Starting Out in the Evening
Encyclopedia
Starting Out in the Evening is a 2007
American
drama film
directed by Andrew Wagner
. The screenplay by Wagner and Fred Parnes is based on the novel of the same name by Brian Morton
.
graduate student Heather Wolfe approaches him with a request for access to his thoughts and recollections for the Master's thesis she hopes will reintroduce the public to his work, he initially refuses to cooperate. But the young woman is relentless, and he finally agrees to weekly meetings in which he slowly begins to open up to her as he reluctantly recalls his past.
Slightly suspicious of Heather's motives is Leonard's daughter Ariel, a former professional dancer who supports herself by teaching yoga
and Pilates
. Rapidly approaching forty, Ariel has stopped using birth control with her boyfriend Victor without telling him about her determination to have a baby. When he learns about her plan, she ends their relationship, coincidentally at the same time Ariel's former lover Casey Davis returns to New York City
after a five-year absence. He and Ariel had reached an impasse in their relationship because of his refusal to have a child, and as they begin to see each other again, he is quick to let her know his position hasn't changed.
The film focuses on these four individuals and their evolution as they are thrust out of their comfort zone
s and into arenas that force them to examine their lives and decide how much they are willing to compromise and sacrifice their own desires in order to accommodate the demands of others.
of Manhattan
in eighteen days.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival
, the Edmonton International Film Festival
, the Mill Valley Film Festival
, the Austin Film Festival
, the Hamptons International Film Festival
, the Virginia Film Festival
, and the Denver Film Festival
before opening on seven screens in the US on November 23, 2007. It grossed $76,214 on its opening weekend and eventually earned $898,786 in the US.
reported 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 92 reviews, while Metacritic
reported the film had an average score of 78 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times observed, "Even though it is less populous than Mr. Morton’s novel . . . the adaptation . . . rarely feels unduly claustrophobic or rarefied. Allusions and incidents that evoked the milieu of Leonard’s younger days, and the texture of his mind, have been pruned away. But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores . . . And what is so remarkable about [him] is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause."
Roger Ebert
of the Chicago Sun-Times
rated the film four out of four stars and commented, "The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness."
Mick LaSalle
of the San Francisco Chronicle
said the original novel's appeal was in "the simple but elegant prose and in the way Morton lets us see into the thought processes of his characters. Neither of those elements translates into a visual medium, and so anyone adapting this novel was sure to face a challenge. Unfortunately, director and co-writer Andrew Wagner compounds the difficulty by wallowing in the story's bleakness and settling for sentimental gestures from his actors. Frank Langella is the single big exception on the acting score . . . Starting Out in the Evening has the feeling of a film in which the actors, left to direct themselves, played into their own self-indulgent instincts, and the only one who resisted was the old pro who knew better."
Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone
called the film "remarkable" and said "Langella delivers a master class in acting [with a] deeply felt portrait of a lion in winter."
Meghan Keane of the New York Sun
stated, "The glowing accolades that the filmmakers attempt to bestow on the novelist Brian Morton ultimately result in an undercooked product . . . [T]he film is unable to re-create the delicate balance of emotions that Mr. Morton created in his book of the same name. The deference to [his] work is clear throughout the picture, but the interactions between the characters often fail to realize the soft sentiment that his novel achieved."
Scott Foundas of Variety
called the film "a wise, carefully observed chamber drama," a "small yet deeply resonant pic," and "a sophomore film of unusual maturity and confidence - the work of a filmmaker with a sure grasp of his characters."
Critics for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun cited the film as one of the ten best of the year.
and was nominated for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
.
Andrew Wagner and Fred Parnes were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay
.
2007 in film
This is a list of major films released in 2007.-Top grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2007...
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 Andrew Wagner
Andrew Wagner
Andrew Wagner is an American film director.Wagner is an alumnus of The Collegiate School. He received degrees in Creative Writing and Psychology from Brown University. He received an M.F.A...
