Joe Gould's Secret is a 2000

2000 in film

The year 2000 in film involved some significant events.The top grosser worldwide was Mission: Impossible II. Domestically in North America, Gladiator won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor ....

 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci

Stanley Tucci is an American actor, writer, film producer and film director. He has been nominated for several notable film awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in The Lovely Bones...

. The screenplay by Howard A. Rodman is based on the magazine article Professor Sea Gull and the book Joe Gould's Secret

Joe Gould's Secret

__FORCETOC__Joe Gould's Secret is a 1965 book by Joseph Mitchell, based upon his two New Yorker profiles, "Professor Seagull", and "Joe Gould's Secret", . Mitchell's work details the true story of the eponymous Joe Gould, a writer who lived on the streets of Greenwich Village in the first half of...

by Joseph Mitchell

Joseph Mitchell

Joseph Mitchell was an American writer best known for the work he published in The New Yorker. He is known for his carefully written portraits of eccentrics and people on the fringes of society, especially in and around New York City.Mitchell was born on his maternal grandparents' farm near...

.

Plot

Set in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 in the early 1940s, the film focuses on the relationship between Joseph Mitchell, a writer for The New Yorker, and Joe Gould

Joe Gould (Bohemian)

Joseph Ferdinand Gould was an American eccentric, also known as Professor Seagull. Often homeless, he pretended to be the author of the longest book ever written, an Oral History of the Contemporary World...

, an aging, bearded, disheveled bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 graduate who wanders through the streets of Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

 carrying a tattered portfolio and demanding donations to "The Joe Gould Fund." At times Gould is calmly sweet and perceptive, at others he's a pathological liar and an obnoxious drunk, and he frequently experiences sudden outbursts of rage. Earning occasional financial support from poet e.e. cummings

E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...

, portrait painter Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...

, Village Vanguard

Village Vanguard

The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.-History:Over 100 jazz...

 founder Max Gordon, and art gallery owner Vivian Marquie, among others, Gould is able to secure a nightly room in flophouse

Flophouse

A flophouse , doss-house or dosshouse is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.-Characteristics:...

s until an anonymous benefactor arranges accommodations in a residential hotel for him.

Gould allegedly is collecting the observations of average citizens to incorporate into his oral history of the world, fragments of which he has given to various people for safekeeping. Mitchell meets him in a coffee shop and initially is fascinated by the colorful character. However, with the passage of time, as Gould becomes irritatingly intrusive and demanding, disrupting the ordinary life Mitchell shares with his photographer wife and their two daughters, the journalist begins to question if the elderly man's 9 million-word opus actually exists or is merely a figment of his imagination.

Production

The film's soundtrack

Soundtrack

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

 includes a number of period songs performed by Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington

Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...

, Count Basie

Count Basie

William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...

, Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....

, Woody Herman

Woody Herman

Woodrow Charles Herman , known as Woody Herman, was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called "The Herd," Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and '40s bandleaders...

, Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

, Perry Como

Perry Como

Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...

, Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, and Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...

, among others.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

 in January 2002. It opened on five screens in New York City and Los Angeles on April 7 and grossed $38,760 on its opening weekend. It eventually earned $468,684 in the US.

Cast

• Ian Holm
  Ian Holm
  Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
  
   ..... Joe Gould
• Stanley Tucci ..... Joe Mitchell
• Hope Davis
  Hope Davis
  Hope Davis is an American actress. She has starred in more than 20 feature films, including About Schmidt, Arlington Road, Flatliners, Mumford, American Splendor, The Lodger and Next Stop Wonderland....
  
   ..... Therese Mitchell
• Celia Weston
  Celia Weston
  Celia Weston is an American actress of stage, film and television, and a character actress. Professionally, she may be best known for her role as Jolene Hunnicutt on Alice.-Life and career:...
  
   ..... Sarah
• Susan Sarandon
  Susan Sarandon
  Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...
  
   ..... Alice Neel
• Patricia Clarkson
  Patricia Clarkson
  Patricia Davies Clarkson is an American actress. After studying drama on the East Coast, Clarkson launched her acting career in 1985, and has worked steadily in both film and television. She twice won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in Six Feet Under...
  
   ..... Vivian Marquie
• Steve Martin
  Steve Martin
  Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....
  
   ..... Charlie Duell
• David Wohl
  David Wohl
  David Wohl is an American comic book writer and editor. He is best known as an editor at Marvel Comics and Top Cow Productions and, at the latter, writing The Darkness and Witchblade.-Biography:...
  
   ..... Max Gordon
• Harry Bugin
  Harry Bugin
  Harry Bugin was an American film, stage and television actor and musician.-Life and career:Born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Isidore and Sadie Bugin,and brother to Ruth Bugin, he was a graduate of the New York Public School system and a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts...
  
   ..... Newsman

Critical reception

Stephen Holden of the New York Times said, "Sir Ian's ranting, fiery-eyed performance is the brilliant spark that ignites this otherwise rather somnolent film . . . The movie does a lovely job of evoking a boozy 1940's Greenwich Village of poetry readings, cavernous bars and raucous parties . . . Despite its rich period ambience and Sir Ian's fiery acting, the movie never brings Mitchell's relationship to Gould into clear enough focus . . . Lacking dramatic tension, Joe Gould's Secret settles for being an atmospheric scenes-in-the-life biography of someone's most unforgettable character. It could have been so much more."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

observed, "Stanley Tucci is a director and actor with an openhearted generosity for his characters; he loves and forgives them . . . Here he's made a chamber piece of quiet scenes, acutely heard dialogue and subterranean emotional shifts . . . There is a dark, deep and sad undercurrent in the movie . . . Some have said the film is too quiet and slow. There is anguish here that makes American Beauty

American Beauty (film)

American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...

pale by comparison."

Edward Guthman of the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

stated, "[Ian Holm] nails one of the best roles of his career . . . [Tucci] directs with quiet affection and rare restraint."

Edvins Beitiks of the San Francisco Examiner said, "The good looks, sounds, sights and acting . . . owe a lot to director Stanley Tucci . . . Holm and Tucci are as brilliant in Secret as they were in Big Night

Big Night

Scott and Tucci won the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best New Director. Tucci and Tropiano won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay...

. . . The cast is outstanding . . . but the movie belongs to Tucci and Gould with no room, really, for anyone else."