Mary Shelley: Movies about Writing

Now to go from the batshit to the attempts at historically accurate on the same topic. Mary Shelley was a movie I never saw before this because I heard it actually wasn’t that accurate (for example, only 6 minutes into viewing I noticed that they completely removed Fanny, the third Godwin sister which is so unfair).

As this one is more about Mary’s life, it has a larger cast than the other movies I watched. Elle Fanning play the titular character who has already begun her attempts at writing even before meeting Shelley (attempts which her father criticizes as unoriginal). Bell Powley is Claire Clairemont, Douglas Booth is Shelley, Tom Sturridge is Byron, and Ben Hardy is Polidori. Since the night in Switzerland is only a part of this film you also see Mary’s best friend Isabel (Maisie Williams), her father (Stephen Dillane), and her despised step-mother (Joanne Froggatt - who outside of Downton Abbey always seems to play antagonists). Thomas Hogg (Jack Hickey) gets to be in this one too who was a friend of Shelley’s.

The movie starts with Mary sent away to Scotland when she and her step-mother butt heads more than usual. She and Isabel share a love of the supernatural and a bond since both lost their mothers at a young age. The house welcomes Percy Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to recite their poems at parties. The attraction is instant and yet no one is shocked by their flirting. Shelley shows up at Mary’s home in London to become a student of Mr. Godwin and discuss the scandalous ideals of Mary Wollstonecraft. Let the philosophizing begin!

Mary takes a break from her own writing when Shelley shows up and still doesn’t pick up a pencil when Shelley’s wife makes an appearance. When the pair elopes, they of course take Claire with them. This more than any other film focuses on how close Claire and Mary were. This is heartbreaking since the real women fell out in the last few years of Mary’s life. Despite the lack of writing on Mary’s part, she and Claire are devoted to reading and supporting Shelley’s own attempts to be published. When Mary finds out that she’s pregnant, she worries about being a mother and that she’s moving further away from her goals of writing. There is also the whole Shelley wanting to bang Claire thing and thinks Mary should be free to bang his friend Hogg that gets in the way of Mary’s new relationship. Then Lord Byron enters the picture.

After the death of their first child and an escape from Shelley’s debts, they go on the fated trip to Geneva. Here the story will seem familiar. Once more, the second child William is written out, but the manipulations of Lord Byron’s are left in. The opium, the drinking, and the free love commence. Polidori is used more as a talking head who befriends Mary and acts as her sanity in the midst of Byron and Shelley’s “creative process”. Oh hey, this movie does talk about the connection between the painting “The Nightmare” and Mary’s mom.

The ghost story competition is used as high point where both Byron’s cruelty to Claire, the death of Shelley’s wife, and Mary’s renewed interest in writing all come together on one dark night. Polidori is picked on for his Vamyre novella so Mary doesn’t present her book idea, still Byron says he “looks forward to reading her work someday”.

Something I will give this film a lot of credit for it how it actually shows how science and the death of her children, not just ghost stories, inspired Frankenstein. The movie also deals in her own depression and the doubts of a teenage girl trying to build her own life. They give her more independence from Shelley, a realization that she loves him, but her own autonomy is more important than his philosophy and excuses for behaving however he wants.

More importantly, the Mary Shelley movie is more about her writing her book than any other film about her and her depressing life. She has a period of being cut off from Claire and Shelley in which she uses all of the pain she’d experienced in a short life to write the tale of the lonely creature. This also leads into the tale of the publishing which in itself was depressing. Just like in real life, it took her a year to find a publisher and Shelley had to write a preface meaning lots of people then thought he’d secretly written it. There is a nice outburst from Mary about how she wonders the meaning of writing her great work if she can’t have credit for it. It’s a fair question. Is is more important just to be in print or to get credit?

BFI Films owns this image… I think

Rowing with the Wind: Movies about Writing

Have you ever said to yourself - gee, I wonder what it would be like if Hugh Grant played Lord Byron? What? You haven’t! Too bad. It happened. Rowing with the Wind was a 1988 Spanish film with a mostly English cast distributed by an American studio. “Too many cooks! Too many cooks!” Besides Grant as Bryon, the movie stars Lizzy McInnerny as Mary, Valentine Pelka as Shelley, Jose Luis Gomez as Polidori (making him way older than the rest of the group), and Elizabeth Hurley as Claire. Yes, children of the 90s, this when Grant and Hurley met. They also make William Fletcher, Byron’s valet, a major character played by Ronan Vibert.

