Mistletoe Inn: Movies about Writing

Here we are again. Another holiday season and another round of mass-produced Christmas movies staring white TV actors who weren’t doing anything that week. I could get on my soapbox about these films and how they are not my thing, but instead I’m going to point out that after working in a bookstore for 12 years, I’m finally experiencing something by writer Richard Paul Evans. Nothing against Evans, I’m just not a big Christian fiction reader. But does this movie movie fit perfectly into this blog theme? Surprisingly yes. Like very much yes. Like I kinda hate how much I associated with parts of this movie. There was a long, hot shower after I finished watching.

This one is about Kim (Alicia Witt) who has been working on a romance novel for a long time, feeling like it’s not ready yet and will not allow others to read it except her dad (a fact which causes her boyfriend to break up with her, saying he wants to be in a relationship with another “real writer”).

Okay, Hallmark! I feel personally attacked. How dare you! Just because some of us writers want to make sure things are just so and might do 6 or 7 rewrites then spend nearly 2 years in editing does not mean we are not “real writers". How dare you question.

Kim goes to a writing retreat made up of a series of workshops. There she meets Zeke, a writer who uses a typewriter that he claims is the same model Hemingway used, and they proceed to insult each other in a lackluster meet-cute.

I hate the Hemingway typewriter cliche, by the way. Other famous writers used typewriters! You don’t have to idolize the rum-guzzling, narcissistic embodiment of toxic masculinity. Why can’t a writer in a movie ever once say “I use this brand of typewriter because Maya Angelou used it” or how about Douglas Adams or Mark Twain or. . . I confess I looked up a list of famous authors who used typewriters for this rant.

Amazingly, Mistletoe Inn doesn’t get you drunk according to the rules of the Hallmark Christmas Movie Drinking game. Just tipsy. Not that I tried it…

Kim makes friends with another writer, Samantha (Lucie Guest) who has been to the conference before and helps Kim be judgy towards her ex-boyfriend who is also at there. The ex-boyfriend of course uses all of his allotted dialogue to keep reminding Kim that she’s not a serious writer. Samantha also scolds another author (I didn’t catch the character’s name) who tries to make all of the new people feel like crap who have not being published yet. I’m sorry to say, but this felt like the most realistic part of the conference to me. There’s always at least one published snob ready to bring other people down and shatter their confidence.

The workshops Kim attends included a really good quote from a visiting editor. “This is a safe space for ideas. Writing is brave work. Ridicule is the tool of shallow people. Don’t be one of the shallow people.” Damn, Richard Paul Evans! Who hurt you at a writing conference? Whoever it was I hope they saw your first bestseller. I’m not a fan of your books, but damn dude! Mad props to whatever you survived at one these workshops.

The other quote I liked came from Zeke when he tries to show Kim how to handle the criticism of crabby, overly critical publishers and agents. This was inspired by him convincing her NOT to sit through a lecture by a notorious dream-killer (yep, been to those lectures before. My favorite part is when you ask a specific question and they manage to insult you without answering the question). “Every tiny victory along the road is worth celebrating. . . . that the point of writing is not be discovered, but rather self-discovery that hopefully other people can enjoy.” I’m not sure if that comes from the original book or it comes from the teleplay writer Michael Nourse, but DAMN!
As this is a Hallmark movie, Kim and Zeke fall in love over a course of snowball fights, warm romantic dinners, and more writing exercises. I mean literal writing exercises. That’s not an innuendo. I actually made a squee noise when Zeke tries to give her constructive criticism (legit, constructive criticism about how a first draft always needs tweaking). She takes this way too-hard, but again, I think she doesn’t understand what a FIRST DRAFT is! Case-in-point, I repeatedly called one of my finished first drafts “the turd” and my boyfriend said I should work on a second draft so it can at least be a “gilded turd”. I always go to Kira Shay and Sidney Reetz first because we’ve been sharing writing ideas since we were in high school. This is totally related to how the movie’s main theme about trusting the people who share your work with, but also being willing to share.

I’m going to end this one here, but other than the highly predictable romance sub-plot, I didn’t hate this one. Fine Hallmark. You won this round.

Image property of Hallmark. Also, they’re both writers. Why does he get to hold all of the writing materials

Devotion: Movies About Writing

First of all, understand that 1946 was NOT concerned with historical accuracy. This melodrama spent more time on building “woe is me” moments than it did researching the Bronte family. My boyfriend gave it the alternate title “Devotion or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tuberculosis”.

Second, I’m not really sure what induced me to watch this movie for the first time in years. I didn’t like it as a kid and I didn’t find much to recommend it now.

