What are you still reading for? Didn’t you see the title?
Glynis: A Movies about Writing Request
I just found out that there was a Murder, She Wrote BEFORE Murder, She Wrote. In the 1960s Glynis Johns (you know, the mom from Mary Poppins) starred in a sitcom about a mystery writer married to a defense attorney and they solved crimes together! But all I can find of this show is a thirty second clip! Does anyone know if anything else of it exists? Is there any place to watch a full episode? If you do know, please leave comment below. Thanks for fueling my obsession.
Life of Emile Zola: Movies about Writing
I confess I know little about Emile Zola and the only one of his stories I’ve read is Therese Raquin (and I never finished it). But they reference this film in the movie The Majestic and that left me curious. I also learned that Zola was a fighter of antisemitism using both his verbal and written powers. Of course, the movie made in 1937 didn’t dare bring up this topic even though it was the entire reason for the climax of the film!
Paul Muni plays a sympathetic yet pretentious Zola with the usual starving artist tropes. The film opens on a cold garret where he lives with Paul Cezanne and the burn popular novels in order to keep warm. I get that Zola wants to believe in the idea that books need to say something important, but burning? Really dude! Get off your literary high horse. What was your lofty point in Therese Raquin, huh? Yes, I’m just going to go back to that one. It’s my only argument. If you read it or watch a movie version, you’ll see what I feel it makes a valid argument here.
Zola starts as a penniless idealist who can’t hold down a writing job because his topics are not bestsellers. He investigates labor conditions, homelessness, rights for women, and even how the law treats prostitutes. This movie is post Hays Code so they never call Nana, the woman he interviews, a prostitute although it is heavily implied. His fictionalized account of how life treated her to put her in that circumstance becomes his first successful book (sex sells even when it’s highly depressing and oppressive sex). The bookseller is happy to surprise Zola with a large check for 1800 Francs. In reality, Zola interviewed several prostitutes and women who worked in a theatre in Paris. Also, the actual book Nana sounds like just an exploit of how women ruin their own lives. Either way, there was no single Nana, but that’s not very good for a screenplay. Still, I find the movie idea so awful. He essentially tells this single woman’s story without her permission. He gives her a copy with a few francs inside though.
Zola and Cezanne part ways when Zola continues to write scandalous exposes of life in contemporary Paris which make him a comfortable living. He starts to focus more on politics instead of social issues, criticizing the French army and leaders.
Most of this film focuses on what is known as the Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkrut) is a Jewish (in the movie Hungarian) officer accused of treason. He’s railroaded by the French government with little proof of his guilt and sent to Devil Island for years. *History fact: the only evidence against Dreyfus was disposed of letter found by a cleaning woman and written in handwriting proven to be another member of military personnel. The French military did not want people to think they could not catch a traitor in their midst and supposedly fabricated evidence to blame Dreyfus and have to hunt down the other man. Dreyfus didn’t get a full exoneration by the French government until 1995 because even 80 years later, they didn’t want to be wrong.
When Dreyfus’s wife presents Zola with new evidence in the case, she begs him to expose that the French military knows her husband is innocent and do not want the public shame of admitting it. A middle aged Zola builds of renewed energy at his own outrage and writes the famous newspaper article, “J’Accuse…!” The passionate words of his article convince a portion of the French people of the truth. Again, I’m going to state that the original point of J’Accuse was to show that Dreyfus was a scapegoat due to his Jewish background and that antisemitism was keeping-him imprisoned despite evidence of his innocence. But Hollywood didn’t want to deal with that mess topic in the times of Hitler and appeasement.
There’s rioting in the streets and Zola is put on trial for his open letter of anger. In court, Zola states that he stands up for his country with “his pen”. He gives a great “Oscar clip” speech despite being a “writer” not a “talker”. His argument that his work, even his declarations of Dreyfus’s innocence, is a plea for the good of France.
I’m not going to give away the ending (you can look it up elsewhere or read a biography to get the rest), just know that the last half of the movie is about how writing can convince or infuriate or even fight for a man’s life.
