Salem's Lot: Movies about Writing

First rule of being an author in the Stephen King universe - never travel anywhere to write something.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched or read Salem’s Lot (personally, I’ve always loved the fictional history of the town more than the actual plot of the book - and, yes, before you’ve asked, I’ve read the short story). My first thought when I heard about this one was, “It’s under 2 hours? They must’ve cut out the whole story!”

Ben (Lewis Pullman) is a writer who comes back to Jerusalem’s Lot looking for inspiration. He rents a room from a woman demanding payment in advanced when she hears his profession. His second encounter after the local sheriff is meeting Susan (Makenzie Leigh) who is reading one of his books and insults it without knowing that he’s the author.

At the same time, Marsten House, the haunting source of all local urban legends, has a European antiques dealer moving in. Straker (Pilou Asbaek) and his mysterious partner Barlow (Alexander Ward) are the catalytics who will destroy the town (in case you haven’t read the book).

Spoilers ahead.

A group of characters will come together as vampires take over the town. Ben and Susan are joined by teacher Mr. Burke (Bill Camp), Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard), Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickley), and 11 year old Mark (Jordan Preston Carter). Honestly, I spent most of this muttering, “I don’t remember that in the book.” Look, there were vampires and the cast gets killed off one by one.

Ben is the first person Mr. Burke goes to when he realizes that there are vampires. He thinks that just because the guy is a writer that he’ll believe in vampires. And he does, because this movie has no time for character development. There are other quips about being a writer, but honestly, they are really just repeats of how being an author is not always viewed as a legitimate career. Maybe I’ll just watch the mini-series from the 70s.

Coraline: Movies about Writing

Coraline - the delightfully creepy tale of a child being courted and hunted by an ancient terror who creates a dreamworld to catch her in. But that’s not what I’m going to write about. I’m going to focus on Coraline’s parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones are working on a gardening catalog when they move to the “Pink Palace”, the Victorian home turned into apartments where Coraline discovers the tiny door leading to the “Other Mother”. Her mother is the editor and her father is the author. These jobs fit their personalities. Dad is more laid back and silly. Mom is more rigid and practical. My favorite line of Charlie Jones’s is “I have a terrible case of writer’s rash on my-”, but his wife cut him off as he points to his butt. He works on a computer that appears to be a little out-of-date (either that or the story takes place a few years before I think it does) on a cluttered desk with the usual research and half-drunk coffee. How do I know that coffee is half-drunk? Because that’s part of the process. Duh.

Coraline’s mom (who is name Mel according to the internet, but I’m not sure if they ever say her name in the movie) keeps Charlie on task. She is also in charge of the finances, promising Coraline that things will change once the book sells.

Coraline feel ignored by her parents even though they work from home. In the world created by the “Other Mother”, a creature known a the Beldam who wants to keep children and eat their lives away, Dad is a pianist who writes songs just for is kid and helps her in the garden. The Other Mother cooks delicious food and buys Coraline whatever she desires. Although it’s sweet that Coraline wants the attention of her parents, the Other Mother’s world clearly did not give them jobs.

P.S. In the part where Coraline touches a switch that shuts off the power, including her dad’s unsaved work on his P.C., he lets out a cry which I feel in my soul every time.

Field of Dreams: Movies about Writing

Normally, in September and October I do spooky films about authors and newspaper people. However, James Earl Jones, one of the icons of my childhood, passed away. I know he was in his 90s, but it doesn’t matter. I’m still sad. His deep voice and infectious smile meant a lot to me as a kid. So here’s a short blog about Field of Dreams - it kinda has ghosts in it.

If you weren’t alive in the 90s, you might not know this film. A struggling Iowa farmer, who regrets his last encounters with his baseball-obsessed father, is told by a disembodied voice to build a ball field in his corn. So he does. The ghosts of famous players (as well as a doctor played by Burt Lancaster who did so much good, but never got to the majors) show up in the field. However, only certain people can see them.

James Earl Jones plays Terrence Mann, an award winning author who has hidden himself from a corrupt world which he feels expects too much of him. In case you can’t tell, he’s based on J.D. Salinger. He was the favorite author of the main character Ray and his wife Annie in college. Annie fights to keeps Mann’s books in the local school district, arguing about how pacifism and learning from reality are not reasons to ban a book (she makes a good speech about Stalin and Nazi book-burning). When the voice tells Ray to help Mann, he discovers a bitter man unwilling to speak to a fan. Mann gave up writing a decade early to become a software programmer, feeling like after two terms of Nixon as president, no one was really listening to him anyway. Still, he sees the ghosts like Ray and his family do. He goes to Iowa and returns to a sense of wonder and hope in humanity. And he’s going to write about it, because, “That’s what I do.”

