“Kind of like the only choice”: Kent Jones recalls how Willem Dafoe was invested in Late Fame's story even before the film’s casting

Late Fame, starring Willem Dafoe, is heading to the latest Venice International Film Festival to be a part of its Orizzonte section. It's a tragic drama about a New York poet who receives his flowers only after spending most of his life away from adulation. He finds it in his twilight years from a group of twenty-something admirers of his long-forgotten work.

Dafoe stars as the said poet, who gets rediscovered by these young fans, taking him on a whirlwind experience. It's a story he has been meaning to work on for a while, much like the Late Fame director, Kent Jones. They have been interested in Arthur Schnitzler's eponymous novel, which serves as a source for their latest collaboration.

That's why, in a recent interview, Jones spoke about Dafoe's casting in Late Fame, which feels almost predetermined, considering Dafoe's emotional investment in Schnitzler's novel. In a recent conversation, Jones recalled sharing a flight with Dafoe, when he was already carrying the book even before he was cast in the film. Jones said, as per The Hollywood Reporter,

“He [Willem Dafoe] and I knew each other a bit -- I had done New York Film Festival stuff with him -- and we just talked for the whole time about absolutely everything but Late Fame. And then when it got to the casting process, [he] just seemed like not just the right choice, kind of like the only choice. And it turned out that while he was on the plane, he had a copy of the novella in his backpack, which is just crazy. So he was already on the trail before he knew that there was a script.”

Late Fame offers an interwoven narrative to capture the essence of NYC's bygone era

Kent Jones' Late Fame centers around Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe), a poet who spent several years working quietly at a post office. He stayed away from the fruits of his poetic genius until one day, a young NYU grad, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), knocked on his door and offered him the kind of praise and respect he had never received.

Meyers leads him to a coterie of fellow admirers, including Gloria (Greta Lee), who takes his life on tangents he never expected to enter. Still, while very much a story about Saxberger, it's also a story of those he meets. Kent Jones elaborated on this aspect of Late Fame, saying,

“There are three stories that are happening simultaneously. There’s the story of Willem’s character, there’s the story of Greta’s character, and there’s the story of the guys. And the way that they all interact and interweave and then come apart is what the movie’s all about.”

For the film, Jones is working with a script written by Samy Burch, the Oscar-nominated scribe behind Todd Haynes' intoxicating melodrama, May December. Speaking about Burch's work, Jones shared the following statement with the Venice Film Festival:

"The very first time I read Samy’s script, so emotionally varied and knotty, so funny and so bracingly frank, the film started forming in my mind. I could see the characters. I could see the places where they hung out and where they made a living. I could see the New York of now and the New York of a now vanished past, one delicately layered over the other."

He continued, saying,

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"And I could feel the presence of poetry, forever fragile and at its very best, forever free. I knew that the story could only come alive on an intimate wavelength, with a cast and crew and producers who worked together like a jazz ensemble. We made Late Fame in a spirit of camaraderie, and it’s in that spirit that we’re offering the finished product."

After the Venice premiere, Late Fame will be screened at the 2025 New York Film Festival.

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