Hamilton: Movies about Writing
You know this one. It’s a Broadway play filmed for Disney+ (don’t sue me Disney+). Okay fine, if you don’t know it - it’s a fictional account of the life of Alexander Hamilton, father of the American economic system, and to a lesser extent about his wife, Eliza. Some people argue that she’s the real protagonist, but for the sake of this blog, I’m sticking to Hamilton.
Why am I writing a blog about a founding father rap musical by Lin Manuel Miranda? Because Hamilton always wrote “like he was running out of time”. Duh.
I’m keeping this short, but what I want to point out is how the play makes a point of showing how prolific Hamilton was. How he wrote everything down and, when he was passionate about a topic, he wrote until he ran out of ink. The play even shows how this habit cut into his personal life with his family and how it led to his downfall as a politician. He needed more balance which he only finds about several tragedies.
That was pretty much all I had to say except that I’ve had “My Shot” stuck in my head for days now. At least it finally go the Bruno song out of there.
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.”
Gothic: Movies about Writing (Copy)
And now for something completely batsh*t.
Long before I ever actually read Frankenstein, I was weirdly knowledgeable about its creator, Mary Shelley. And therefore, when I was flipping though late night television long ago and probably watching channels I wasn’t supposed to be, I discovered a young Natasha Richardson running panicked down a hallway while Julian Sands made out with Gabriel Byrne. They addressed each other as Byron, Shelly, and Mary, so naturally I kept watching. What I had stumbled upon was 1986’s Gothic directed by Ken Russell, a man who had to have been high most of the time (and if he wasn’t, the inside of his brain must’ve been a scary, brightly colored place).
This is meant to be a horror movie, but the monsters are pretty obviously the result of a bad trip.
There are several films that attempt to capture the idea of Mary Shelley winning the famous “let’s tell ghost stories” night against Byron, Shelley, and John Polidori (more about them later), but this is the only one that really focuses on the amount of opium likely ingested that night. This is NOT A CHILDREN’S FILM. Hell, I don’t this film is probably appropriate for most adults.
The madness open with Percy Shelley rowing Mary and her step-sister, Claire, to the shore of Byron’s villa. The moment he exists the boat, ye olde fangirls chase Percy up the lawn i hopes of tearing his clothes as a souvenir. You know, that whole poets being the rockstars of their day comparison. I don’t care how popular, I don’t think anyone every squeed at a poet. Sorry poets.
The characters/historical figures are established by extremes in the first 8 minutes. Byron is a lustful rogue who instantly makes Mary uncomfortable. Percy is a ridiculous child who just wants the attention of those around him. Claire is a wild thing determined to keep up in her recent and abusive affair with Byron. John Polidari, Byron’s person doctor, is just weird and uncomfortable with a sense of being both as lustful as Byron yet sexually harrassed by him (everyone man in this is established as bi from the get-go). And finally Mary, the quietest and most sensible of the group.
They decide to play a game in the giant house where the director fills the set with obvious sexual allegories, clockwork figures (that are very obviously people in costumes) and annoyed servants. The game is ended abruptly with Percy crawling out on the roof in the midst of a lightning storm and reminding Mary of her father’s favorite theories about electricity.
Drunk, high, and in hopes of an orgy, the group starts to read aloud from a book of ghost stories (while Percy makes out with Mary and feels up Claire at the same time…yep, you read that right). The stories instantly show Parallels to Mary’s future such as doom for Percy near water and the loss of a child. It feels like most movie versions about this night like to do this, Make it seem like Mary cursed them all for tragedy by writing Frankenstein. Nevermind that this whole group suffered from mental illness that was added to with booze and opium.
Byron decides they should “conjure” a ghost which Mary is unnerved by due to her own desires to bring her recently stillborn baby back to life. Even though they declare that they will make up their own ghost stories you never really see this - just more orgies, Claire having a seizure, Byron ordering a half-naked maid to pretend to be his half-sister, and Mary realizing that Percy is infatuated with Byron.