The film opens with Mary on a ship in icy waters writing the same scene into Frankenstein. Then there’s an abrupt transition to Shelley asking Mary’s father for permission to make her his mistress while Mary, Claire, and their sister Fanny watch through a keyhole. Despite Mr. Godwin’s rejection of this plan leads to the group escaping to Lake Geneva so Claire can tell Lord Byron that she’s pregnant. Poor Fanny gets left behind. For those of you who don’t know, Fanny was Mary’s half-sister, the illegitimate child of famed writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who’d been adopted by Godwin when he became her step-father. She committed suicide the same year Mary ran off with Shelley which is thrown in as a random tragedy instead of being the senseless horror that it should have been in Mary’s life.

Byron is suffering from ennui when the group arrives so he accepts them as perverse entertainment with the usual cruelty to Claire and Polidori mixed in. Shelley starts freaking out before the drugs have even been passed around. There’s a lot of easy to look up facts that are inaccurate in this version, but at least it includes mention of the storytelling night. Still, not much is stated about how not just Frankenstein was developed that night. How about a little love for the Vampyre, movie makers! It deserves more love than Byron and Shelley’s philosophies that fill up half of these movies.

This film does go beyond that summer of creation, but in more of a creepy, supernatural way. Mary’s writing is a larger part of the actual story. She’s begun her novel and starts to feel like the creature is haunting her and those around her. After Polidori drunkenly attempts to talk to her in the middle of the night while she’s working, he hallucinates a scarred man in a coachman’s coat is playing pool with him. The next day he’s found hanged near the billiards table (THAT NEVER HAPPENED! The doctor died 6 years later).

Mary pauses the book as she and Claire each give birth to children, but she’s still followed by her creature. She begins to worry about curses and insists they go to Italy for both Shelley’s health and to try to stop her father from demanding money from them. In Italy, the creature kills Mary’s son William, Claire’s daughter is taken away by Byron and dies, Mary grows jealous of Claire, and (gasp) Mary receives poor reviews for her novel Frankenstein! Mary decides she must destroy the creature before it destroys her! Very dramatic.

This one is more of tragedy meeting art in an awkward, historically inaccurate way. There’s no mention of Mary’s other kids or other books. It’s all sadness and Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a little conceited to think every terrible thing to happen in the 19th century was the result of one book you wrote. C’mon Mary, get it together, girl.

Haunted Summer: Movies about Writing

Oh, Alex Winter. Why are you here? Then again, thank you for being here. It makes this film more interesting.

This is actually the third time I’ve seen this movie and it was all pretty much new to me. That’s how memorable it is. First, this Mary Shelley story is based on a novel by Anne Edwards written in 1972, not a historical source. Our key players this time are Alice Krige as Mary, Philip Anglim as Byron, Laura Dern as Claire, Eric Stoltz (yes, 80s teen actor Eric Stoltz who shows off all of his, cough, talents) as Shelley, and Bill S. Preston Esquire as Dr. Polidori. The producers are the infamous Golan and Globus under their company Cannon. If you know not of this duo ridiculous films - LOOK THEM UP! Do it now! Especially some of their 80s magic. I’ll wait.

Yep. The American Ninja films, Superman VI, and the Masters of the Universe films - all their fault! I should be ashamed of how much this company shaped my childhood, but I have no shame. The 80s were a weird time, man.

Haunted Summer pretty much starts by establishing that Mary and Claire are both sleeping with Shelley and are both aware/fine with it. Sisterly sharing, I guess? The poetic lifestyle they are embracing not only includes free love, but drugs, hallucinations, and cruelty disguised as friendship. Toxic relationships alert!

They meet with Byron through Claire’s obsession and love affair, starting with a luncheon before moving onto the villa where most of the film takes place. Just like in Gothic (see other blog), Byron is figure within and yet outside of the group. Their leader who everyone except Mary is in love with. Mary is fascinated by him like a character study, but not obsessed with him like the others. They fight over his attention and grovel at his feet when he’s cruel. I do like how the Dr. Who episode made him more of this figure within his own pompous mind instead of it being his actual role. Mary’s son William is not a part of this story, but Byron’s relationship with the group is changed by the announcement of Claire’s pregnancy. He forces Claire to give up the baby to him, but end their relationship.

Politics and philosophy are also brought into this version, referencing both of Mary’s parents and how their “radical” views shaped her and put her on the path to “revolution”. Interestingly, Byron shows off Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare painting to the group (the same one used as a visual source in Gothic), but there’s no mention of the fact that Mary’s mother knew Fuseli personally.

Now the writing parts. Mary is making her first attempts at prose while on this trip and she complains of how “muddled” her words are. Shelley keeps promising her that her ability will grow with practice. Studying Byron and how he mistreats both Claire and Polidori starts to give Mary nightmares of a large, deformed man in a coachman’s coat stalking the house.

SPOILER ALERT:
There’s no night of storytelling where she comes up with Frankenstein. Mary decides that Byron will experience her terror firsthand. She and Polidori drug the lord and the doctor wears a monster mask. He chases Byron through an underground cave and the next morning when Mary reveals the trick, Byron tells her that all monsters have some sadness. Oh and then they sleep together because that’s what this movie is. For once, Shelley is the only one who doesn’t sleep with Byron!

