We, old-fashioned guys, prefer "...back to where we started," over "...back to where I started." Can you ever forgive us?
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Has Melissa McCarthy finally found a film worthy of her acting talent? I hope so, having been disappointed in the duds she has starred in before. Looking forward to this new movie.
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Love this review. Accolades for the writer, who may consider publishing also.
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Those of us who work or have worked in the special collections divisions of the New York Public Library have mingled feelings about this film. I'm prepared to believe that it's well-acted and entertaining, but we remember the real Lee Israel as far less fascinating.
Most special collections are highly restrictive in permitting access to independent researchers like Israel, but NYPL welcomed her. She repaid the Library's kindness by stealing a number of unique items from its holdings--many more than the single Fanny Brice note mentioned in the movie. Israel laughed these thefts off in her memoir, justifying them by saying that she needed to pay her vet bills. (Oh, well then, that makes it all right, doesn't it?)
I never dealt with Lee Israel, but I have friends and co-workers who did, and I remember the memo we all received, instructing us to notify the security staff if she attempted to gain access to our reading rooms or even if we saw her in the building.
I'm prepared to find "Can You Ever Forgive Me" a worthwhile movie. I just hope it doesn't give viewers the idea that manuscripts theft is a trivial or an amusing crime. When people steal from libraries, they steal from all of us.
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@Linda At the same time that I respect and revere libraries, my cats wish me to say that any theft that can help cats and their health is a noble - think Robin Hood - one.
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@Linda
Thanks for the information on the "real" Lee Israel, though I don't know the people you work with, so I'll treat the information as secondhand and judge for myself.
As to the cautions as to stealing boring literary letters and the moral lesson you pressed in your comment, though, I have one thing to say:
IT'S A MOVIE, FOR GOD'S SAKES. The point is entertainment. A long time ago I listened to someone much younger and more impressionable that I am pan "Fatal Attraction" because it was a negative representation of women, and I feel a bit the same reading your review. Hitchcock's "Psycho" would probably be banned now because it presents a negative representation of people who are mentally ill.
Give us a break, please. If you're still working, you're younger than I am, and I truly wonder about who would take his/her ethics from a movie. Only a kid, I suspect. I hope, anyway. But in these times, most of us just want to be entertained by a movie. It's one of our few respites from headlines.
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@Linda My husband worked in the Billy Rose Theater Collection for many years. As you say, Lee Israel's thefts were common knowledge there.
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