Here, I finally make a writing observation besides the poet thing. Percy Shelley is portrayed in Gothic as both being fascinated and attracted by Byron, but also as if he wants to be Byron. Sometimes writers think that by mimicking the behavior of their literary idols it will improve their craft. You know those people who only use a typerwriter and drink rum because Hemmingway did the same. Or only use a quill pen and hide oneself in a room because Emily Dickinson was a shut-in. Or pine after a girl named Laura because that’s what Petrarch did.
From that point, the movie 45 minutes of nightmare fuel involving more sex, miscarriages, boob eyes, near suicide, mud baths, philosophical conversations about death and homosexuality and religion, and Frankenstein’s creature following Mary around the house until she sees an image of her son William dead (which really did happen). The characters argue whether this is all the result of their minds or a creature of the night.
The end of all of this crazy is the idea great literature and horror comes from nights of great f*&%ed-up events. A part at the end involving modern tourists informs the audience that from Polodoiri’s obsession with blood and Byron came the novella the Vampyre and Mary’s insistence to bring back the dead came Frankenstein.
Once again, a movie about writers relies on the idea of their biography being directly linked to their works. Only in this case, it involves a lot of Julian Sands being naked and, at least for me, that does not inspire much in the way of literary genius.
By the way, despite my sounding so critical of this bizarre film, I do own it.
I’m too lazy to check who owns this. Just don’t sue me, please.
Theme in June
June is going to be all Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley based movies/tv episodes. It was going to be May. Why May? Because that’s when she started writing Frankenstein, of course. I would have focused on a man-made terror if it meant I didn’t have to hang out with Byron. So why not May and instead June? Because my blogs will be delayed for a month because Phoenix Fan Fusion is back! Yes, we have our "legally can’t call it Comic Con” back this year and that means a lot of planning and a lot of taking vitamin C.
Saturday Night Live (Fiction Workshop): Movies about Writing
This is a silly choice, but here’s a short from Saturday Night Live. This is from earlier this March (2022) when Oscar Issac hosted.
In this five minute skit, a teacher at a monthly writer workshop invites the custodian to sit in on their session because she always sees him with a book in his hand. Custodian Michael (Issac) reveals that is own writing is his late night fantasies about Dua Lipa coming to the school late at night looking for him. The writing instructor, realizing where this is going, tries to stop him. However, the male writers in the room urge him on while the female writers try not to listen.
The instructor, wanting to be supportive and create a safe space for sharing, allows him to continue. Then, the story turns to the janitor “character” making out with the music sensation. Once again, the instructor stops him, but when Michael sadly says, “You’re right. I’m not a writer” she invites him to finish the story.
SPOILER ALERT (like you didn’t see this coming) His story starts to turn pornographic (after a brief criticism of the porn industry as a whole) and he skips to the end . . . of chapter one. Mike then reveals that the “short story” has over 800 pages (yep, authors lie about length sometimes when they’re excited to share), so the instructor and female authors exit while the male authors sit in rapt attention.
I think we can all learn something from this skit about trying to be supportive of other writers . . . but also look out for the creepers.
The Veil (The Crystal Ball): Movies about Writing
My boyfriend found a $3 dvd set of a Boris Karloff anthology series I’d never heard of called “The Veil”. Apparently it was film and never aired as a series. And it’s not bad!
The Crystal Ball is an episode not about the writing process, but about how the world can view fiction writers as fanciful and people to be placated.
Edmond is a popular author in early 20th century France with his love stories translated and sold in multiple western countries. His girlfriend, Marie, had left him for his rich publisher, Charles. Her parting gift is a crystal ball, which Edmond’s uncle (Karloff) says is just like her - beautiful but useless. Boris Burned You, Lady!
The uncle is pretty observant of people. He makes Edmond burn Marie’s letters, pointing out that as a writer of “ sentimental love stories” Edmond will keep pining if he keeps her words. The uncle makes another comment that Edmond would never fall for a woman who didn’t show a flair for “passionate” word smithing. Edmond also tries throwing himself in work, but he’s blocked.
