Melissa McCarthy has always had range beyond the pratfalls she's most well-known for. In this fall's Can You Ever Forgive Me?, she gets an opportunity for both a leading part, and one that's got a lot more for her to do than simply "be funny."
McCarthy plays Lee Israel, the real-life celebrity biographer who resorted to forging and stealing letters from famous folks when she had trouble getting published. This dramedy tells the story from that fraudulent period of her life, and her tenuous friendship with her drinking buddy Jack (in a role that Richard E. Grant is sure to luxuriate in).
The film looks like it will follow the same balance of humor and drama that made the 2007 film The Hoax such a delight. (There, Richard Gere played Clifford Irving, who wrote a fabricated biography of Howard Hughes.) Co-written by Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) and newcomer Matt Whitty, this is the second film from writer-director Marielle Heller, who received a lot of acclaim for her adaptation of The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? opens this fall, but will almost certainly play some of the bigger festivals before its wide release.
About Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about.
I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague.
Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work.
In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo.
I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.
