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Bookmark this pageJoe Gould's Secret (2000)
Director: Stanley Tucci
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Joseph Mitchell encountered Joe Gould, an eccentric, erudite tramp, drunk and rogue, in the 1940s, and later wrote about him in two beguiling, time-separated investigative essays for the New Yorker. The pieces asked whether the bum's claim to have composed, in the form of a massive unpublished oral history, one of the most profoundly important books of all time held up to inspection. The tale had colourful characters, decent themes - fame and neglect; loyalty, faith and betrayal; creativity and destructivenes - and the ring of truth. Tucci's well-meaning but staid simplification is clumsily sentimental, with a horribly indulged 'larger than life' turn from Holm as the boho derelict, who, incidentally, is one of the most fragrantly clean tramps ever to grace a cinema screen. After The Impostors, this calls into question the promise shown by Tucci (or was it Campbell Scott after all?) with Big Night.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Stanley Tucci
Producer: Chuck Weinstock, Beth Alexander, Stanley Tucci
Cast: Stanley Tucci, Ian Holm, Hope Davis, Susan Sarandon, Patricia Clarkson, Steve Martin full cast
Duration: 108 mins
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