Wine and Movies: LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND (1997)

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Today’s episode is all about a long forgotten indie gem from the 90’s, brought to our attention by fellow Substacker,

Decarceration

. (Who you should all subscribe to RIGHT NOW.) We invited Decarceration onto the pod, and he suggested a real doozy of a subject: fake movies within movies, and the fictional worlds where such movies are made!

He gave us a laundry list of films to watch that contained these fake movies, and Love and Death on Long Island was one of them. And folks: this is a criminally underseen, forgotten movie.

Based on a novel by Scottish writer and journalist, Gilbert Adair, who was most famous for the "fiendish" translation of Georges Perec's postmodern novel A Void, in which the letter e is not used, but was more widely known for the films adapted from his novels, including Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and The Dreamers (2003). The novel is partly a satire of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.

LaDoLI is directed and adapted by Brithish/Polish director Richard Kwietniowski. Kwietniowski would only make one more feature length film, 2003's Owning Mahowny starring Phillop Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver, and again John Hurt, and it while once again critically acclaimed - Roger Ebert called it “one of the top 10 films of 2003.” It made $1M on a $10M budget. So it goes.

And we paired it one “easy” and one “challenging” wine.

We hope you enjoy the episode! Paid subscribers get access to an UNCUT SPOILER (go watch the movie first, but this was a great little moment where we had to hash out what the ending meant!) and can also read our lengthy write-ups on the wines below.