Playwright/screenwriter Craig Lucas (The Secret Lives of Dentists, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss) makes an audacious directorial debut with The Dying Gaul, a fiercely original psychological thriller based on his play of the same name. Part Sunset Boulevard, part Greek tragedy, The Dying Gaul is a tale of lust, power, corruption, betrayal and revenge set in the seductive world of the Hollywood elite.


Peter Sarsgaard stars as Robert Sandrich, a fledgling screenwriter who has been living on the fringes, writing spec script after spec script to no avail. His life changes when he is offered a million dollars for his latest and most personal work - "The Dying Gaul," the raw, autobiographical story of the death of his lover. But there's a catch - the studio thinks the project will be much more commercially viable if Robert will only change the dead lover to a woman.


Making the offer is Jeffrey (Campbell Scott), a smooth, ruthless and sexually avaricious studio executive who seduces Robert with the intoxicating Hollywood cocktail of power, money and sex. Patricia Clarkson stars as Jeffrey's wife, Elaine, a former screenwriter now ensconced in a Malibu villa with children, a housekeeper, and time on her hands. She brings the grieving Robert into the family fold, drawn by his talent and his pain. When Robert confides that he finds solace, both sexual and emotional, in the ghost-like world of chat rooms, the curious Elaine meets him there anonymously. As their online dialogue unfolds, she discovers that Robert and her husband are having an affair. The shock of that revelation - and the unexpected way she responds - sets off a dangerous series of deceptions, confessions and betrayals. Never sliding into the conventional histrionics of the thriller, The Dying Gaul is infinitely more complex, as the lines between predator and prey, sadist and victim shift and blur.


Visually stunning, The Dying Gaul contrasts the dazzling California sunlight that bleaches out the palm-lined movie studios and oceanfront estates with the cold and detached world of cell phones and computers. What emerges is a truly original postmodern Hollywood noir, unsettling, unpredictable and morally explosive. As John Cooper writes in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival program, "Lucas has honed a precise, interlocking plot that exploits his scalpel-sharp irony. The Dying Gaul will push you to the edge of your seat, simultaneously unnerving you with its complexity and frightening you with its believability."
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