Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Her greatest work will be her biggest crime.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Timing: 1:46 (106 min)

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Release date
Country
Genre
Budget
$0
Box office
$8 586 944
Director
Scenario
Producer
Anne Carey, Amy Nauiokas, David Yarnell, Bob Balaban, Pamela Hirsch, Jawal Nga
Camera operator
Composer
Nate Heller
Artist
Stephen H. Carter, Deborah Wheatley
Audition
Jennifer Euston
Editing
Anne McCabe
Whole Team (108)

Short description

When a bestselling celebrity biographer is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception.

What's left behind the scenes

  • The film features a book store sale where books by Lee Israel, including a biography of Estée Lauder, are offered with a 75% discount. Lauder wrote her own memoirs and even offered Israel money not to publish her biography, but Israel refused. Lauder's autobiography was released in October 1985, and Israel's book a month later. The reading public preferred Lauder's own memoirs. Israel later regretted refusing the sum offered to her.
  • Richard E. Grant plays an alcoholic in the film, but in real life he is allergic to alcohol.
  • The film was shot in Manhattan, New York, in 28 days.
  • Julianne Moore was originally cast as Lee Israel when Nicole Holofcener was appointed director. However, they had a completely different vision for the character, and Holofcener fired Julianne, causing the project to fall apart.
  • Even before Melissa McCarthy, the lead actress, joined the project, her husband Ben Falcone joined as well, being cast as Alan. He was the one who recommended her for the lead role.
  • In reality, Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) and Jack Hock (played by Richard E. Grant) never met or even spoke on the phone again after the FBI arrested him as her accomplice. Several months before his death from AIDS in 1994, she happened to see him in a line at a free clinic in Manhattan. According to Lee, this was the starting point for creating this film. At that moment, she wanted to call out to him, but she held back. Jack never saw her.

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