Lee Israel
Movie Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
3.5 stars out of 5 Reviews by their very nature are not objective, and this one is extra tricky for me, as not only was I friends with Lee Israel for some 17 years, but I also did a little consulting on an earlier iteration of this movie. So you could say that I attended […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 5 (Mar. 2011 – Mar. 2012)
Today would’ve been Lee Israel’s birthday, and we are soon approaching the anniversary of her death. Like Elvis, Michael Jackson, Andy Kaufman, Tupac, etc., Lee’s had quite the posthumous year. To recap: Times obituary, announcement of a movie based on her book starring reigning Oscar-winner Julianne Moore to be written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 4 (2010)
Having obtained a newly uncovered photo of Lee as a little girl (with her brother Edward), I thought it was high time to return to her collected e-mails. Since our last installment, we learned that the extremely funny, talented, and charming Chris O’Dowd has joined the cast with the already announced, amazingly wonderful Julianne Moore in […]
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Israel, Vol. 3 (2009)
With baseball season underway, it seems like a good time to return to the collected e-mails of Lee Israel, as this batch heavily features her interest in our national pastime. Lee routinely watched Yankees games on TV even if, as you’ll see, she wasn’t particularly root-root-rooting for the home team. The previous year, with the […]
Lee Israel Is Real
How heartening it has been over the past week and a half to see the phoenix-like return of my friend Lee Israel. She has soundly disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tired axiom “There are no second acts in American lives.” By my count, we’re up to at least Lee’s fourth act. And who knows, she may […]
Jack Silbert, curator