The story focuses on the idea of the 4 Bronte siblings in an artistic rivalry and, more heavily, on a made-up love triangle between Emily, Charlotte, and (spoiler alert) the man who in reality became Charlotte’s husband. One historically inaccurate piece is the Bronte Sisters being told by their aunt that with all of their worry about novels and poetry, they’ll never get husbands. At the time this story takes place, they would have been in their mid to late 20s Pssh! That’s old maid status in that time!

Devotion stars some of the greats at the time trying to earn some Oscars - Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland, and Sydney Greenstreet. I’d mention Paul Henreid, but he gets so over-the-top sometimes that this was NOT his best work. Just saying.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t show some merits of the Bronte’s as artists. The movie opens with a title card staying how 2 of 4 Bronte kids were geniuses - which I find as a big ole F*$@ YOU to Anne Bronte. Okay, I confess I’ve only read a little of her poetry, but I have been to her grave in Scarborough. I feel like they wouldn’t have given her a nice tombstone and an icon on the tourism map if she’d been a lousy writer. I also know that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered one of the first great feminist novels - which I know because my friend had to write a paper on it during university and she told me all about it during lunch over several days.

The movie also addresses some of the struggles for writers at that time, starting with the lack and expense of paper. Emily and Charlotte fight over wrapping paper at the start of the film because they both want to use it for writing something long that would use it all up. They also discuss the patronage needed in an artistic field if you want to eat on a regular basis or the need for thankless jobs like being a governess. However, the need for male pen names because of society’s problems with women writers at the time is glossed over.

Devotion wastes no time in reminding its audience that the only brother, Branwell Bronte was an alcoholic painter, depicting him as a bully to Anne, in need of Charlotte’s guardianship, and constantly under Emily’s criticism yet dependent on her. Luckily the movie leaves out some patriarchal theories that was actually the author of all of his sisters’ works (I’m looking at you fictional character played by Stephen Fry in Cold Comfort Farm!).

Cold Comfort Farm: Here’s Fry’s character Mybug asking Kate Beckinsale’s character Flora Post if she believes “women have souls”. Image property of BBC Films - don’t sue me. I’m an avid Doctor Who and PBS Masterpiece fan. You need me as much as I need you, BBC!

Devotion does cover where inspiration comes from for a writer, but it does this poorly and obvioulsy. Anne and Charlotte are both so disgusted by their employers as in their governess work, it is supposed to be the backdrop of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey (which I own and might finally read after all of this). And a derelict house left abandoned on the moors gave Emily the idea for Wuthering Heights. All three of these ideas are credited by historians, by the way, but the movie makes it very obvious without any detail. I don’t feel like inspiration is always obvious, but sometimes worms it’s way in and we realize later where the idea came from.

Some things I do like in the film from a writing point-of-view includes the praise and fears of the siblings, but again this is handled in an over-the-top way. All 4 have a certain amount of jealously towards each other’s talents, which can happen even at the same time as loving someone else’s work and desperately wanting to succeed. But that want for mutual success is lost in the movie to the constant head turns and near swoons of despair.

The same goes for the need for critical analysis and praise of their work. Emily especially is shown as more secretive and protective of her writing. Anne is willing to just keep trying with a sort of blind optimism. Charlotte is the one who seeks the help of professionals that could get her published and defends her own work with logic. She’s the one overjoyed when famed novelist William Makepeace Thackeray gives them praise.

I don’t know if these are the actual personalities of the women, but this does cover three of the major personalities of many writers I know. I’m a little disappointed that my personality matches more of Emily Bronte’s reactions in the film. Wuthering Heights is not my favorite Bronte book. Jane Eyre is. Duh. But the thing is - the movie claims that this supposed love triangle was where the emotion within Wuthering Heights came from, proving that the screenwriters never read it. The point of Wuthering Heights is how toxic people can be and call it love not how 2 sisters should fall for the same boring dude.

Still, the part of this movie that bugs the crap out of me is the idea that the Bronte sisters could have never written of love and loss the way the did without experience that include a ridiculous unrequited love, a single man to be the object of 2 sisters’ affections, and the poorly filmed dream sequences of betrayal. In the end, Devotion reduces their lives to stereotypes and tragedy.

Poor Bronte’s.

Devotion: Arthur Kennedy as Branwell, Ida Lupino as Emily, Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte, and Nancy Coleman as Anne as the Bronte siblings playing on the Yorkshire Moors. Image property of Warner Bros. Don’t sue me please! All you’ll get is a collection of Funko pops and empty notebooks too pretty to write in.