HER GREATEST WORK WILL BE HER BIGGEST CRIME.
In 1991, alcoholic writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) finds work scarce and begins to forge letters from dead cultural icons, then selling themā¦ Based on a true story, told by Israel herself, this funny and touching film shows how she found pride in her scam and a kind of friendship with a flamboyant gay drug dealer who started helping her. McCarthy and Richard E. Grant are magnificent as people who are brutally honest and caustic, always headed for disaster, unwilling to change, incapable of it. An alluring and tragic story of faking it until you make it ā and trying to maintain dignity in all your loneliness.
2018-U.S. 106 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced byĀ Anne Carey, Amy Nauiokas. Directed byĀ Marielle Heller. Screenplay: Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty. Book: Lee Israel. Cast: Melissa McCarthy (Lee Israel), Richard E. Grant (Jack Hock), Dolly Wells (Anna), Jane Curtin, Ben Falcone, Stephen Spinella.
Trivia: Julianne Moore was allegedly considered for the lead; Sam Rockwell as Hock.
Quote: “Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she just moved to the suburbs ā I always confuse those two.” (Grant discussing an acquaintance with McCarthy)
Last word: “In many ways, Lee is out of step with her own era. She feels like she should have been a contemporary of Dorothy Parker and living a very literary life, but instead finds herself in 1990s New York. We were playing with multiple eras, because Lee wasnāt rooted in her own era but we were still trying to create that very specific time.” (Heller, Town & Country)
