At first, Scott McLemee couldn't believe they made a film out of Starting Out in the Evening, the 1998 PEN/Faulkner-nominated novel by Brian Morton. "I never imagined it as a movie either," Morton confesses during their interview about the adaptation, which is already garnering Oscar buzz for Frank Langella in the role of a novelist at the low end of the midlist spectrum facing the end of his career. "There's so much interiority in the book—so much 'Was she thinking I was thinking what she was thinking I was thinking?' Kind of hard to film." But then screenwriter Fred Parnes came to him and said he thought there might be a movie in there:

"I knew Fred well enough to respect his integrity—I knew that whatever changes he made, he wouldn't turn Schiller into an elderly New York Intellectual who had a little business selling skag on the side. We wouldn't have a scene where Schiller, sick and tired of years of critical neglect, sticks a Beretta under his belt and goes out to gun down James Wood."

Notice how he didn't say there wouldn't be a Jackie Chan cameo. I fervently cling to this remaining hope!