. The screenplay by Wagner and Fred Parnes is based on the novel of the same name by Brian Morton
Brian Morton (American author)
Brian Morton is an American author, born in New York City. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. He has worked for Dissent, where he became executive editor in 1995. He currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University and The Bennington Writing Seminars...
.
Plot
Now aging and ailing, one-time celebrated author Leonard Schiller has been forgotten by his readers, literary colleagues, and critics during the decade he has struggled to complete what he knows will be his final novel. When brash, ambitious Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
graduate student Heather Wolfe approaches him with a request for access to his thoughts and recollections for the Master's thesis she hopes will reintroduce the public to his work, he initially refuses to cooperate. But the young woman is relentless, and he finally agrees to weekly meetings in which he slowly begins to open up to her as he reluctantly recalls his past.
Slightly suspicious of Heather's motives is Leonard's daughter Ariel, a former professional dancer who supports herself by teaching yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
and Pilates
Pilates
Pilates is a physical fitness system developed in the early 20th century by Joseph Pilates in Germany, the UK and the USA. As of 2005, there were 11 million people practicing the discipline regularly and 14,000 instructors in the United States....
. Rapidly approaching forty, Ariel has stopped using birth control with her boyfriend Victor without telling him about her determination to have a baby. When he learns about her plan, she ends their relationship, coincidentally at the same time Ariel's former lover Casey Davis returns to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
after a five-year absence. He and Ariel had reached an impasse in their relationship because of his refusal to have a child, and as they begin to see each other again, he is quick to let her know his position hasn't changed.
The film focuses on these four individuals and their evolution as they are thrust out of their comfort zone
Comfort zone
The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk . A person's personality can be described by his or her comfort zones...
s and into arenas that force them to examine their lives and decide how much they are willing to compromise and sacrifice their own desires in order to accommodate the demands of others.
Production
The film was shot on location on the Upper West SideUpper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
of 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 eighteen days.
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...
and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
, the Edmonton International Film Festival
Edmonton International Film Festival
The Edmonton International Film Festival is a nine-day film festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, hosted at Empire Theatres at Edmonton City Centre....
, the Mill Valley Film Festival
Mill Valley Film Festival
The Mill Valley Film Festival is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute. Known as a filmmakers’ festival, the annual Mill Valley Film Festival offers a non-competitive environment for exhibiting independent and world cinema.Founded in 1978 by MVFF...
, the Austin Film Festival
Austin Film Festival
The Austin Film Festival was started in 1994 in Austin, Texas and is claimed to be "the first organization of its kind to focus on the writer’s unique creative contribution to the film and television industries"...
, the Hamptons International Film Festival
Hamptons International Film Festival
Hamptons International Film Festival was founded to provide a forum for independent filmmakers from around the world to express their vision. The Festival is traditionally held for five days in mid-October in theatre venues from Montauk to Southampton and attracts roughly 15,000 visitors annually...
, the Virginia Film Festival
Virginia Film Festival
The Virginia Film Festival is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, held usually in late October/ early November.- Themes :The Virginia Film Festival has historically had a different theme each year...
, and the Denver Film Festival
Denver Film Festival
The Denver Film Festival is held in November, primarily in the Tivoli Union on the Auraria Campus and the new Denver Film Center/Colfax, in Denver Colorado...
before opening on seven screens in the US on November 23, 2007. It grossed $76,214 on its opening weekend and eventually earned $898,786 in the US.
