The Talented Mr. Ripley with Special Guest William Horberg
R
Run Time: 139 min.
June 6, 2023 at 7pm
Tickets: $20 Regular, $30 Premium
Members: $17 Regular, $25.50 Premium
Main Theater
Starring: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: Anthony Minghella
Screenplay: Anthony Minghella
Please join us for a special screening of The Talented Mr. Ripley followed by a Q&A with the film’s producer William Horberg.
After the Oscar-winning The English Patient, writer/director Anthony Minghella attempted another tricky literary adaptation with The Talented Mr. Ripley, which features heartthrob Matt Damon cast against type as a psychopathic bisexual murderer. Tom Ripley (Damon) is a bright and charismatic sociopath who makes his way in mid-’50s New York City as a men’s room attendant and sometimes pianist, though his real skill is in impersonating other people, forging handwriting, and running second-rate scams.
After being mistaken for a Princeton student, Tom meets the shipping tycoon father of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), who has traveled to the coast of Italy, where he’s living a carefree life with his father’s money and his beautiful girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). Dickie’s father will pay Ripley 1,000 dollars plus his expenses if he can persuade Dickie to return to America. As Ripley and Dickie become friends, Tom finds himself both attracted to Dickie and envious of his life of pleasure. In time, he decides that he would rather be Dickie Greenleaf than Tom Ripley, so rather than go back to his life of poverty, Ripley impulsively murders Dickie and assumes his identity. The Talented Mr. Ripley was based on the first of a series of novels featuring Tom Ripley written by Patricia Highsmith; the story was previously filmed in 1960 as Purple Noon, with Alain Delon as Ripley.
5 1999 Academy Award Nominations
“A scenic, voluptuously beautiful film … that has a traffic-stopping cast.”
– Janet Maslin, New York Times
“Performances are aces top to bottom.”
– Todd McCarthy, Variety
About William Horberg
William Horberg is a partner with Zhang Xin in Closer Media, a new company that finances and produces films, series and documentaries, that he joined in 2021. Their recent films include Ezra, directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Robert De Niro, Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Dorji’s The Monk and the Gun, and Alex Gibney’s In Restless Dreams, a two part documentary series about songwriter Paul Simon. Horberg produced The Queen’s Gambit, written and directed by Scott Frank and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, the most-watched scripted limited series in Netflix history, for which Horberg won the Emmy Award as well as the Golden Globe, Critics Choice and PGA awards for Best Limited Series. Previously, Horberg was the President of Production at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, where he Executive Produced Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling, and written by Academy Award nominee Nancy Oliver; and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, starring Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams and Samantha Morton, among many other films. Horberg was also an executive producer on Focus Features’ Milk, starring Academy Award winner Sean Penn and directed by Gus Van Sant. He also produced Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner based on the international best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini, for DreamWorks and Paramount Vantage. Prior to forming Wonderful Films, he was partnered for 12 years with Academy Award-winning filmmakers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella in their film and television production company, Mirage Enterprises. During Horberg’s tenure at Mirage, he produced such films as Mr. Minghella’s Cold Mountain, for which Renée Zellweger won an Academy Award, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon and Academy Award nominee Jude Law; Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American, starring Academy Award nominee Michael Caine; Tom Tykwer’s Heaven, starring Cate Blanchett; Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors, starring Gwyneth Paltrow; and Steven Zaillian’s Searching for Bobby Fischer. Horberg was formerly a Senior Vice President of Production at Paramount Pictures, and is the Chairman Emeritus of the Producers Guild of America, East.