Frankeleda's Book of Spooks: Movies about Writing

You want to see something creative and original?

Well then, "Let’s summon the writer”, as this show says.

Frankeleda’s Book of Spooks is an award winning Mexican stop-motion series about Frankeleda, a deceased author who needs readers for her stories or she will fade away. Her sharp-toothed talking storybook, Herneval, doesn’t see it that way, thinking that sharing stories will awake something terrible. You see what they’re doing here? Huh? Huh?

Okay, yes, the metaphor for being a writer is pretty obvious. Each episode has our ghost-host tell a story that usually a lesson for children mixed with some nasty critter or supernatural terror. I’m not gonna lie. Some of these tales were impressively scary for a kids’ show. Spoiler warning: Things never turn out well for the children in her stories which Herneval points out doesn’t seem fair. The book is like her conscience, attempting to protect you, the audience, from whatever Frankeleda’s latest story is . . . and from whatever is keeping them trapped in a scary old house.

SPOILER ALERT: As the reader, you hear a final story about a girl named Francesca Imelda who is expected to do all of the domestic duties for her father and older brothers after her mother dies and wicked Aubela moves in with them. Her escape is story writing, something she does at the most inconvenient times just like any other young writer. Her biggest fan is a owl-child (Herneval prince of the spooks - yep, the book used to be a really neat owl-prince) that lives in her house, but she thinks is a dream. By the time she’s grown, Francesca feel confident enough take the most perfected of her horror stories to a publisher, who instantly tells her that it’s unladylike. She leaves the office crying, declaring that she will quit, until she attempts to cross out her own name and ends up creating the name Frankeleda. The prince of the spooks, also now grown, shows up at that moment to plead with her to help him create new nightmares so his people will not fade away. He essentially kills her in hopes that she will replace his current nightmare writer. Something went wrong and the prince was turned into a book. The original nightmare writer trapped him and Frankeleda in his consciences and that’s where they have been ever since.

As an author , Frankeleda is obsessive, tragic, and does not take criticism well. She doesn’t care if she puts her audience in danger for her art and her own freedom. And she will never stop writing.

Insert maniacal laughter here.

Beetlejuice (Poe-Pourri): Movies about Writing (Copy)

This will be a short one, because it’s based on a short one.

Remember the Beetlejuice cartoon? What? You never watched it? My nostalgia riddled mind will tell you it was amazing . . . so probably best not to trust me. All you really need to know is that Lydia and Beetlejuice are friends in the cartoon, there’s no Barbara and Adam, and it had a lot of little kid humor (so. many. burping. jokes.).

Beetlejuice is freaked out one night reading a book of poems Lydia left at his roadhouse in the Netherworld. I don’t know why the ghost lives in a roadhouse, but I digress. Poe shows up at his house with a rapping raven, a literal steamer trunk, and handfuls of cash which he throws around when he cries about Lenore. I didn’t know writer’s got residual check’s in the afterlife?

The greedy Ghost with the Most invites Poe to stay at the roadhouse as he continues his search through the Netherworld for Lenore. Seriously, where is Poe getting all of this moolah? He was never rich in life. Anyway, Lydia comes over to fangirl over the wailing author while Beetlejuice is driven mad in a montage of Poe tales.

Due to this episode airing when I about seven or eight, I thought Lenore had been a real person, not an allegory for the loss of Poe’s wife and other women he loved. I also thought the Masque of the Red Death was a little mask with a runny nose.

Wednesday: Movies about Writing (Copy)

I’m rounding out my Poe blogs with a writing related piece of media not about Poe or even featuring a living version of him, but where he is a central character.

If you grew up with me, went to school with me, or met me, you probably know that I’m a huge Addams Family fan. I’ve seen the original series multiple times (but confess to only sitting through the 1970s Halloween special once).

Yes, I have seen most Addams Family incarnations and don’t ask me what I thought about those recent animated films unless you want to see my hair burst into flames. I put off watching Wednesday because 1) I loved Adult Wednesday Addams on Youtube written by and starring Melissa Hunter and how could anyone do it better than that (they can’t), 2) Tim Burton keeps breaking my heart, and 3) I was waiting for my boyfriend because he wanted to watch it too. Still, this is not my giving my opinion of the show. This is me talking about depictions of writers and writing in films and TV. (In case you do want my opinion just message me in the comments).

In this Netflix series, Wednesday is an aspiring author of mystery novels featuring a teenage sleuth in a difficult relationship with her mother. Meanwhile, Wednesday is thrust into a mystery at her new school while feeling like she’s living in her mother’s shadow. Yes. Her therapists points out that her real life connections are pretty obvious.

