Yes! A film about someone who wants to be 1930s pulp writer! I love the 30s for writing because upper classes are still thumbing their nose at genre novels while the middle and lower classes loved cheap paperbacks of melodrama, horror, crime, and westerns. The modern book club will be born from these beloved albeit sometimes corny books which gave people happiness in the midst of the Great Depression.
The movie Hearts of the West starts with Lewis Tater (Jeff Bridges) in his Iowa farmhouse bedroom on a typewriter questioning his own vocabulary choices and acting out the scenes he just wrote in mirror. Shut up! We all do it! He goes to what he thinks is a university in Colorado to learn how to be a western author, but is attacked by two men running a school by mail scam. They try to steal his typewriter!
In escaping the men, Lewis wanders onto the set of a western film where he meets a cowboy actor (Andy Griffith), the director’s secretary (Blythe Danner), and a director (Alan Arkin). He becomes a stuntman and actor, yet his need to be the next Zane Grey is still his ultimate goal. Oh. And the bad guys are still tracking him down because he accidentally stole money from them.
Almost instantly, Lewis shows off his skills of observation, attempting to memorize clothes and feathers of those around him in hopes of using what he sees in a story. He verbalizes stories while everyone stares at him. The obsession with Zane Grey goes so far that he states that Grey also used to build up stories out loud and insists that he keep his Grey-esque haircut. He keeps constantly bringing up that he a writer. It’s Andy Griffith’s character who finally tells him that’s he a writer when other people say so. I admire his confidence in the film, but even I found him annoying at times. I did enjoy how he never let anyone tell him to give it up. He even continues to try when he has his heart broken by people he admired and trusted.
