jones\u2019 first in 26 years. Though Jones doesn\u2019t want viewers to necessarily walk away from the film with a specific message, he hopes that the film can help \u201creframe\u201d their perspective.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s the thing about art,\u201d Jones says. \u201cIt\u2019s not the practical value of it, it\u2019s the enlargement of vision that can happen through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUp next, Jones teases that he has written two narrative scripts that are \u201c100% ready to go\u201d \u2014 one is another New York-set movie and the other takes place in the Berkshires. But both he and Burch would love to work together again. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was just the greatest,\u201d Jones enthuses of Burch. \u201cAnd oh god, she\u2019s so funny. Every time I get a text from her, she actually makes me laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Kent Jones and Samy Burch, nearly everything about making their new Venice-premiering drama, \u201cLate Fame,\u201d was kismet.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,105077,105078,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,105079,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,30989],"class_list":{"0":"post-187581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-kent-jones","10":"tag-late-fame","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-samy-burch","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-venice-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115118651767218460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}