Sadly, these steps do not help Edmond as he has to attend dinners at Marie and his boss’s house and, oh yeah, because he starts to see visions of Marie in the frickin crystal ball. Yes, this is that kind of story.
The visions show him Marie’s affairs with a Parisian artist while her husband is away on business. Edmond spirals into a sleepless obsession with her dalliances and his work suffers greatly despite a deadline on the horizon. Finally, he reveals to his uncle that he thinks he’s going mad because of the crystal ball images. The uncle dismisses this as the jealous fantasies of an overactive imagination. But he does offer the solution that if Edmond sees Marie go someplace, he should check that place in reality. “ if you are going out of your mind let’s find out in time to do something about it!” the uncle rather practically declares.
I won’t give away the entire plot although I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own, but I do want to add how Edmond tries to tell his boss. The publisher has a similar reaction as the uncle. Good writers has realistic fantasies (oxymoron) and it’s all in Edmond’s head.
Now another important thought - how did that crystal ball not burn down Edmond’s house! He kept is uncovered in his garden with the sun directly shining on it! I’m just saying.
Writer's Block: Movies about Writing
Writer’s Block is a 2013 short film directed by Brandon Planco and staring Bryan Cranston. Cranston plays a nameless screen writer who smokes too much while he second guesses his own work. He realizes he doesn’t know where to go with the plot and decides to take a walk. The part with him talking to himself at his computer table if very relatable. His clothes including unzipped hoody are pretty relatable too or it that just me?
This walk involves following a beautiful woman out of his hotel and into the night. The woman, listed in the credits as “Writer’s Block” leads him to a movie theatre where he has an emotional meltdown. I’m not going to give away the whole short, but understand that is a brief series of metaphors between him and the woman. Or was it?
Okay, so there’s no real ending, but I got the jist.
Drive My Car: Movies About Writing
It was Oscar season which means I watched every best picture nominee as per tradition started when i was in college. I know, know. It’s a little pretentious but it’s also fun. It’s like a game every year where you have to see every movie before that bloated annual ceremony which I religiously watch.
Still, I’m going to keep this one short. I just wanted to make a little comment about the screenwriting process presenting in the nominated (and winning) film Drive My Car.
First, warning. Thar be references to adult content here. Second, a thought. I have not read the Haruki Murakami short story that the movie is based on so I have no idea if this was a part of the original plot or something the screenwriters Ryuske Hamaguchi and Takamsa Oe came up with. If it’s the former, I find it a strange addition.
If you’ve seen the film, you know where I’m going with this. If you haven’t, here’s some background. Drive My Car is about a widower theatre actor and director played by Hidetoshi Nishijima being chauffeured by a twenty-three year old woman who makes him reminisce about the loss of his daughter (who would be the same age as the chauffeur if she’d lived) and especially his wife. Without giving anything important away, the whole plot is about art and grief and loss and guilt.
BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANT TO COMMENT ON. The main character’s late wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), had been a critically acclaimed screenwriter who mostly wrote televised dramas. And, oh yeah, she got her best ideas from orgasms. When she and her husband would have sex, she’d spout out plot points and character building. The next day, he would repeat all to her and she’d write it into a script.
I have so many questions about this? Most of which might make my mother blush if she read this blog. But I guess my biggest thought is - how is that productive? What if she’s on a deadline, but has a headache? What if she needs a flash of brilliance but she has a UTI? Also, she must’ve really trusted her husband to repeat it all back to her the next day. I’d be paranoid he’d forget something important because . . . you know . . . they’re having sex.
This idea just does not seem like a good writing model, but I guess I shouldn’t judge. My model for motivating myself to write involves a lot of Youtube rabbit holes and spinning in my chair. To each their own, I guess.
