— Don DeLillo, UnderworldIt is early into Kent Jones’ Late Fame when Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) joins a coterie of twenty-something wannabe intellectuals for a drink in the Village. Like Diane, Jones’ first narrative feature, Late Fame concerns a middle-aged character reckoning with their younger self. Written by Samy Burch, Late Fame is the portrait of an artist who’s lost his mojo; hard as he tries, Ed just cannot bring himself to work again. He did it once and got to live in a “dark, glittering asphalt Mecca,” to borrow from Way Past Go, at a time when people “made everything happen and never stopped.” Late Fame screened at the 63rd New York Film Festival and opens August 7.