The Caveman's Valentine
2001 film by Kasi Lemmons
The Caveman's Valentine is a 2001 American mystery-drama film directed by Kasi Lemmons and starring Samuel L. Jackson based on George Dawes Green's 1994 novel of the same name. The film was released by Universal Focus, a subsidiary of Universal Studios, which would later become Focus Features.
Plot
A former family man and pianist studying at Juilliard music school, Romulus Ledbetter, now has paranoid schizophrenia and lives in a cave in Inwood Park, New York. He believes that a man named Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant is controlling the world with rays from the top of the Chrysler Building, and that his mind is inhabited by moth-like seraphs. On Valentine’s Day, he discovers the frozen body of a young man, Scotty Gates, left in a tree outside his cave. The police, including Romulus's daughter Lulu, dismiss the man's death as an accident. However, a homeless ex-lover of Scotty tells Romulus that he was murdered by the famous photographer David Leppenraub. Determined to discover the truth behind Scotty’s death and prove his worth to his daughter, Romulus manages to get an invitation through a former friend to perform one of his compositions at Leppenraub’s farm. What unfolds thereafter is a twisted tale of mystery, deception, and a man's struggle against his own mind.
Cast
Samuel L. Jackson as Romulus Ledbetter
Colm Feore as David Leppenraub
Aunjanue Ellis as Officer Lulu Ledbetter
Tamara Tunie as Sheila Ledbetter
Jay Rodan as Joey Peasley
Ann Magnuson as Moira Leppenraub
Anthony Michael Hall as Bob
Sean MacMahon as Scotty Gates
Jeff Geddis as Paul
Rodney Eastman as Matthew
Release
Box office
The Caveman’s Valentine opened in limited release on March 2, 2001, and grossed $112,041 on its opening weekend.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Caveman's Valentine” as 2001 film by Kasi Lemmons. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2001 film by Kasi Lemmons. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1766681. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Caveman's Valentine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.