Poe comes into this as the school’s most famous pupil. The yearly house competition teams are named after his stories and the secret society is hidden behind his statue. However, the poem that helps one to figure out the password did not feel like a work of Poe’s. Just saying.

I did enjoy her sitting with perfect posture on her antique typewriter and using her novel as an excuse to be glad when her roommate was angry with her. She keeps her typed pages in a file box with her initials on it which I confess to being jealous of. However, I am really trying to remember what it was like to be in high school, forced into a social life, hunting for murders, AND having time to write! Oh. To be young.

Under the Bridge: Movies about Writing

Even those this is about a mini-series, I’m keeping this one short. Under the Bridge is the fictionalized account of the investigation into the murder of teenager Reena Virk in 1997. The series was based on two books, one by Virk’s father and Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey.

Godfrey (played by Riley Keough who I say looks more like Priscilla, but my boyfriend looks more like Elvis) is made a character in the story even though she didn’t started researching the event until after the investigation began. As the series is more about the life that was lost and the societal problems which led a group of youths to violently kill more than the pure horror and morbid curiosity of true crime.

Godfrey is portrayed as a journalist trying to write a book about the young women who feel abandoned by her home city. She returns home just as her former girlfriend Cam, a local police officer played by Oscar winner Lily Gladstone, arrests a large group of teens for the murder of their classmate. As the different events leading to the death come to light, Godfrey develops a connection with one of the teens involved, Warren Glowatski.

The show brings up several ethical and important questions about true crime writing. Godfrey struggles with how much involvement she can have as a journalist. Cam points out that she can’t tell if Godfrey’s actions throughout the movie are genuine or for the sake of her book. The moral justification of her interviewing any of the kids when the trial is going on is questioned, especially as she seems to overlook the victim. At first, her closeness to Glowatski has her focused solely on how the justice system is railroading him (a homeless Native kid) and allowing middle class white girl Kelly Ellard to have a fairer trial. However, in focusing on these two, she forgets to tell the story of Reena and her family. Guilt and thoughts of her own family make Godfrey go back over her book and try to find out more about Reena. She presents the pages to Reena’s parents, apologizing that she didn’t do more in the first place.

Although, it is a little ironic that the show was about how writer must be so careful when writing a true story when they completely rewrote Godfrey’s life and involvement in order to have a better television series.

Violence: Movies about Writing

Film noir time!

Ann is, naturally, an investigative journalist who’s been using her writing skills and a camera hidden in her watch in order to blow the lid off a group of cooks, misleading veterans into breaking up unions with riots. Even the leader of this organization, True Dawson - best mob boss name ever - has no clue that his secretary is a spy. However, Ann ends up in an accident causing (dun dun dun) amnesia!

A mysterious fiance, Steve Fuller, claims her at the hospital and takes her back to the the organization where she gets him a job. In her addled state, Ann believes in everything the organization stands for and that her boss, Dawson, is a benevolent leader. When a young woman shows up looking for her missing husband, Fuller confuses Ann by telling her get away.

SPOILER ALERT: As Ann suspects that Fuller is a bad guy and rats him out to Dawson, her story on the organization is printed. Nick from It’s a Wonderful Life roughs Ann up and, tada, instant cure for amnesia! All she needed was a healthy dose of assault! She, the mournful wife, and her publisher make a plan to save Fuller and stop a riot the organization is planning. Instead, Ann is captured, but she and Fuller (who is an undercover cop) manage to warn the strikers about the upcoming attack. The bad guys end up killing each other. Fuller and Ann become engaged for reals. And Ann is famous as the “Pretty girl reporter” who exposed a “phony group”. Okay, so it’s not a great plot. In fact, I had a little trouble following it in the first fifteen to twenty minutes. I kept thinking Fuller secretly worked for the bad guys and then it turned out he was spying on the bad guys and the bad guys were clueless as their secrets kept getting out . . .

Anyway, I want to point out one scene. Ann is asked to make a speech when she still has (gasp) amnesia. She is such a good writer, that she rattles off an impassioned string of sentences without really knowing what she’s talking about. A good writer should always have the power of the bullshit.

Merrily We Live: Movies about Writing

It’s 1938. The Great Depression is hitting high proportions. Mass numbers of Americans are out of work. Fathers are abandoning families in shame. Therefore, let’s watch a film about a pair of rich dopes and their “too clever for their own good” grown children. Personally, if you want a great film with a similar premise, watch My Man Godfrey.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Mrs. Kilbourne (the ditzy matriarch played by Billie Burke) insists on bringing home “tramps” to work in their home. She gives them jobs in service, forgets their names, forces them to read patronizing books about what they need to fix about themselves, then is shocked when they rob the family and run off.

