Harald Krichel / DannyB Photos via Wikimedia Commons
Richard Gere and Diana Silvers will be on the Upper West Side on Tuesday shooting scenes for “Asymmetry,” the film adaptation of Lisa Halliday’s 2018 novel about a young editorial assistant who falls into a secret relationship with a celebrated author five decades her senior.
Advertisement
The production is set to work at and near West 73rd Street and Central Park West on Tuesday, July 28, according to signage posted around the area. A photo of one of the flyers was shared on X by Green Room NY.Gere is 76 and Silvers is 28. He plays Ezra, a world-renowned 70-year-old novelist, and she plays Alice, a young editorial assistant who comes across him in Central Park one afternoon. A single moment of eye contact turns into a private relationship that upends both of their lives, and stays hidden until it is exposed, according to Deadline, which broke the casting news in May.
The project comes from director Edward Zwick, whose credits include “Glory,” “The Last Samurai,” and “Blood Diamond.” Zwick wrote the screenplay with Marshall Herskovitz and Halliday herself, and FilmNation Entertainment and Rainmaker Films are co-financing, according to FilmNation.
The Upper West Side connection runs deeper than a convenient shooting location. In the novel, Ezra Blazer is a famous author who lives on the Upper West Side, and he is widely understood to be modeled on Philip Roth, whom Halliday dated in her twenties while working as a young editorial assistant. Roth was a genuine neighborhood fixture in his final years, living in a combined condo on West 79th Street. His biographer has said he shopped at Zabar’s and took breakfast at Nice Matin, per the Forward. In other words, a movie about a fictional Upper West Side novelist based on a real Upper West Side novelist is filming a few blocks from where that novelist actually lived.
Advertisement
Tuesday will not be the production’s first pass through the neighborhood. Gere and Silvers were photographed shooting in Riverside Park on July 2 in a first look image published by People, and they were seen filming in Central Park on July 15, according to Just Jared.This stretch of the UWS has hosted plenty of camera crews over the years, sitting a block from the Dakota and inside a landmarked historic district of 1880s rowhouses. Residents should expect the usual disruptions: suspended parking, equipment trucks, and crew members politely asking passersby to hold up for a take.
Tuesday is the only date we have been able to confirm, though productions frequently work a location over more than one day, and schedules shift constantly.
Have a news tip? Send it to us here!
