Henry Fool is a 1997 American seriocomic film written, produced and directed by Hal Hartley, featuring Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, and Parker Posey. As in The Unbelievable Truth, an earlier Hartley film, expectation and reality again conflict. The film won the best screenplay award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. A sequel, titled Fay Grim, was released in 2007. Socially inept garbageman Simon Grim is befriended by Henry Fool, a witty rogue and untalented novelist. Henry opens the world of literature to Simon, and is inspired to write "the great American poem". Simon struggles to get... his work recognized, and it is often dismissed as pornographic tat, but Henry continues to push and inspire Simon into getting the poem published. Henry carries around a bundle of notebooks he refers to as "His Confession", a work that details aspects of his mysterious past that he one day hopes to publish, when he and the world is ready for them. Henry's hedonistic antics cause all manner of turns in the lives of Simon's family, not least of which is impregnating Fay Grim .
more