Enter Wade Rawlins (Brian Aherne) a man who stops at the house to use the phone after his car breaks down. Mrs. Kilbourne mistakes his oil drenched appears as poverty and hires him as the new chauffeur before he has an opportunity to correct her. He sees all of this as instantly amusing and decides to just be the family driver. Despite their misgivings about mother bringing in someone else without references, Rawlins begins to grow upon the family after he rescues grumpy Mr. Kilbourne from a drunken night. Two of the Rawlins children, bratty Kane (Tom Brown aka Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables) and animal loving Marion (Bonita Granville aka the original Nancy Drew) appreciate Rawlins handling of their father. However, it’s the eldest daughter, Geraldine known as Jerry (Constance Bennett) who he has the instant connection with. Only Mr. Kilbourne fails to see Rawlins merits and worries he’ll be an embarrassment at their important dinner with a senator.

But au contraire! Rawlins is mistaken as a guest and charms the pants off the senator. Moreover, the senator’s daughter wants Rawlins to charm the pants off her (ba-bum-bum-tsk!). Rawlins decides to mess with the family and act the part of a guest in their house while Mr. Kilbourne tries to get the senator to help his business. By the way, I have no idea what Mr. Kilbourne’s business is. Anyway, Jerry gets jealous and fights with Rawlins. He exits swiftly for a mysterious destination.

Meanwhile, in a nearby town, police have found Rawlins’s smashed up car over a cliff. They report him as deceased to a local general store owner (a man that Rawlins borrowed the car from) who reveals that Rawlins is a noted novelist who fishes in the area. Oh hey! Character actor Willie Best! Oh dang, he’s playing a stereotype.

The newspapers report how famous author E. Wade Rawlins has died suddenly with a photograph to confirm to the Kilbournes exactly who they had working for them. There’s a ton of fainting as people think their seeing a ghost and the long suffering butler declares he will become a tramp. All I can think is, “Whelp, Rawlins has lots of material for his next novel.”

La Boheme: Movies about Writing

Hey, you know that Broadway show Rent that you were super into as a theater kid in high school, then just sort of forgot about when you got older. It was based on an opera, which was based on a book of sketches in lives of starving French artist in the early 1830s. What I watched is film version made in 1926 staring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert. Just to repeat - I’m writing a blog about a silent film based on an opera based on a book all of which inspired Rent. Spoilers ahead.

“Would you light my candle?
What are you staring at?”

- From not this version

Rodolphe is a playwright disgusted that he has to sacrifice his art by writing puff pieces for a local paper in order to help pay the rent of his shabby flat. He shares the flat with Marcel, an artist, Schaunard, a musician, and Colline, a philosopher (played by an Edward Everett Horton that was so young I didn’t even recognize him). The fifth member of their group is Musette, Marcel’s girlfriend who usually has some money because of her job . . . a job left unsaid in the silent film. Get it? Unsaid? Silent film? Oh fine. Yes. Musette is a sex worker. They invite into their circle Mimi, a seamstress who lives in the same building and struggles to survive. While the others make light of their meager earnings and eked out existence, Mimi is determined to survive to the point where she works long hours in her freezing garret apartment without a coat. Why no coat? She had to pawn it of course.

The circle of “Bohemians” are clever, boisterous, and usually drunk. They declare the hardships of their life simply they way it must be for them to be geniuses of the thinking world. I think in the opera there are more side plots featuring Marcel, Musette, and the others but these have been left out to keep the run time at 90 minutes. You don’t really get as much of the comradery as you would expect in a movie about an artists community. When do they dance on a table in a restaurant in a show of solidarity to their non-conformist lifestyle?

Anyway, when Mimi declares her love to him, Rodolphe becomes a play writing fool, which is great for his art, but not for the bills. As he’s neglecting his job selling stories to the local paper and Mimi’s work has slowed, she works herself to the bone trying to keep them both fed. In the opera she leaves to be mistress to a wealthy viscount. In 1830, either a woman has integrity or a full belly, not both. In the film, the viscount only promises to show Rodolphe’s plays to a theater manager he knows in exchange for Mimi’s company. Rodolphe drives her away in a fit of jealousy like a punk. Seriously, he’s a whiny brat who blames his outbursts on artistic integrity. Then, too late, he figures out everything Mimi has done for him, after batting her around some. Swell fellow.

