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.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Movies about Writing

People often forget that Paul, the main character of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is a published writer.

In case you don’t know the story because you’ve been living under a rock, Paul (George Peppard) has been set up in a new apartment by the wealthy woman who keeps him as her boytoy. There, he meets the eccentric call girl Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) - also a very racist stereotype played by Mickey Rooney, but the less said about that, the better. The pair become friends, at first through his fascination of her personality and her insistence that he looks like her beloved brother Fred. Paul stands by her through parties, love affairs, her rather gross past (really - more people don’t talk about the fact that she was freaking child bride!) trips to Sing Sing, and, of course, visiting Tiffany’s. He falls in love with her despite her repeatedly saying that she could never belong to another human being just like her nameless cat (who lives in her apartment and is dependent on her for nourishment). This is Hollywood, so you know it will all works out okay. Let’s focus on Paul’s job as a writer.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Holly finds out what he does and calls him out for not having any ribbon in his typewriter. He says, “I’m a writer, I guess” and her fantastic response is, “You guess? don’t you know?” Let us all learn from that moment. Paul has one book of short stories which were dirty, “angry, sensitive, intensely felt, and that dirtiest of all dirty words - promising. Or so said The Times Book Review, October 1, 1956.”. Holly even convinces him to sign the library’s copy, which the librarian gets terribly bent out of shape about it. Most importantly, Holly gives Paul a typewriter ribbon. Even though his married girlfriend want him working on a great American novel, a project he’s been slogging through for years, Paul instead writes a short story about Holly. He earns his first paycheck for his own work for the first time in years. This and his feelings for Holly give him the liberty to break away from his sugar mama. And even when he no longer has Holly, he continues to write.

Truman Capote isn’t in this, but if you read the original book you can hear him behind the main character, a struggling New York writer who is observing his usual friend with both criticism and amusement. The film is much different, but at least in the story you know that Cat is okay in the end.

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.

Lucky Partners: Movies about Writing . . . Sort of

This is gonna be short as this isn’t actually a movie about the writer in question, but about the illustrator.

Ginger Rogers plays Jean, a bookstore clerk who believes David Grant, the caricature artist in her neighborhood (Ronald Colman), brings her good luck. She suggests they go in on sweepstakes ticket together as she’s wanting her money to put away at the time of her marriage to school friend Fred (Jack Carson). Grant agrees but only if she allows him to use his part of the winnings for her honeymoon. When the money doesn’t win as much as Jean hoped, David offers to take her on a trip as a “social experiment”. He’s a perfect gentleman until an elderly couple approaches them at the hotel ballroom and mysteriously asks Jean and David to follow them. No, it turns out they are not swingers, they are the authors of Jean’s favorite children’s books who come back to that spot and recreate a cherished memory. Being authors of stories for kids, this cherished memory includes a foot bridge and a wishing well which they ask Jean and David to through pebbles into. There’s some kissing then Freddie shows up, accusing Jean of cheating. All of this comes to a conclusion in a court room after David is suspected of stealing a car he bought in Jean’s name. As it turns out, he is not David Grant, bohemian cartoonists. He’s actually Paul Knight Somerset, the illustrator of a famous folktale book deemed lewd by a judge who threw Somerset in jail. Somerset felt cast down by this because, according to Jean, “artists aren’t like ordinary people, they’re sensitive”, even though the book and its art are later declared a modern classic included on university reading lists. Anyway, Jean and Davi . . . I mean, Paul are set free by the judge to finish falling in love and all that rot.

But I want to see this folklore book, damn it! Also, where was the author he worked with in all of this? Didn’t he have to go to jail too? I need more backstory!

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.

Things to Celebrate May the 4th Be With You…That You Shouldn't Do at Work (Copy)

* it’s technically May the 6th but know you’re still marathoning Mandolorian
1. Don’t stick cinnamon rolls to either side of your head. Let's face it, not everyone can have that luscious wig they threw on Carrie fisher. But if you come in wearing breakfast pastries over your ears not only will your bosses wonder about your sanity, your coworkers will be annoyed that you didn't bring them any. Plus, you'll attract ants.

2. Just because you're wearing a robe-like white dress without a bra, you are not automatically a princess. Stop trying to put medals on the big hairy guy in the next cubicle.

3. Searching through the art installation rock garden for Kyber crystal will not be taken with a grain of salt by office security. I'm pretty sure this is the workplace equivalent of digging through a fountain for pennies. Security won't understand that you need it for your lightsaber.

4. Don't spend your whole lunch period trying to pick a fight about ending of Rogue One.

5. Don't try to use the Force to throw plastic cutlery at your coworkers

6. When you overhear other people saying that they are not afraid of your boss, don’t go up to them and whisper in a croaking tone, “You will be. You. Will. Be.”

7. Don't tell your supervisor that you sense is great darkness in her/him

8. Don't announce to everyone that you are going to use the restroom by loudly humming the Imperial March 

9. When you steal someone else's yogurt from the fridge and they catch you, don't declare that you are a smuggler and it's what you do, sweetheart. If they question you further, don't then additionally declare that you are only there to get paid.

10. Don't fill out reports while muttering under your breath, “I am one with the force. The force is one with me.”

11. Every time the copy machine acts up, don't start pleading with it by using the words, “Droid please!”

12. Don't tell people to get out of your cubicle by singing the Bea Arthur song from the Christmas special.

13. Don't find your coworkers service dog and try to explain to it what a helmet is (or ask it to raise your orphaned children if you are ever killed upon Endor).

