Heights
A Merchant Ivory Film

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Heights, which is Amy Fox's first full-length screenplay to be produced, is the story of how the fates of two women, a mother and daughter, intersect over the course of a whirlwind 24-hour period. Diana Lee (Glenn Close) is a Broadway diva who dispenses terse acting advice to her master's class, bickers playfully with her theatre director and flirts wildly at her own birthday party after learning of her husband's new lover. Meanwhile her daughter, Isabel (Elizabeth Banks), is forced to choose between sticking with Jonathan (James Marsden), a man she's not sure she knows, and taking a dream photography job that would force her to miss her own wedding.

Heights is loosely based on a one-act play, also called Heights, that premiered at New York City's Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2000. Merchant Ivory Productions commisioned Fox to adapt her play into a screenplay after reading its review in the New York Times. In Fox's adaptation, what was once a 25-minute play is now a four-minute scene in the movie. The original play is published by Dramatists Play Service. For more about the adaptation process, read the press release.

Heights premiered on January 25, 2005, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah and screened at the Miami International Film Festival on February 11. Heights opened in New York and LA on June 17, 2005 and nationwide a few weeks later. It's now available on DVD.

Click here for a look at some reviews or read a New York Times interview with screenwriter Amy Fox and director Chris Terrio.