Anyway, feeling guilty and realizing how sick Mimi is, Rodolphe make the grand gesture that he will give up his craft to earn money through a day job. Martyr Mimi won’t allow him to do such a thing. She runs away to the streets of Paris where he can’t find her. Meanwhile, Rodolphe writes a masterpiece that make him a great success in the theater world. By the time Mimi comes back to him, she’s dying of consumption. The whole group gathers around her as she declares her love one last time and states that she is happy. The end.

Therefore, remember folks - suffer for your art and you too can be a genius who loses your girlfriend to tuberculous.

The Great Race: Movies about Writing

Despite this being a long film, this will be a short blog. Let’s talk about determination in a writer.

This comedic masterpiece directed by Blake Edwards is meant to be a nod to the melodramas of the silent era. The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis is a master of all trades with a dazzling smile and his perfectly clean clothes. As its the turn of the century full of new innovation, Leslie has agreed to an automobile race against his rival, the mustached Professor Fate (played by my classic Hollywood crush - Jack Lemmon) from New York to Paris. Keenan Wynn and Peter Falk play their assistants respectfully. Still, it is Natalie Wood’s character Maggie Dubois that I’m going to talk about.

Miss Dubois is a suffragist attempting to live an “emancipated” life full of smoking cigars and making grand speeches. She bullies her way into a job on a newspaper and enters the race in order to report on it. This is after both Leslie and Fate refuse to take her with them in their cars. She brings carrier pigeons with her to send her stories and photos back to the newspaper office in New York. This woman is so dedicated to proving her skills as a writer, she literally works on a news story about a bar fight while standing in the middle of bar fight. Each time she meets with a problem that will keep her from getting her scoop, she fibs and cheats in a most charming ways possible. Granted, by the end of the movie, it’s more about just finishing the race than the story, but her determination until she no longer has her pigeons is admirable.

Plus, she kicks ass in the massive pie fight in the movie and I’d like to think that is a secret writer skill we never get to explore.

Under the Tuscan Sun: Movies about Writing

This is a great movie to watch when you’re going through a big, unexpected change in your life. But also understand that this has very little to do with the travel memoir of the same name. SPOILERS HO!

Frances (Diane Lane) is a writer, teacher, and book reviewer who finds out about her husband’s infidelities by an angry author whose book she gave a poor critique. I get that the dude was upset but I can’t imagine being so upset that you’d reveal to a person you barely knew that their husband was getting read to leave them. To break her out of depression after the divorce, her best friend Patti (played by everyone’s favorite Sandra Oh) sends Frances to replace her on a gay tour of romantic Tuscany since Patti can’t travel with a new pregnancy. Patti states that Frances needs to get her life back on track and start writing again.

Frances does get a kitten out her her misadventures.

The first inspiration she has is when one of the men she hangs out with on the tour asks her to write a postcard home for him. She crafts a beautiful paragraph full of metaphors and onomatopoeia. The owner of the postcard declares that he can’t send it now. His mother would never believe that he wrote it! Ingrate!

Anyway, her second inspiration comes in the form of a villa. The majority of the film is about Frances buying, refurbishing, and living in an old Villa. As she lives there, she makes friends with her neighbors, the Polish contractors fixing the house, and Katherine, a fabulous local eccentric played by Lindsay Duncan who once acted as a muse to Fellini. I like the bond Frances forms with one of the Polish workers, teenage Pawel, which is like an aunt and nephew and explains why she supports when he falls in love with the neighbors daughter. That is to say, her time is not just platonic friendships and make-shift family. Frances has a romantic encounter with the handsome Marcello, who is charming and adorable, but has no patience. He can’t handle when a very pregnant Patti shows up and is in need of Frances’s time. By the way, the way Frances and Patti talk is very natural. You can believe that they’ve been friends for years.

In the end, all of Frances’s depression and feeling like she’ll never have all she wanted are cured in various, unexpected ways. She has family and life all around her. She finishes a book (called “Under the Tuscan Sun” - What? Who saw that coming?). AND she meets another fellow writer named Ed who she wrote an other unkind review of. He is healthy person and tells her it was the “best bad review” he’d ever gotten and he used it to help write his next book. So they end up together at the end. Full circle.

*Note: I feel bad for the real Ed (Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes). He’s Frances Mayes second husband and in reality they fixed up the villa together. But no. He became the “reward” at then end of the movie. I don’t know how I’d feel about that if I was Ed.

Agatha: Movies about Writing

Agatha (1979) was an imagining of where Agatha Christie went during her eleven missing days.

The film starts with all of the claustrophobia and depression that comes with the end of a relationship. At a signing, the celebrated mystery writer is closed off and in her own head. Agatha (Vanessa Redgrave) is in a horrible state when her husband (Timothy Dalton) leaves her for her his secretary and ends up wrecking her car. All of this is reality except that they did not mention her child who was in the care of her trusted friend and secretary Charlotte Fisher (Fisher isn’t a major character in the film, but she was important to the real Christie so I feel she should be mentioned here).

