Willem Dafoe’s Lost Poet Finds Honesty in “Late Fame”

When the camera first lingers on Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) hunched over a pool table in a dim Manhattan bar, you get the sense that his world is already small, comfortable, and, frankly, a little stale. He’s a postal clerk who spends evenings with blue‑collar buddies, a man whose poetry lives in the dust‑caked corners of the ’70s, never really having broken out.

That all shifts the day a young, self‑styled intellectual named Meyers (Edmund Donovan) barges into his life, clutching a battered copy of Saxberger’s forgotten collection, Way Past Go. Meyers—fresh out of an elite NYU MFA program and dripping in inherited wealth—talks about Saxberger with a reverence that feels almost religious. He invites the old poet to a gathering of his own making: The Enthusiasm Society, a cadre of affluent, aspiring writers who consider themselves the avant‑garde of contemporary literature.

At first, Saxberger is flattered. The attention is intoxicating, and the society’s sleek loft feels like a stage set for a life he never imagined. He is especially drawn to Gloria (Greta Lee), the only member who also happens to be an actress. Her broken‑eyelash smile and unvarnished apartment stand in stark contrast to the rest of the group’s curated excess. With Gloria, the conversation occasionally slips past pretension, hinting at something genuine.

But the glitter soon fades. Saxberger quickly realizes that Meyers’ “support” is less about art and more about curating a brand. The young man flaunts a first‑edition Naked Lunch with a $1,200 price tag, schedules meetings with literary agents who happen to be family friends, and constantly steers the dialogue toward expanding the Society’s cultural cachet. When Saxberger confides his own writer’s block, Meyers offers a polite nod but no real empathy.

The friction deepens when Saxberger attempts to share his new poems with his pool‑hall friends. Their lukewarm, almost dismissive reaction triggers an argument: they accuse him of looking down on them, while he feels they’ve already relegated his work to “low‑brow” territory. It’s a painful reminder that class divides run both ways.

Gloria becomes the unexpected anchor. She urges Saxberger to abandon the pretentious circle, insisting that his truth lies in the unadorned rhythm of his own life—pool cues, cheap beer, and the occasional line scribbled on a napkin. Their connection is raw, occasionally awkward, and laced with an honesty that the Society can’t manufacture.

The climax arrives at the Society’s highly publicized reading. Saxberger steps onto a minimalist stage, voice trembling, and reads verses that have been simmering for years. The audience—a mix of smug millennials and arts‑elite critics—offers little more than a half‑hearted applause and a barrage of condescending reviews. Gloria, in a tender gesture, performs one of his poems, stripping it of its theatrical polish and revealing the poem’s bruised heart.

Dafoe delivers the performance with a quiet intensity, allowing the character’s cracks to show rather than hide them. Greta Lee matches him note for note, portraying Gloria’s oscillation between ambition and authenticity with a subtle, almost mischievous grace. Director Kent Jones uses the New York setting not just as a backdrop but as a character in itself, contrasting soaring skyscrapers with the cramped, soot‑stained pool hall where Saxberger feels most at home.

In the end, Saxberger returns to his old table, cue in hand, surrounded by friends who still don’t fully grasp his poetry but accept him as he is. The film doesn’t promise a grand literary comeback; instead, it suggests that true fame—if it even exists—might simply be the courage to stay true to the words you write, no matter how few ears hear them.