A Little White Lie

“The truth is in the fiction.”

An invitation arrives for a famously reclusive writer, and it lands with a New York handyman who happens to share his name. Shriver (Michael Shannon) is waved onto a university stage to give a keynote, welcomed by fans and by Simone Cleary (Kate Hudson), who has questions about the work he never wrote. Michael Maren plays it deadpan, letting Shannon's flat, wary stare do the comedy while the room around him gets warmer.