Wally Stanton, a fictional American reporter played by Dustin Hoffman, immediately dives into the investigation. Meanwhile, Agatha checks herself into a hotel near a health spa where she thought the secretary would be. Weirdly, she uses the mistress’s last name as her alias. The start of this film is not particularly intriguing other than Mr. Christie being tailed by reporters and investigators. Otherwise it is many scenes of people ordering food in restaurants and drinking tea.

About 35 minutes in, you start to see Agatha Christie the writer coming out as she writes down ways to kill people from things she sees around the spa. Also, there’s finally some jazz music. I know it’s England in the 1920s, but c’mon! Stanton finds Agatha at the hotel with a little help from Charlotte whose worries about her friend/boss. He does not give Christie his real name or tell her that he knows who she is. Instead, they enjoy the frivolities and he appreciates that she looks happier than she did at the book signing at the beginning of the film. I just have to add that Redgrave in heels is a full head taller than Hoffman and kudos to the filmmakers for not putting him on a box. Now, Stanton is writing a piece on her without her knowledge, yet he treats her with kindness. Awkward, awkward kindness.

Stanton is clearly attracted to Christie. He is also worried for her. I won’t give away the ending just know it might trigger some people. It’s a tad on the melodramatic side and involves CPR which wasn’t widely in use then. It does give Stanton the opportunity to make feel Christie feel better and that her life is still full of possibilities.

I really do not think this is even close to what happened to Christie during those eleven missing days, but it made an okay story. However, if Agatha Christie had written it, there would have been more poison in those many restaurant scenes.

Oh. And the theme song at the end is awful. Just awful.

Hearts of the West: Movies about Writing

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.

Luck of the Irish: Movies about Writing

I’m keeping this short because I soda bread to eat!

Stew! Whiskey! Leprechauns! Tyrone Power! What more could you want? How about Tyrone Power being a a freelance newspaper writer who is being asked to sell his soul to an aspiring politician?

Stephen “Fitz” Fitzgerald and his friend Bill (Bill is really more of an exposition character and does not deserve his last name) visit Ireland where they meet Nora, an innkeeper who has an instant connection with Fitz. However, he still goes back to New York where his girlfriend’s sleazy publisher father wants him to be his hired hype man for his campaign. But wait, Horace, an unusually tall leprechaun, has followed Fitz home from Ireland and is now working as his servant. Nora shows up again, milk goes missing, and Fitz tries hide from modern art by hanging it in his bathroom.

Back to his writing. Bill expresses how Fitz is an excellent writer and is so disappointed in him going to work as a political pawn because he’s tired of being a starving artist. Meanwhile, Fitz’s girlfriend, Frances, says that he’s been wasted as a freelance columnist and with her father’s power behind him he’ll make more of a difference. By the way, she’s not a terrible character. She’s independent and smart. Take note, Hallmark movies! Still, what it comes down to is Fitz not feeling comfortable when asked to lie about his own opinions and go against his writing morals for money. Because . . . you know, it’s a movie.

Anatomy of a Fall: Movies about Writing

This movie is fairly new so understand that I’m not going to be going to many details of the actual court case or end of the films. Still, spoiler warning. Also, unlike the movie, I’m going to keep this short.

Sandra, a known novelist who takes inspiration from real life, is on trial for the death of her husband Samuel, a university professor who was found dead outside of their isolated French home. I don’t understand the legal system in France, so let’s just focus on the parts about writing.

One of the driving forces in the trial is Sandra’s relationship with her husband being rocky because she was an established author and he was a struggling writer. The day Samuel dies, he’s playing loud music while a university student is trying to interview Sandra about how their son’s accident is a thinly veiled plot point in one of her books. The same accident occurred on a day Samuel decided to stay home writing and sent a babysitter to pick up the son from school. Sandra suggests that the guilt over their son’s vision loss caused Samuel to stop writing for a long time. The court suggests that it was her blaming Samuel causing that guilt. I say - why isn’t anyone mad at the babysitter?

Anyway, before his death, Samuel and Sandra had a loud fight with destruction of property about their roles as writers. Samuel accuses Sandra of forcing him to always be on her creative schedule, leaving him no time for his own writing. Sandra accuses back that he uses her as an excuse not to write. Both sides feel valid to me, yet the whole scene made me very uncomfortable - and that’s something I’m filing away for later counseling.

There is also the insinuation that he is bitter that she used an idea from one of his unfinished novels for one of her published works and now he wanted to go back to it, but it was too late. She points out that he gave her permission to use the idea and this part of the argument made me side a little more with her. Don’t give away ideas, dude. That was on you.