Murder, She Wrote (The Murder of Sherlock Holmes): Movies about Writing
Oh, come on! You knew this one was coming eventually. This is the premiere 2 part episode of "Murder, She Wrote” from 1984. You know this show. You know you know it. Even if you’ve never seen it, you know it’s out there, especially if you were a child of the 80s or 90s. The star, Angela Lansbury, was so ingrained into our culture that you were aware of this show probably at birth.
Fine. Just in case you don’t know, the premise of “Murder, She Wrote” is literally that. Jessica Fletcher is a popular murder mystery writer who lives in the small town of Cabot Cove where’s she an active member of the community. So active, that she ends up regularly helping the sheriff solve real murders. In fact, everywhere she goes she’s asked to assist in a murder investigation by somebody. No one seemed to question (that I can recall) why murder followed Angela Lansbury’s character everywhere she went, but you know - it was the 80s. All that cocaine was clouding people’s judgement.
The Murder of Sherlock Holmes starts with substitute teacher Jessica as a part of a local refreshments team viewing the dress rehearsal for a murder-mystery play. By just watching the first act, she reveals to the the director that she knows who the killer is and how. Of course, she’s right because she knows story structure! I love this opening scene! Especially, since the director was writing her off as silly middle-aged woman and thinks that his play isn’t well written and that’s why she figured it out. Many writers of fiction understand cause and effect. We ruin a lot of movies for ourselves, but it can’t be helped.
But at this point in the series, she isn’t published. Her nephew Grady (a re-occurring character that runs to his Aunt Jessica every time he screws up his life . . . which happens a lot in the show) calls to reveal that he gave her first manuscript to a publisher. Within weeks, this recent widow is number 2 on the bestseller list and completely overblown by her own picture in bookshop windows. She’s sent to New York for a series of personal appearances, most of which make her realize that the entire media business is full of phonies, fake academics, fortune hunters, and hosts who give away the ending on television (rude!). Then, she’s accused of stealing the idea from a crazy woman and that’s the end of it for her. She’s ready to leave when Mr. Giles, her publisher, insists on bringing her to a party at his country house to meet friendly book lovers where she won’t be “patronized” or “brow-beaten”.
Jessica is thrust into a rich people costume party where everyone comes as their favorite fictional character (although one man is dressed as Henry VIII so these aren’t intelligent rich people). She dresses as Cinderella’s fairy godmother, but I always thought she looked more like Glinda the Good Witch. Here is where we meet the Sherlock Holmes in question, a lecherous captain played by Brian Kieth, who is found in the pool with a face-full of buckshot. Or at least, that’s what everyone is led to believe at first. This isn’t really important, but Anne Francis played his glamorous, yet suffering wife (she starred in Forbidden Planet - as the song goes).
Enter Ned Beatty as a police chief. Despite him stating that he read Jessica’s book, “not that he liked it”, the chief asks for her insight as a people watcher. Smart man. Ask the woman that’s going to be looking for her next character. Despite his reliance on her theories, Jessica doesn’t want to get involved until her nephew Grady is named as a suspect. If you know this show, you know that Grady is not smart enough or ballsy enough to pull off murder, but he tends to end up in bad situations all of the time.
I’m not going to give away the killer or motive, but I’ll tell some more about the mystery and her writer’s mind. First, a quick complaint. There’s a part when Jessica is trying to tail a suspect and is nearly assaulted by Andy Garcia. First of all, the stand-ins for the fight scene are just bad. But also, she wanders into this bad neighborhood without even thinking about it like she’s some naive small town hick. I wish they’d given her a little more common sense there. Luckily, a young man, (listed int he credits as “Black Youth” - insert grunt noise here) who recognized her from her book cover, follows and saves her from evil Andy Garcia. Still, it’s kind of a sweet scene which shows her that even if the elite of the book world don’t appreciate her, the fans do. But more importantly, there is the moment when Grady promises her she’ll write more books, even when she declares that she’s giving it up. The entire show is called “Murder, She' Wrote” so clearly she keeps writing. Still, even when writers aren’t writing things down, their brain is constantly in a state of authorship.