This is a blog about writing, however, other than Mary being inspired to create a human monster from watching Byron (and out of place scenes of her scribbling while Shelley sleeps naked - too much Eric Stoltz!) there isn’t much about how that night in 1816 inspired her creative process. This was more about creative people goofing off and calling it art.

Doctor Who (The Haunting of Villa Diodati): Movies about Writing

I’ve covered the night of literary birth before when I wrote a blog about Gothic.

First, the cleanest version of the night Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Doctor Who can’t have opium dreams and seductions by Lord Byron after all. This one starts with Mary (Lili Miller) as more of a child-bride, excited by flights of fancy and horror stories. Most of the time, she’s depicted at the logical one amongst the party, but in this case the logic comes later.

Because it is Doctor Who, there are aliens. The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) takes her three companions to the night when the famous ghost story writing challenge is supposed to take place. However, they find the party missing Percy Shelley and busy playing parlor games. This episodes does have a great joke in which one of Doctor Who’s companions, Yaz, commands, “No one snog Byron!”

The strangeness of the episode starts with poltergeist activity and disembodied hands trying to choke people. Percy Shelley has been troubled by visions of a dark figure over the lake and attempts to get to him seem stopped by the villa itself. Dr. Polidori is controlled by an outside force during a bought of sleepwalking which helps the Doctor figure out how the house is tricking them, but also includes another fantastic joke where Byron tries to hide behind Clare when startled.
I also like how the history of the time is added into the episode, how “the year without a summer” played a role in the famous villa holiday and, how it’s effecting the alien presence in the episode. What is “the year without a summer” you may ask? It’s just that. A volcanic errupti0n changed the world’s climate and left most countries in a famine. It’s quite fascinating, yet sad. Look it up.

The alien in question turns out to be an incomplete Cyberman. That’s right. Use the famous Doctor Who villain that is a murdered human body reused by technology in an episode about the author of Frankenstein. Derivative? Probably. But I’ll take it. There is a focus on Percy Shelley’s writing and how the Cyberman has a psychic link to both him and his poetry. And I’ll end the summary of the episode there so you can see the end for yourself.

Being Doctor Who, there is an attempt to give all characters more emotional insight. They of course include the mental health problems of Dr. Polidori and the nasty self-indulgences of Byron. But Claire Clairmont, Mary’s step-sister, is viewed as more of the lost, insecure, and anxious teenager she more than likely was than an instantly mad woman obsessed with Byron.

As for Mary, the episode focuses much more on her relationship to the other character and to her son William than to her writing. Motherhood has made her more mature and determined, more worried about her baby than herself. It’s difficult to watch knowing that William dies as a toddler.

Even though there is little link between Mary’s writing and the night that is is made obvious, the episode includes many visual connections for Frankenstein fans. A great coat like the one the creature wears. A disappearing child in the clutches of a monster. The soul within a horror.

And the doctor has a great speech about how literature effects history. “Words matter.”

Shelfie Time!

We all have the one friend, the selfie addict. All parts of life must be recorded by having the person with the longest arm hold a phone/camera out to capture the tilted up faces of all people involved. I bet you never thought about just how complicated taking a selfie is until you read that sentence.

But there is something easier to still express yourself and visually show the world who you are - the shelfie. No, that is not a typo.

A shelfie, for those of you who are overthinking this and needing clarification, is defined by Urban Dictionary as “A picture or portrait of your bookshelf. Showcasing literature IN ALL IT'S GLORY!
(This term was originally defined by author Rick Riordan)”. And before any of you jump down my throat, yes, Urban Dictionary is a legitimate source in this instance.

Yesterday was National Library Shelfie Day (which falls on the fourth Wednesday of every January), tradition started by New York Public Library as a way to show diverse holidays through books on the subject. In case you didn’t notice, yesterday this unofficial holiday was celebrated on social media by myself, Kira Shay, and Sidney Reetz. But I want to take it a step further. What would the titles on the shelfies of some of the great heroes and heroines of literature looks like?

Jane Eyre: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, The North York Moors: A Walking Guide (Cicerone British Walking) by Paddy Dillon

Susan Penensie: A Lion Called Christian by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, 10 Steps to Declutter Your Wardrobe: Organize Your Closet in a Snap by Carrie Foster, Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, Growing Up: It’s a Girl Thing by Mavis Jukes

Frankenstein’s Creature: Paradise Lost by John Milton, A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer, The Terror by Dan Simmons, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

Tarzan: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Harry Potter: The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble, On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells,  The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynn Reid Banks

Hannibal Lecter: Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick, Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Mind Hunter by John Doulas and Mark Olshaker