The big thing I wanted to point out was that (and this is a big spoiler to the movie - you have been warned) Samuel had been recording family conversations and transcribing them for the book he was working on. Sandra knew this was a process of his, but when she finds out that he taped their argument about writing in general, she starts to wonder if he planned the conversation for his recording and creative process. I think that would piss me off worse than the idea-take-back-sies. Don’t manipulate your spouse for source material. You’re not F. Scott Fitzgerald. Get over yourself.

Staged: Movies about Writing

I’m going to keep this one short even though I’m talking about the first season of a British series.

Staged is the fictionalized tale of David Tennent and Michael Sheen attempting to rehearse a play through some sort of Zoom app in the midst of the pandemic (I should point out that this actually came out during the pandemic).

A big part of the show is about the world going stir crazy. When Georgia, David’s wife, sells her novel, David decides to write a script. He writes it rather quickly and emails it to Georgia. He then gets no response from her even though they are trapped in the same house. Georgia then emails it to Michael. And there are several minutes of anxiety that are overshadowed by Judi Dench. And honestly, I don’t remember what happened with David’s writing attempts after that. Judi Dench was on the television swearing a lot.

Okay, actually, they all read David’s script together and it’s revealed that everyone’s favorite parts were the bits Georgia rewrote.

Castle (Reality Star Struck): Movies about Writing

This isn’t necessarily my favorite episode of the television series about a thriller writer and his job as consultant to a New York homicide detective. I just picked this one because it takes place around Valentine’s Day. As this episode is from season 5, majors spoilers for this show from fifteen years ago.

Castle and Beckett are about to have their first Valentine’s Day as a couple while investigating the stabbing of a member of a “Real Housewives” style reality show. There are jokes about what the couple will be getting each other, how their friends on the force are spending the holiday (Ryan is under his wife’s control in the attempt to convince), and how the murder weapon is high end. Actually, jokes about the fancy knife could’ve been better. “The good news is, expensive cutlery like that won’t dull while cutting bone. Too soon?”

One of the better things about this episode is it is one of many that include a guest appearance by one of Fillion’s “Firefly” co-stars, Gina Torres. It’s fun to see kick-ass Zoe as a uppity rich bitch. Castle is also appalled by the unscripted format of reality TV . . . until he gets caught up in the drama and watching the show all night long. Beckett only watches one episode because she’s classy.

This is also a side plot of Castle accidentally placing his gift to Beckett in their Captain’s coat with a romantic note (he’s a writer, of course he wrote a note). As she is not aware that they are a couple, it become a ridiculous bit of shenanigans that make me quite uncomfortable. Also, Beckett’s gift to Castle is really sweet gesture -a drawer in her apartment to keep his stuff in showing that their relationship has reached the next level. But she also gives him the smallest drawer! Did no one else notice that?

At this point in the series, Castle’s ACTUAL job as a professional author has taken backseat to the mysteries. There is at least a joke about Castle’s thinking the murder is a Valentine’s Day gift in the form of a mystery that makes no sense. The point of his role as a consultant is that his skills in people study and creation of unusual murder scenes makes him a good profiler. Hey, it’s a TV show! No one asked for reality!

All is True: Movies about Writing

At some point, I’m planning on a bunch of Shakespeare blogs, but this was on TV and wanted to watch it before it was no longer available. Streaming services are not the most reliable these days (by these days I mean summer of 2023 and time of the second major writer’s strike in my lifetime).

All is True is really Kenneth Brannagh’s and writer Ben Eltons’s vision of what it was like for William Shakespeare at the end of his career and life. I should point out that Elton was one of the writers who helped Andrew Lloyd Webber create Love Never Dies, so I’m sure he needs to do some sort of creative groveling for that crime against storytelling. Also, understand that this is NOT a debate about whether Shakespeare is the actual author of the plays, so none of that in the comments. Save that for a different film.

This is an almost an entirely fictional, trying to dramatize mysterious moments at the end of the playwright’s life.

The film starts with the Globe Theatre burning down and Shakespeare returning to the family he’s barely seen in 20 years. He has hallucinations of his son Hamnet who died at age eleven, an awkward relationship with his wife Anne (Dench), and accidentally worries his remaining children Susanna and Judith about their own futures. The bard holds on tightly to a belief that, had Hamnet lived, the boy would have been a poet like him. Meanwhile, he dismisses Susanna and Judith since they are women who never had a formal education (most historians agree that Susanna could read and write). Judith outwardly shows her disdain for her father and he asks why when he never gave her a cruel word. Anne responds, “You spent so long putting words into other people’s mouth, you think it matters what is said?”

