Jonathan Bailey and Bill Nighy are set to play a couple whose love story offers a particularly welcome possibility: life can still surprise you, even after grief, loneliness and decades of established routines.
The actors will star in Insomniac City, based on writer and photographer Bill Hayes’s memoir about New York and his relationship with neurologist Oliver Sacks.
A Brouhaha Entertainment announcement confirms Bailey will play Hayes opposite Nighy as Sacks, with Dominic Cooke directing. Hayes and Cooke have co-written the screenplay, and Bailey is also among the producers.
A new city, and an unexpected connection
As Hayes describes the book on his website, he arrived in New York at 48 after years in San Francisco, grieving the death of his partner.
He began exploring the city at night with his camera. Alongside its streets and strangers, he found something he had not expected: another love.
The connection with Sacks had begun before the move. In an essay about their relationship, Hayes recalls receiving a letter from Sacks after the neurologist read his book The Anatomist. Hayes wrote back.
Once Hayes moved to New York in 2009, they spent more time together. By that summer, they were in love.
Sacks was in his seventies. Hayes describes a 28-year age difference, but also a relationship that lasted until Sacks’s death in August 2015.
You may already know his work
If Sacks’s name feels familiar, there is a good reason. He wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, the latter adapted into the film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
This story turns towards his personal life: the man capable of immense curiosity about other people, learning to share his own days with a partner.
The tenderness comes through in the smallest moments. In a published excerpt from Hayes’s diary, Sacks tells him how glad he is that they share the planet, and how much lonelier it would be without him. Hayes reaches for his hand.
It is an ordinary gesture, and a lovely glimpse of the companionship behind the casting announcement.
A romance with room for later chapters
For gay audiences accustomed to stories of first crushes and early adulthood, a film that gives an older man’s love life this attention has particular appeal.
The prospect of Bailey and Nighy together certainly adds to the anticipation. But Hayes and Sacks supply the emotional reason to care: two people finding space for a relationship at very different stages of their lives.
The casting reports have not announced a release date. For now, Insomniac City is a project to watch — and its source memoir is a love story worth discovering.
📷 Wikipedia (Carlos Delgado / LukaFazPhoto)