If you enjoy Murder, She Wrote, you should watch PushingUpRoses on Youtube. She’s an artist who recaps the zaniest episodes of this show with fantastic humor and delightful insight. Also check out her videos on computer games from the 90s and episodes of spooky kids shows and bad movies - you know, what! It’s all great! Just go watch her channel.
Young Cassidy: Movies about Writing
I’ve been meaning to watch this film for years. TCM plays each St. Patrick’s Day so let’s do this.
Young Cassidy is a fictionalized account of Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s autobiography. Johnny Cassidy (Rod Taylor) lives in a rundown house full of books with his mother and siblings who are all desperate for work in English controlled Dublin. Cassidy’s writing begins with protest pamphlets about Irish nationalism. The anonymous pamphlets end up inciting riots where many people are injured and killed. Cassidy decides that stirring up violence isn’t helping and decides to write newspaper articles and dramas about the plight of the Irish instead.
When Johnny publishes his first article and is paid for it, he celebrates by buying six copies of the paper and a book on drilling. He and other men around town form a militia, however, when the men start to think illogically, Cassidy leaves. After a battle (a weird battle that has an Irish stereotype where a man’s whiskey is destroyed and while he moans about it is shot), he writes a book about his fallen friends and is paid 15 pounds by an English publisher in Dublin. Hover, they pay him a check when he has no bank account so he can’t cash the damn thing.
The first play Johnny sends in is sent back the comment “a bit long on character and a bit short on plot”. He edits it, sends it again this time famous playwright, poet, and folklorist W.B. Yeats sends it back, saying, “a bit long on plot and a bit short on character.” The third time he sends the play, it’s lost. This is a legit scenario here. Eventually, one of his plays is produced and he explains to his girlfriend that “writing is love” to him and she takes it personally. Still, she’s supportive when his first play is a flop. Despite the lack of commercial success, the founders of the theatre Yeats and Lady Gregory encourage him to write more.
I’ve never read anything by Sean O’Casey, but plenty by Yeats and other Irish writers of the time who tried to use Irish culture as a way subtly fight back against the oppression of the English. I know enough about the different reasoning for Irish protest to call it oppression. I though his sister’s story was the saddest. Ella married the first man she could to escape Dublin, but he abandoned her with five children. Their mother speaks of Ella’s depression and current personality, according to Cassidy, “as if she had died”. Spoiler alert - Ella does die. But it adds to Cassidy’s fight and trying to fight using as he says it, “Beauty”. “[Ella] used to say that beauty was more important than bread. How do I explain that to her children?”
This film was always advertised to be about young exploits and Irish shenanigans than writing. Among his political struggles are the tales of his love affairs. His first notable relationship is with scandalous actress and kept woman Daisy (Julie Christie). His second is with bookshop worker Nora (Maggie Smith) who is impressed with his love of reading and sends him books he tried to steal. Why is there no public library in Dublin at this time? It’s supposed by like 1910 or 1911. Most major cities in America had libraries? What the heck.
But the movie is more about his love of country and how he could use writing to rebel. Nora makes a classist comment about needing a “high education” to be a writer.
Silver Streak: Movies about Writing
Confession - this movie isn’t very much about the writing process. But I didn’t have time to write a full blog this week. Enjoy.
This film was released in 1976, but the last time I saw it was sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. I’m sometimes surprised by the number of Richard Pryor movies I was allowed to watch as a child. But this blog is going to focus more on Gene Wilder’s character, a book editor onboard a train to attend a wedding. Just a quick warning that if you decide to watch the film, it does include jokes that cross some modern boundaries and use less-than-faltering stereotypes.
Silver Streak stars Wilder as George Caldwell who starts his journey meeting a cast of Agatha Christie-esque characters played by Ned Beatty as a lecherous lawman, Clifton James as an accusing sheriff, and Jill Clayburgh as the female sidekick Hilly. The cast is rounded out by bit parts by Fred Willard, Patrick McGoohan, Ray Wlston, Richard Kiel, and Scatman Crothers.
