Moore turned down character
Can You Ever Forgive Me? makes everything better and then some. One of the year’s best films, this fact-based caper stars McCarthy as Lee Israel, a New York biographer turned forger who conned the literary world into believing that the bons mots she was peddling came not from her own typewriter but from the magical machines of Parker, Noel Coward, Fanny Brice, Lillian Hellman and other famous wordsmiths.
This was a quarter-century ago, just before the internet arrived to make faking things a global pastime for everybody from paupers to presidents. When the story opens in 1991, the printed page still rules and there’s no Google to easily check the veracity of a sale or the bona fides of a seller.
There’s a strong market for letters written by celebrities, but less so for biographies penned by the acerbic Lee, a freelance writer turned author. She did well with books about actress Tallulah Bankhead and game-show wit Dorothy Kilgallen, but a later book on cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder headed straight for remainder bins.
At 51, she finds herself behind in her rent, unable to pay urgent medical bills for her pet cat and reduced to stealing toilet paper. She drowns her sorrows in tumblers of Scotch that she also can’t afford. Her only friend is fellow barfly Jack (Richard E. Grant), a larcenous dandy who is as out about his homosexuality as Lee is repressed about her lesbianism. (The hint of romance between Lee and a timid bookseller played by Dolly Wells gives the picture some needed sincerity.)
Lee’s financial prospects don’t look to be getting better anytime soon. Her agent (Jane Curtin) bluntly informs her that sales prospects aren’t good for her latest biographical project on comic actress Fanny Brice. Furthermore, she advises, Lee needs to be nicer to people and up her schmoozing: “You can be an asshole when you’re famous.”
Lee ignores the advice and, with Jack as her willing but not entirely trustworthy accomplice, instead sets to forging letters for sale.
She discovers that she has a profitable knack for imitating celebs: “I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker!” she crows. Lee is proud of what she’s doing and largely unrepentant, even after the FBI starts to investigate her.
Director Marielle Heller ( The Diary of a Teenage Girl) originally cast Julianne Moore as Lee, but Moore backed out over reported creative differences. It’s a fortuitous occurrence, giving McCarthy a character of intelligent bite and bark that she’s only hinted at in recent chucklefests. She’s brilliantly paired with Grant, the salt to his sugar, and they both have a chance this year to win Oscars, or nominations at the very least.
Screenwriters Nicole Holofcener ( Enough Said, Please Give) and Jeff Whitty (Tonywinning Avenue Q) adapt from the late Lee’s autobiography, also titled Can You Ever Forgive Me? Anachronisms crop up — a character laments the impending demise of print, not a big concern in1991— but otherwise the writing is strong. Holofcener and Whitty have given McCarthy and Grant characters they’ll long be remembered for.
She’s behind in her rent, unable to pay medical bills for her cat and reduced to stealing toilet paper