Late Fame
Seen at the 2026 Atlanta Film Festival
If you had told me 25 years ago that I would not be working in the music industry, or on film music on a regular basis, I would have gone into a deep depression. I was young, ambitious, and definitely had some ego to me, and anything less felt like a failure. I was very much similar to the young artists and intellectuals that make up the core of Kent Jones’s “Late Fame.” At 48, I’m glad that I’ve graduated to be more like Willem Dafoe’s Ed Saxberger, who long accepted that his young ambitions were simply a burst of inspiration, and he’s found peace in his later life.
In 1979, Saxberger was a high school dropout who moved to New York City. He wrote a book of poetry, got into the artist scene, but for the most part, his work disappeared. He’s been working at the post office for 37 years. One day, he comes home and a young man is waiting for him. He’s the head of a group of young intellectuals who has read Saxberger’s work, and he wants to meet him, and be around his genius. Ed is appreciative, and gradually, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), wears him down, and he goes to the group, who wants to host a reading. Maybe with a new poem from Saxberger?
“Late Fame” is adapted from a story by Arthur Schnitzler. If that name is familiar, he wrote the original novella that Stanley Kubrick adapted into “Eyes Wide Shut.” The film’s writer and director is Kent Jones, who has moved between documentaries and narrative in his career. His eye in this film is focused on a number of things- the way Saxberger reacts to this late life “celebrity”; the irony of Meyers’s group being against modern culture while also being privileged to use some of its amenities; and the dynamics between individuals in the group who feel genuinely passionate vs those who simple act intellectual. The wild card in the group is Gloria (Greta Lee), a flamboyant actress who seems to be fairly affectionate with Ed, and opens up possibilities for him that he hadn’t thought about for a long time. I really was quite taken into the story that Jones tells here.
If you’re young, I think it’s hard to really internalize the idea that sometimes, creativity is not just a way of life, but a burst of inspiration someone has. That they do not live and breathe creativity, and a lifestyle of fostering creativity. Meyers’s group has heard the stories of great artists, and just figures that Saxberger is one of them. For them, it’s impossible to think that he’s just not living the life that they’ve internalized all great artists live. He has his own life, out of the spotlight, with friends he’s met at his job; but they just want to hear about work he did- and build an idea of him in their heads as this great “rediscovery.” That tension does make Saxberger’s arc in the film fascinating, as he tries to lean into it, only to really realize that it’s just not his life. When the facade drops late in the film, it’s just the out he needs.
This is a lovely, sometimes uncomfortable, always compelling drama about people at different times of their lives, some armed with truth, others holding on to fantasy. Dafoe and Lee are magnetic in everything they do here- for Dafoe, in particular, this might be some of his best work. “Late Fame” is not in the cards for the actor; he’s still rolling the way he always has. And God bless him.