George confesses to taking the train because he needs to get some reading done for his publishing job. Hilly has recently taken a job for an academic trying to sell his book on Rembrandt so the pair quickly create the usual banter using nonfiction as the subject. The film automatically gives the notion that book editors make bank because George has a first class train cabin and orders fancy food with lots of champagne.
My question is, while George and Richard Pryor’s character are tossed into a world of art conspiracies and murder, what happened to all of the books George was supposed to be editing on the train? Those poor authors. I hope they had carbon copies.
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford: Movies about Writing
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford is a 1936 where Jean Arthur plays a mystery writer named Paula whose trying to convince Dr. Lawrence “Brad” Bradford (William Powell) to marry her again instead of making his alimony payments to her. It’s a comedy. During their “wedded bliss” Paula would convince Brad to consult on murders so she could research them for her novels. But Brad insists that he likes his life now where he can read the paper and “enjoy a murder” without her buzzing in his ear. He didn’t object to her writing mysteries. He objected to her “living them”. He has a point there as she is paranoid that every surprise is a gangster with a gun ready to bump the both off.
Of course, because this is a movie, a case falls into their lap about a murdered jockey. What follows is intrigue and screwball antics. Paula uses their budding retry at domesticity to play detective. She tries drugging them, bashing them, and all sorts of other problems in order to solve the case. However, events lead to suspicious against Brad and now he has to play the detective while Paula distracts the police on his tail.
I enjoy how Paula’s brain is always on the case like how most writers would be distracted. Of course, since she writes mysteries, it causes her to forget her manners. I appreciate this about her character. So many old movies make authors charming and sociable. It’s more realistic in my opinion for her to be distracted and a little “dizzy” as they say in 30s lingo. She also has a big box of props for developing murder stories which is a fantastic detail!
Alex and Emma: Movies about Writing
I know this one is not everyone’s favorite movie, but I enjoyed the jokes about the writing process and maybe if you watch/re-watch you’ll agree after reading this blog.
Alex (Luke Wilson) is an in-debt author on a deadline who hires stenographer Emma (Kate Hudson) to take down his words and save him on the editing process for a his first draft. Rob Reiner upholds a tradition by both playing Alex’s publisher and is the director of the film (seriously, look at his movies. He acts in a lot of them).
Alex’s Gatsby-esque book becomes fantasy sequences throughout the film. He and Kate Hudson play literary counterparts of themselves and Sophia Marceau play’s the subject of the lovelorn Alex’s affection (both fictionally and in reality), Polina. Although, he lies to Emma and says Polina is a mixture of various women he’s known. The novel is about Adam, a tutor for a wealthy family who falls in love with the single mother of his young charges, but needs money in order to win her. Emma is turned into a series of characters that I will get to later.
First of all, I appreciate Alex’s apartment, a half-renovated mess full of books with a loft for a bed and bare wood all around. The sharks who come to collect money he borrowed from their boss did not age well, portrayed as Cuban stereotypes donning tank tops and neck tattoos. Alex has to confess to them that he’s blocked so they give him thirty days to get what he owes before they kill him. Yeah. I know. I feel like taking a penniless writer’s money was a bad idea on the Cuban boss’s part. I don’t think he would have done it in the first place, but then this movie wouldn’t have a plot, I guess.
It’s extreme NanoWrimo! Write 50,000 words in 30 days or DIE!!!!
Emma immediately dislikes Alex’s desperation and hypochondria, still she takes the job out of curiosity. Meanwhile, Alex is annoyed by Emma’s logic and how she always reads the end of a book first to decide if she will read it. In fact she does this with his previous novel right in front of me. Rude. Emma is confused that Alex has no idea where the new book will go and finds it strange when he explains to her that the characters decide where the story will go. This starts a first day of hours upon hours of Alex trying to write a grabbing first sentence. Yet, when Emma threatens to storm out, Alex’s brain starts to flow.
