In a perfect world, Nicole Holofcener would be cranking out movies at the same rate as Woody Allen, but I’ll take what I can get. Since 2013’s lovely "Enough Said," the filmmaker has mostly been working on television shows like "Togetherness," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," and "Inside Amy Schumer." But now she’s got a new feature brewing and as always, it’s promising stuff.
Newly anointed Oscar winner Julianne Moore and Chris O’Dowd will star in Holofcener’s "Can You Ever Forgive Me." Based on the memoir by Lee Israel, it tells her story about turning to counterfeiting letters of dead writers and celebrities, and selling them to make ends meet. Here’s the book synopsis:
Before turning to the criminal life, running a onewoman forgery scam out of an Upper West Side studio shared with her tortoiseshell cat, and dodging the FBI, Lee Israel enjoyed a celebrated reputation as an author. When her writing career suddenly took a turn for the worse, she conceived of the astonishing literary scheme that fooled even many of the experts. Forging hundreds of letters from such collectible luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, and Lillian Hellman — and recreating their autographs with a flourish — Israel sold her "memorabilia" to dealers across the country, producing a collection of pitch-perfect imitations virtually indistinguishable from the voices of their real-life counterparts. Exquisitely written, with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is Israel’s delightful, hilarious memoir of a brilliant and audacious literary crime caper.
No word yet on when it’ll shoot, but the project is housed at Fox Searchlight, and let’s hope cameras are rolling soon. [Variety]