I Love Dick
Description
The Amazon TV series I Love Dick, based on the wild and obsessive 1997 blend of fiction and memoir by artist and writer Chris Kraus, follows the neurotic, libidinal adventures of a struggling Brooklyn filmmaker who tags along as her husband attends an artist retreat in Marfa, Texas, after she loses funding for her own project. Transparent’s Kathryn Hahn perfectly captures the alternately zealous and depressive pathos of Chris. Her older husband Sylvere (Griffin Dunne) is a compassionate yet self-involved soundboard for her reeling energies. Then she sees intellectual cowboy Dick (Kevin Bacon), a sculptor and teacher, riding down Marfa’s main street on his horse and is immediately smitten. Hahn expertly conveys Chris’s anxious lust for Dick, played with gusto and cowpoke charm by Kevin Bacon. With her excited husband’s bemused encouragement, she begins the tormented series of “Dear Dick” letters that powered the book. Director Jill Soloway successfully mines the comic potential of the love letters, adds the hilarious contrast of innocent urbanites abroad in the Wild West, and brings restrained satirical power to the assorted art school-type characters. But the heart of the show is Chris’s unbound fixation on Dick, and her willingness to follow this powerful force to its unknown end for the sake of her art, bringing to mind Oscar Wilde’s famous quote, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” The Festival is presenting the first two episodes from this new series. —Gustavus Kundahl
Biographies
Chicago-born director, producer, and writer Jill Soloway is the creator of the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series Transparent. She also directed the comedy Afternoon Delight (Festival 2014), which earned a Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival. Among her other writing credits are episodes of Six Feet Under, Grey’s Anatomy, and Dirty Sexy Money.
Kimberly Peirce made her feature debut with Boys Don’t Cry (1999), a dramatization of the life and death of transgender man Brandon Teena that garnered her Film Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature – Over $500,000. She also directed Stop-Loss (2008) and Carrie (2013), as well as episodes of television shows, including The L Word and American Crime.