Will uses his artistic past in an attempt to smooth certain things over in his town and with his family. For example, when a man accused Susanna of an affair and there is a suit of slander, Shakespeare informs the accuser that a well-built “Moor” who performed in his plays loved Susanna so that he would rush from London to kill any man who dishonored her. Anne points out that she met this actor and knew him to be a sweet man and Shakespeare insists she not tell the accuser that. *By the way, there really was a slander case, but the case never went through and was thought to be a result of a feud between the accuser and Susanna’s husband.

One of the big plot points is how Anne does not want to know more about Will’s life in London as everything he was rumored to have done or said effected her. The Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), who was Shakespeare’s patron for a time, arrives and it upsets Anne as rumors that he was her husband’s lover created problems in her life years earlier. And yet, these characters and moments are important because they reflect on how London saw fame for Shakespeare as a writer while his village only gossiped.

On the other side of the coin, you see how children are constantly told that their father the writer is genius and a celebrated poet can grow to feel less. There is a theme about the expectations of an absentee father and fame and how the two did not have to be mutually exclusive. Gender roles, societal expectations, and general personalities all play a role.

I think it was funny how William Shakespeare has a prepared speech for when people approach him with questions. “The best way to get started as a writer is to start writing. I don’t have a favorite play. I admire all my fellow dramatists equally. And, yes, I do think women should be able to perform the female roles as is the practice on the continent now.” Shakespeare does not give an answer as to why he no longer writes.

“If you want to be a writer, and speak to others and for others, speak first for yourself. Search within. Consider the contents of your own soul. Your humanity. And if you're honest with yourself, then whatever you write, all is true.”

The Good Place (A Chip Driver Mystery): Movies about Writing

I don’t want to give away the entire show of The Good Place (especially since this episode takes place in the final season), but I’m going to have to give away quite a bit to explain why I blogged this episode. Still, this to me is one of the best tv shows ever made and I encourage you to watch it.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead.

The Good Place is philosophical comedy about the afterlife and what it means to be a good person. Ted Danson plays Michael, an architect in charge of four humans named Tahani (Jameela Jamil), Jason (Manny Jacinto), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), and Eleanor (Kristen Bell). Helping them is Janet (D’Arcy Carden), an all knowing entity whose entire existence is based on being a go-fer in the afterlife.

The episode opens with a book. Michael is telling a story to a Bad Janet (also D’Arcy Carden) trying to prove that humans can improve themselves. A new group of humans are being used as unknowing guinea pigs in a human moral experiment and seems to be showing positive outcomes. Then Brent (Benjamin Koldyke), the worst of the three, announces that he has written a book and he wants Chidi, John (Brandon Scott Jones), and Simone (Kirby) to read it in two days before he does a signing. An afterlife signing. Apparently, that’s a thing.

Brent describe the book entitled “Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery” as “half-spy novel, half -murder mystery. It’s also half-submarine adventure, half-erotic memoir, and half- political thriller. It’s also half- golf tutorial and half- commentary on society”. Immediately, Simone, who has very little patience for Brent’s sexism, racism, classism, and a whole lot of other negative isms, is gleeful about making fun of this novel. Tahani suggests that they all be kind because Brent has been showing improvement and they should be the bigger people (since that’s exactly what she’s trying to make them into). Then she starts to read the book with Eleanor and Michael.

The love interest Scarlett Pakistan in the book is a cultural stereotype who looks like Tahani and is described as “Her brown eyes were as brown as the brownest crayon. She had legs like Jessica Rabbit from that movie”. Is it bad that I sometimes enjoy bad writing because it makes me feel relatively better about my own writing? Stop judging me! I never said I belonged in the Good Place!

Tahani is not the only human objectified and insulted by being a thinly veiled character in Brent’s book, making it difficult to get the others to be kind about the painfully terrible prose. Eleanor tries to get them to create subtle criticisms. This is a good lesson for anyone not wanting to hurt another person’s writer feelings. For example, pointing out that “just writing a book is an amazing accomplishment” and then following with a sandwich of what you like and what needs improvement. That’s what editing is for. It’s a pain in the butt, but thanks the gods for the editing process and the people willing to edit.

However, if someone writes a book that insults you and your beliefs and the author can’t respect that why you didn’t like it - rip them a new one. Yes, a book is a form of art, but if your art is hurtful to the people you claim to like, what is the point? And how can you be upset if they don’t like that you hurt them? That’s not art, that’s more about ego. Despite all of this, Eleanor and the others still want to help Brent become a better person.

And all of this ends back with Michael finishing his story about how people can be good.