Kevin Fullam writesThe Fourth Wall: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Welcome to The Fourth Wall, CHIRP's e-conversation on cinema. This week's subject is the Melissa McCarthy movie Can you Ever Forgive Me?

This edition is written by CHIRP Radio volunteers Kevin Fullam and Clarence Ewing.

Kevin:

A little preamble here: when I was a kid, I was a huge comic-book geek. I may be a jaded cinemagoer today and thus nonplussed by the current wave of superhero movies, but I was a big-time Marvel Zombie from about 1984-90, enough so that I would frequent local comic-book shows to hunt down various back issues. The comics dealers would often sit side-by-side with sports memorabilia folks, and while I was also a baseball fan, the idea of collecting cards or autographs never seemed very appealing? To me, the entertainment value from a signature or card featuring a bunch of numbers on the back (which anyone could find elsewhere) paled mightily when compared with a tale about Spidey's latest exploits.  While it was cool to have a comic "collection," it would've been meaningless to me without the stories therein. 

This takes me to Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the recent film about writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) and her forgery schemes of the 1990s. When the story opens, Israel is sitting just one step above "destitute" -- unemployed, months behind on her rent, and far removed from the days when her agent would promptly answer her calls. While doing research on 1920s entertainer Fanny Brice at the library, a personal letter from Ms. Brice slips out of a dusty old tome... and Israel soon finds out from her local bookseller that such celebrity correspondence is worth serious coin. What's more, the letters are even more valuable if they include a bit o' personal flair from their authors. So, whom would it harm if Israel tacked on a saucy line or two to embellish the note, right?

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