- What did you find most interesting or surprising about the cinematic adaptation of Lee Israel’s Can you ever forgive me?
- I found Israel’s character acting to be the most interesting, as she effectively portrayed her emotions.
- In both the memoir and the movie, Lee Israel indicates she did some of her best writing in her forgeries. How does that relate to “writing in your own voice” and what did that mean for Lee Israel’s writing career?
- For Lee, writing her forgeries gave her a sense of liberation, as she did not experience feelings of judgement. Writing in her own voice also contributed to the success of her writing career.
- Did you catch where the title of the memoir and movie came from? The title came from a forged Dorothy Parker line that Lee Israel wrote. Share your thoughts on possible implicit meanings from that.
- I believe that the implicit meaning of the title is Lee’s search for redemption from the deceit in her forgeries. It seems as if she is attempting to reconcile with herself from her past mistakes.
- Lee Israel goes to great lengths and finds very clever ways to create her forgeries. Yet, the reason she is in this predicament is that she was unable to focus that energy on her own writing. Using specific examples, what are some ways she could have used those strategies in her own writing?
- Instead of studying authors’ writing styles to imitate them, Lee could have been inspired to find her own voice in writing. Lee could have also included some of her personal anecdotes in her stories to make them engaging instead of researching authors’ biographies.
- What lessons did you learn from watching this movie? What questions did it leave you with?
- You can always reconcile with and redeem yourself. You can always be the resource rather than the source. I wonder what the true implicit meaning of the title is, and I wonder if Lee Israel began writing forgeries due to her sense of low self-esteem or the thought of the incapability of coming up with something new.