Cast
- Frank LangellaFrank Langella-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...
as Leonard Schiller - Lauren Ambrose as Heather Wolfe
- Lili TaylorLili TaylorLili Anne Taylor is an American actress notable for her appearances in such award-winning indie films as Mystic Pizza, Say Anything..., Short Cuts and I Shot Andy Warhol, and the acclaimed TV show Six Feet Under....
as Ariel Schiller - Adrian LesterAdrian Lester-Personal life:Lester was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Jamaican immigrants Monica, a medical secretary, and Reginald, a manager for a contract cleaning company. He sang as a boy treble in the choir of St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham...
as Casey Davis - Michael CumpstyMichael CumpstyMichael Cumpsty is a British actor. He has been acting since childhood. He has worked extensively performing Shakespeare, as well as both musicals and dramas on Broadway...
as Victor - Jessica HechtJessica HechtJessica Hecht is an American actress, known for numerous Broadway appearances and TV roles.-Background:Hecht was born in Princeton, New Jersey, the daughter of Lenore, a psychotherapist, and Richard Hecht, a physicist. Jessica moved with her parents and her sister to Bloomfield, CT, at the age of...
as Sandra Bennett - Dennis Parlato as Author
- Jeff McCarthyJeff McCarthy-Television:He made guest star appearances on television shows such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ed, Designing Women, Cheers, Freddy's Nightmares, Matlock, and In the Heat of the Night. McCarthy was the voice of the Chuck Jones' creation, Michigan J. Frog, for the WB television network...
as Charles
Critical reception
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 92 reviews, while Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
reported the film had an average score of 78 out of 100, based on 33 reviews.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times observed, "Even though it is less populous than Mr. Morton’s novel . . . the adaptation . . . rarely feels unduly claustrophobic or rarefied. Allusions and incidents that evoked the milieu of Leonard’s younger days, and the texture of his mind, have been pruned away. But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores . . . And what is so remarkable about [him] is that he seems to hold Leonard’s intellectual cosmos inside him, to make it implicit in the man’s every gesture and pause."
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...
rated the film four out of four stars and commented, "The movie is carefully modulated to draw us deeper and deeper into the situation, and uses no contrived plot devices to superimpose plot jolts on what is, after all, a story involving four civilized people who are only trying, each in a different way, to find happiness."
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle is an American Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] [[film reviewer] and the author of two books on pre-[[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays Code]] Hollywood...
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,...
said the original novel's appeal was in "the simple but elegant prose and in the way Morton lets us see into the thought processes of his characters. Neither of those elements translates into a visual medium, and so anyone adapting this novel was sure to face a challenge. Unfortunately, director and co-writer Andrew Wagner compounds the difficulty by wallowing in the story's bleakness and settling for sentimental gestures from his actors. Frank Langella is the single big exception on the acting score . . . Starting Out in the Evening has the feeling of a film in which the actors, left to direct themselves, played into their own self-indulgent instincts, and the only one who resisted was the old pro who knew better."
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
called the film "remarkable" and said "Langella delivers a master class in acting [with a] deeply felt portrait of a lion in winter."
Meghan Keane of the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
stated, "The glowing accolades that the filmmakers attempt to bestow on the novelist Brian Morton ultimately result in an undercooked product . . . [T]he film is unable to re-create the delicate balance of emotions that Mr. Morton created in his book of the same name. The deference to [his] work is clear throughout the picture, but the interactions between the characters often fail to realize the soft sentiment that his novel achieved."
Scott Foundas of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
called the film "a wise, carefully observed chamber drama," a "small yet deeply resonant pic," and "a sophomore film of unusual maturity and confidence - the work of a filmmaker with a sure grasp of his characters."
Critics for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun cited the film as one of the ten best of the year.
Awards and nominations
Frank Langella won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best ActorBoston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor
The winners of the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor are listed below:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...
and was nominated for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:...
, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 2007
The 20th Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, given by the CFCA on December 13, 2007 honored the best in film for 2007.-Best Actor:Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood*George Clooney - Michael Clayton...
, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
The Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama is an annual award given by the International Press Academy as one of its Satellite Awards.- 1996–1999 :- 2000–2009 :-2010–2019:...
.
Andrew Wagner and Fred Parnes were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay
Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay
The Film Independent's Spirit Award for Best Screenplay is one of the annual Independent Spirit Awards.-1980s:* 1985: The Trip to Bountiful - Horton Foote** After Hours - Joseph Minion** Blood Simple - Joel and Ethan Coen...
.