"The Lie" Joshua Leonard, Jess Weixler and Violet Long (c.) - Photo by Ben Kasulke
Increasingly paralyzed by guilt, liars across the country are expressing relief at the announcement of National Liar’s Remorse Day, which will be celebrated on November 18, 2011. Timed to coincide with the release of The Lie, National Liar’s Remorse Day will give otherwise well-meaning liars a nationally sanctioned opportunity to confess.
One of the holiday’s founders, a prominent psychologist, states that the holiday was created to address the recent nationwide surge in lying. “With everything that’s going on in our country, the truth just isn’t very appealing anymore. Ordinarily honest people are resorting to an option once reserved for politicians, bank executives and CEOs: large-scale lying. Unlike their liar counterparts in government and business, however, honest people tend to experience intensely unpleasant, often overwhelming feelings of guilt when they lie. National Liar’s Remorse Day was created to address that guilt, to give regular people across the country the opportunity to come clean.”
Repentant liars are invited to confess on The Lie‘s Official Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/theliemovie. The individual who shares the most compelling lie (as judged by The Lie writer/director/star, Joshua Leonard) will receive a prize package to include a home lie detector kit and a $100.00 gift certificate to 1-800-FLOWERS to facilitate the liar’s atonement.
Pinocchio by Enrico Mazzanti 1883
Initial response to the announcement of the holiday from liars across the country has been overwhelmingly positive. “Man, I have just got to get this thing off my chest,” a New York liar who preferred to remain anonymous stated. “This lie is huge. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill, ‘I got stuck in traffic’ kind of lie. I could get my face clawed off for this lie. I had no idea what I was going to do before National Liar’s Remorse Day came along. You better believe I’m counting the days until November 18.”
National Liar’s Remorse Day is a United States holiday observed on November 18. The inaugural holiday coincides with the theatrical release of The Lie, directed and co-written by Joshua Leonard, who stars alongside co-writers Jess Weixler and Mark Webber. The holiday was created to allow ordinarily honest citizens a chance to confess and atone for their lies, thereby avoiding a chain reaction of deception that causes their lives to spiral out of control. Note: Due to the questionable nature of their remorse, politicians, corporate executives and celebrities are prohibited by law from participating in the holiday.
About The Lie (the movie)
When they first met, Lonnie (Joshua Leonard) and Clover (Jess Weixler) were young idealists, but an unplanned baby forced them to flip the script. Lonnie put his music on hold and got a nowhere job. And now Clover is abandoning her activism for an “opportunity” in the corporate world. Drowning in disappointments, Lonnie decides he needs some time off work to reexamine his life. He calls in sick, but his abusive boss demands he show up or get fired. Lonnie panics and tells a shocking lie to justify his absence – and once the lie is out, there’s no going back. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the grenade he’s thrown on his life explodes and Lonnie is suddenly pushed to figure out who he is, what he wants, and just maybe, what it means to be a father.