This becomes the norm between the two of them. He comes up with an idea and she argues it. Some of her arguments are super annoying like how he can’t claim that real explorer Cartier discovered the made-up setting of his book. Others make more sense as a reader, such as her objecting to descriptions of characters after they’ve spoken, ruining what she’s already imagined in her head. There are great jokes about word choice (“You introduced the bosom. I'm just asking if you want them to heave.”, plot holes, and character development. Most of the character development comes from him constantly changing the book’s Au-pair who he bases on Emma. She starts as Ylva, an awkward Swede, then becomes Elsa the bossy German, and finally Anna an American who embodies the truth of Emma in fictional form.
A good deal of the real writing process is in this movie. There is even a scene where a day’s work is ruined and Adam must re-write it.
The rest of the film is the usual rom-com fodder. He grows as a man. He gets the girl. He loses the girl. He learns a lesson. And so he gets the girl again.
Down With Love: Movies about Writing
First off, this one is really only funny if you’ve watched the cheesy Doris Day/Rock Hudson rom-coms of the late 50s/60s. But even then, it’s a fun look at a writer’s struggles to become famous. In this case, the writer is Barbara Novak (Renee Zellweger), an attractive librarian from Maine who had written a book encouraging women to first obtain from sex until they have met their career goals, then practice “sex-a-la-carte” like men do in order keep them from being trapped in a marriage that will ruin what they worked so hard for. Sarah Paulson is hilarious as Barbara’s determined publishing agent, Vikki Hiller. However, their rise to success is under attack from Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor the gorgeous), “the lady’s man, man’s man, man about town” journalist who is determined to prove that love will always end a woman’s ambitions. With little approval from his friend and boss, Peter McMannus (David Hyde Pierce), Catcher takes on an alternate personality that will cause Barbara to fall in love and discredit her book.
Everyone good on the plot? Good. Let’s jump into the author stuff. The movie opens with Barbara arriving in New York and meeting Vikki. The two instantly become best friends (a running gag is how they dress in similar over the top fashions everywhere they go), but a part of that bonding comes from facing the board at Vikki’s publishing company. The men (led by a Tony Randall cameo) dismiss the book as ridiculous and refuse to put money into marketing. Vikki and Barbara decide to prove them wrong, first by trying to get Catcher Block to write an article about the book for his men’s magazine. When that fails, Vikki manages to get an appearance for Barbara’s book on the Ed Sullivan Show. The editing department must have had fun with this. They had to make it look like Judy Garland was singing “Down with Love” on the Ed Sullivan Show when I’m pretty sure that was from her own TV show.
Oh marketing. People think that if you are published with the big five companies they do all the marketing for you. Ha! Not unless you are already a best seller. Sorry folks. It’s up to the authors. This is why more authors have been switching to independent and small distributors because they have more control over their work and still have to do all the footwork.
One of my favorite scenes is when Vikki takes Barbara to see her book on a shelve in a bookstore. Barbara points out how there is only one copy and if someone buys it, there will be zero copies. Vikki corrects this by pointing out there is one more copy in another bookstore. Barbara looks like she will cry. I feel you, Barbara, I feel you.
After the television hype, Barbara’s book becomes an international bestseller (where the movie manages to put in some Cold War jokes) and even gets parodied in Mad Magazine (you know you’ve made it when someone parodies you). Her book is even banned! Nothing says success like a banned book. The non-fiction scandal creates a social revolution. Woman start wanting to focus on their own lives and make men have to wait on them. Like, you know, equality or something.
SPOILER ALERT:
It turns out Novak is a made-up name of Catcher Block’s former secretary Nancy Brown who wrote the bestseller in order to get his attention. Yet, after writing the book and seeing how it changed the lives of so many women for the better, she decides that she doesn’t want Catch’s love. Meanwhile Catch and Peter are in the dumps because they just want to marry these women and are feeling used. Catcher and Barbara find middle ground where they could both have jobs and be married. Power of books, man!
