{"id":7577,"date":"2018-11-14T06:45:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7577"},"modified":"2018-12-13T08:14:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:14:42","slug":"can-you-ever-forgive-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7577","title":{"rendered":"Can You Ever Forgive Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CanThe trials of women authors are laid bare this season in several movies (The Wife, Colette<\/em>), never more amusingly and heart-breakingly than in director Marielle Heller\u2019s honest comedy-drama, written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, based on Lee Israel’s autobiography (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Melissa McCarthy is perfect as Lee Israel, a middle-ranking author of celebrity biographies in 1970s and 1980s New York, settling down into the ranks of the unpublishable. Lee can\u2019t get her next project going\u2014an unpromising, probably unsaleable biography of Fanny Brice. Her agent (Jane Curtin) won\u2019t take her calls, her prickly personality has alienated any people who might have helped her, she\u2019s behind in her rent and reduced to stealing a winter coat, and her cat is sick. Life is tough and so is she.<\/p>\n

By chance, Lee stumbles upon a couple of original letters by Brice and sells them to the kind of antiquarian book dealers who trade in such collectibles. She soon learns bland doesn\u2019t sell. What makes notables\u2019 correspondence valuable is the personal touch, a bit of wit. She\u2019s a writer; she can do this. And does.<\/p>\n

Into her insular life arrives a comet of a man. Jack Hock, played with manic relish by Richard E. Grant, is Lee\u2019s polar opposite. Gregarious and most probably homeless, he becomes her companion (the word \u201cfriend\u201d would be tricky here), her drinking buddy, then her partner in crime.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers initially saw Julianne Moore in the role of Lee, but they were so fortunate in casting McCarthy. Says Monica Castillo<\/a> on RogerEbert.com<\/em>, “The range in McCarthy\u2019s performance cannot be overstated. At almost every turn, her character gives the audience plenty of reason not to like her. Yet, with Heller\u2019s sympathetic approach and McCarthy\u2019s acting, the movie humanizes her beyond caricature,” and Israel is presented with tremendous empathy and understanding.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 98%; audiences: 86%.
\n<\/a>\"\"
\nAs an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. If you decide to read this book and click the photo above to order it, you\u2019ll help me fill the jar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trials of women authors are laid bare this season in several movies (The Wife, Colette), never more amusingly and heart-breakingly than in director Marielle Heller\u2019s honest comedy-drama, written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, based on Lee Israel’s autobiography … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Can You Ever Forgive Me? - Melissa McCarthy in a role worthy of her talents at last!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,272,52,118,68,359,104],"tags":[1452,1453,91,28],"class_list":["post-7577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-comedy","category-crime","category-memoir","category-publishing","category-review","category-the-morgue","tag-lee-israel","tag-melissa-mccarthy","tag-new-york","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Yd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7579,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions\/7579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}