Old Acquaintance: Movie about Writing

OH. MY. SWEET. BABY. SLEIPNIR. This movie was. . . hard to get through. Before I get accusations about being a rube who doesn’t appreciate art, I want to point out that I usually love old movies. I thought, “A 1943 film I’ve never heard of staring Miriam Hopkins and Bette Davis based on a play by the same guy who wrote ‘Bell, Book, and Candle’. You son of a bitch. I’m in.” Then I started it. Then I turned it back off. Then I tried watching more the following day. Another ten minutes and I stopped. I think it took me a week to watch this film in it’s entirety.

It’s a melodrama so of course there are silly rivalries, a couple of love triangles, and other ridiculous fodder. The movie is about two childhood friends who both grow up to be well-known authors. Practical and good-humored Kit (Bette Davis) is a novelist and playwright who really only churns out products every few years. They don’t make her a lot of money, but acquire her a lot of fame since she chooses subject matters of society and feminism. Her work seems to be mostly popular with academics like college students. Meanwhile type-A personality Millie (Miriam Hopkins) mass produces best selling romance novels that make her a wealthy woman in only a few years. Although Millie is constantly jealous of Kit and feels they need to be in some kind of competition, Kit only wishes Millie success and makes many excuses for when Millie acts selfish or flies off the handle. A part of this comes from the backstory of Millie having brought Kit home from school one day so she wouldn’t have to go to her own awful life and from then on she became like a foster child to Millie’s family. Kit feels a constant gratefulness for this because she credits any parts of her happy childhood to Millie.

Millie also the wife of some kind of successful gentleman with a thin 40s mustache (played by John Loder) who not-so-secretly pines for Kit. Together they have a daughter, Deirdre, (played by Dolores Moran as a teenager) who is named after the main character in Millie’s books and also seems to love Kit more than her emotional mother. Then, when Deirdre is a young woman, she and Kit fall in love with the same man (Gig Young) and Kit stands aside for her would-be niece. See. Drama. So. Much. Drama.

The pair of women have several literary conversations throughout the film that always start off interesting and realistic. They range in topics from editing and peer review to confidence in writing and when you have to let of of a project (just publish already) *note: I feel personally attacked every time this comes up in a film about writing. I will finish when I’m ready. Stop judging me, TV people! And even the ideas of marketing and publicity. Then the conversations turn into a thinly veiled fight with Millie constantly insulting Kit without realizing it. Still, Kit keeps trying to save Millie’s relationships with her husband and child, despite all of Millie’s tantrums.

I feel like if this was just a drama that only focused on the two authors and their friendship versus the differences in their careers, I probably could’ve gotten behind this film. Even if it was about how Kit was constantly trying to save Millie’s personal life in the midst of success and a character study of how Millie is so oblivious, I’d probably have felt this was a smart film about interesting writers. Instead, I found myself zoning out as there were long speeches involving words like “I can’t! I simply can’t” and discussing the moral implications of all the messes of their lives. Music swelled, people started to talk in passionate tones, and I would go get a snack. When I’d come back they’d still be talking about love affairs and suicide attempts. And I got really sick of this martyr routine they gave to Bette Davis. And it goes on for years! The movie takes place over nearly two decades and, although she does have success as a public figure, is never a bestselling author and of all the things she wants in life the only thing she gets to have in the end is her toxic friendship with Millie.

Image property of Warner Bros.

Character Study - Secondary Characters

Writing good sidekicks, best friends, and minor yet important characters is just as important as your main characters. Still, they fall into stereotypes so often that it sometimes wrecks the original mood of a book. So, here's a list:

Secondary character stereotypes to avoid:  

1. The Sassy Gay Friend: it’s always wonderful to create a diverse world filled with people of all backgrounds, but make then real. They become the comic relief  without any real substance.  This was something started by goofy 80s movies and somehow followed our culture into the new millennium. 

2.  The  Harassing/Overbearing Boss:  We all want to secretly stick it to "the man".  We want to pour our own frustrations from work into our books (yes, Young Skywalker, use your anger). But a character can go very quickly from being the usual boss you love to hate to a full blown character trope. The male bosses all become handsy and the female bosses are all bitches with something to prove. They have no family save for a spouse that everyone pities and no friends.  It’s fine if this character is only appearing for a few key moments within the story but if they are a reoccurring character you need to make them a little more human.

3. The Wise Wizard: Have you ever met a wise magic person? Neither have I? I think writers live this because it’s an easy way to move along a hero’s journey. What is a quest without a wise wizard? Less convenient, but might be a better story. 

4.  Talking Heads & Informative Bookworms: Exposition machines who do nothing by data dump need to be stopped - except Bob in the Dresden Files.

5. The Rogue: Oh, he's so sexy, but you know he's bad. Even Jane Austen managed to make most of her rogues well-rounded, but they can borderline onto soap-opera territory.

6. Muscular Barbarian: Make your characters figure out how to open their own damn doors. The D&D equivalent of the Hulk rarely gets to do much beside the occasional mighty chortle and break something.

7. The Bumbling Sidekick: This is really only acceptable in Disney cartoons or buddy comedies.

If you need some good examples, ask yourself "What the Dickens?" Any secondary characters in any Charles Dickens novel are always good first examples. Dickens created people in his books, not characters. No one, no matter how insignificant to the main plot, was ever purely good or purely evil. Some were very eccentric with ridiculous names, but the all still felt like people you could pass in a busy city in real life.  

And people watching. It's both a great writer's tool and a way to creep out the neighbors you don't want to socialize with anyway.

Best Place by the Fire: Some words on John Hurt and Storytelling

“Let me show you fate through the round of this ring—”

A poetic way to start a tale. Now, read it again, but this time, imagine a deep, warm voice with a slight gravely edge speaking to you.

Those words, written by Anthony Minghella, captured the short attention span of a five year old me. This was not simply because they were well-written words or the fact that they were a part of Jim Henson’s short run series “The Storyteller”. It was because the voice which spoke them mesmerized me. When John Hurt told a story, you listened.

In the wake of his passing, I re-watched this television series with a fresh sense of respect. The voice which sanctioned a hunt for the Black Cauldron, declared his humanity to a judgmental Victorian world, screamed in agony at the parasite within him (twice), raised Hellboy, helped a wand choose a wizard, and dared to tell the Time Lords “No more”, that was one of the first voices which made me want to write.

It’s a strange connection, yes, but it’s how it happened. Hurt brought Minghella’s versions old fairy tales to life by simply speaking in the way he always did. He filled each word with humor, tragedy, and adventure. It made me want to be able to put together words worthy of such a reading. And I will miss that voice.