LATE FAME: Screening and conversation with director Kent Jones and Professor Alexander Nemerov

Willem Dafoe stars as Ed Saxberger, a New York poet who gave up writing decades ago and has worked at the post office ever since. When an eager young admirer (Edmund Donovan) turns up at his door, Saxberger is drawn into a circle of twentysomethings who call themselves the Enthusiasm Society and anoint him a rediscovered genius, and into the orbit of Gloria (Greta Lee), the group's resident tragic heroine. Funny, tender, and unsentimental, LATE FAME is a film about flattery, belonging, and the hard work of making art, set in a downtown New York that now survives mostly in memory.

Written by Oscar nominee Samy Burch (MAY DECEMBER) from Arthur Schnitzler's novella, the film premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, played the New York Film Festival, and was the Opening Night film of this year's SFFILM Festival. It is now in theaters from Magnolia Pictures.

The screening will be followed by a conversation and audience Q&A with director Kent Jones, moderated by Alexander Nemerov, Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities.

Kent Jones is the director of DIANE (2019), HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (2015), and A LETTER TO ELIA (2010), co-directed with Martin Scorsese. A longtime critic and author, he served as Director of the New York Film Festival from 2013 to 2019.

Alexander Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford. His books include Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, a National Book Critics Circle finalist, and The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s. 

Co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History and the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.

Event Image: Willem Dafoe in LATE FAME, Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.