I had heard that Lerner had, in later years, become obsessed with his brief glimpse of Clarice. “Neither Kafka, nor Dostoyevsky, nor Fernando Pessoa” would ever be interviewed on film, he wrote. He had the chance to film an interview with the greatest of Brazilian writers—and he felt that he failed. Over the years, almost as if to make it up to her, he announced a series of projects, few of which came to fruition. He wanted to write a book about the interview; he wanted to make a film about it; by the early two-thousands, he was calling Lispector’s son, Paulo Gurgel Valente, at two in the morning, wanting to talk about it.