‘Listen Up Philip’ is a film about someone a lot like Philip Roth

The film “Listen Up Philip,” is about a self-centered Jewish writer named Philip who isn’t very good at maintaining relationships with women. It uses a Philip Roth-ish font in its titles. It certainly has some Philip Roth elements.

The film stars Jason Schwartzman as the novelist Philip (as Flavorpill puts it, “sorta Philip Roth”), whose second book is about to be published. Elisabeth Moss is his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend, and Jonathan Pryce plays Zimmerman, an older literary mentor who takes Philip under his wing.

Any resemblance to Roth’s alter ego Zuckerman is conceivably coincidental.

Director Alex Ross Perry’s film screened at Sundance and the trailer, above, is now online. “Both a censure of and salute to the literary world, its neurotic creative types and the tiny/gigantic egos that need constant nourishment,” Rodrigo Perez writes in a review at Indiewire, “‘Listen Up Philip’ is remarkably well-observed and rich. And the skewering of these appalling characters is often riotously funny.”

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