Wild Nights with Emily (2018)

Interesting facts

Wild Nights with Emily is a 2018 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Madeleine Olnek. It stars Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson, as well as Amy Seimetz, Susan Ziegler, Brett Gelman, Jackie Monahan, Kevin Seal, Dana Melanie, Sasha Frolova, Lisa Haas and Stella Chesnut. The film is based on the actual events of Emily Dickinson's life, including her process as a writer, her attempts to get published, and her lifelong romantic relationship with another woman.

Production

Wild Nights with Emily was originally performed as a play at New York's WOW Café in 1999, and was also produced by Chicago's Caffeine Theatre in 2010 as well as in Boston and Alaska. When she was in college, Olnek used to say that she aspired to be "the Emily Dickinson of comedy" because of the conception at the time that Dickinson had been miserable, but she later found out Dickinson was actually really funny.

Olnek knew many of the actors in the film from working with them in the past. She attended NYU with Molly Shannon, and had directed a performance with Shannon for which she first created the character Mary Katherine Gallagher. All these years, Olnek decided to wait to work with Shannon again until she had a story with enough "depth and scale", and Shannon was surprised to be asked because Emily Dickinson is not the type of role that Hollywood wou…

A rough cut of the film won the "US in Progress" award at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, including a prize of €50,000 for post production and promotion.

Olnek has credited Drunk History as an inspiration for the tone of the film. She thought it was important to include comedy because she has noticed that "some people don't like to be lectured about feminism".

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