14. Don't reply to every piece of office gossip with, “Nooooo! That's not true! That's impossible!”

15.  And finally when your boss tells you that you have been fired for your strange shenanigans, don't tell them that if they strike you down it will only make you more powerful.

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.

Love & Jane: Movies about Writing

I was done with this blog when my computer froze and I lost the whole thing! So this will be short because I am not sitting through this movie a second time.

Lilly is a promising writer (won an award and everything) who runs a Jane Austen Society in Boston (Boston by way of Canada- did not see a single Dunkin). Her love of Austen’s work is on a ridiculous level, I state as I sip tea from a Pride and Prejudice mug, and she keep referring to the author as “Jane”. I beg your pardon, you and Miss Austen have never been properly introduced! Lilly is feeling down for number of small reasons. First, the pub where they hold the society, the Tell-Tale Heart (ha!) is being sold. Second, her favorite bookstore has been bought by a basic Hallmark love interest named Trevor who she instantly dislikes. Trevor is also who Lilly is tasked with creating an advertising campaign for at her job (he has an app - it’s explained in the movie, but not really). And her boyfriend proposes to her in a way that can be summed up as “you’re life sucks, might as well marry me”. Therefore Lilly does what Hallmark thinks women obsessed with Jane Austen would do, gets drunk on wine and face plants into one of the famed novels while calling out to the authoress for help. And what do you know? Jane Austen appears.

First of all, Lilly isn’t all that likable of a character. She’s not unlikable either. She just meh. Trevor is pretty much the same. They are shrug of the shoulders, do in a pinch, “pretty sure this is how human interact” according to a Hallmark dart board of character design. Lilly is supposed to be into old fashioned things, but her clothes make her look more like a WASP - want-to-be. Her Austen group is over the top and more into the romance of the novels than the social commentary. Come on! I love how much shade Austen throws upon her peers. Regency era snark is so subtle. Also, her best friend comments that’s she so surprised at how well Pride and Prejudice mirrors her own Punjabi upbringing. Bitch, there was a whole movie about that (which by the way also included social commentary about modern views of India).

Of course, there’s a dollar store version of Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennett romance between Lilly and Trevor. Oh, should I have said spoiler alert? Like you didn’t see that coming! Let’s get to the real thing I wanted to blog about! Jane Austen’s ghost.

For the most part, the character of Austen wasn’t awful. She was logical, to the point, proper, and defensive of her own work. A good joke was her seeing wet shirt Mr. Darcy on TV and declaring that she needs to meet the actor. However, there were several things she said which reminded me that it was clearly a Canadian actress pretending to be a two-hundred and something year old regency woman. And the writer of this did weird Austen research. First, Austen keeps talking about “her sister” and I kept expecting a heart warming monologue about how Cassandra always supported her. But nope. Instead, we get a joke about her Emma dedication to the prince regent which is a nice piece of trivia, but hardly something that gives us insight into Austen as a woman.

At least a majority of the movie ended up being about writing. Maybe not a majority, but most of the second half of the film. Austen says Lilly should not “sacrifice” her writing for her job and keeps pulling Lilly’s manuscript out of the trash. I am a tad triggered by this “sacrifice” comment. Food and electricity do need to come before art sometimes. Eventually, the main character sends her work to a publisher (not through an agency, just straight to the publisher) and gets an affirmative answer THAT SAME WEEK! Never mind the Austen ghost! That’s the biggest piece of fantasy I’ve ever seen!

Writer's Critique - My Problematic Relationship with Some of my Favorite Authors

Just a weird vent.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - First, the one of these things that’s not like the other. I claim to love Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but what I really love the idea of a feminist icon in the industrial age writing against social norms. Yes, I adore the short story the “Yellow Wallpaper”. Even more, I love that it intrigued my niece who at the time was extremely anti-reading. YES! Catch the attention of another generation of women! You go, Perkins Gilman! Keep encouraging us to stand up for our medical rights and vote (she was, naturally, a suffragist).

I own a book of her short stories which are pretty good. Most of them are average stories of the time period with some underlining themes of socialism and reform. However, I’ve also read Moving the Mountain, Herland, and With Her in Ourland, her three feminist utopian novels. The trio of stories are a bit bland, definitely taking some framework from Thomas More’s original Utopia where it it more about over-explaining how a perfect society could work over giving barely any character development or plot. Still, the books present interesting ideals of family, work, and government as well as gender roles (imagine the Barbie movie, except with lots of offspring and very strict rules). While she does touch on sexism and equality, these books also discuss eugenics and racism. Like, a lot.

Academically and historically, I want to say I love Perkins Gilman. Yet, in my heart of hearts, I know she is quite cringe worthy. Just can’t have nice things sometimes.

Shirley Jackson - I love her unreliable narrators and subtle creepiness. However, my love of Shirley Jackson was nearly squashed before it began by over saturation. In high school, my honors English class read “The Lottery”. There was an instant attachment there. My young mind whirled with this exciting alternate reality and gruesome normalcy.

Then, my first year in college, we read it again. I remember the instructor being so excited to see our reactions to the ending and I confess to faking it to make her feel better (insert innuendo here). This time, the bloom was off the rose and I was less intrigued by the tale. By the fourth and fifth times I was forced to re-read it, I started to blame Shirley Jackson personally.

Despite my enjoyment of the 1963 film The Haunting (if you mention the 1999 version, you are dead to me), I would not read the book The Haunting of Hill House until I was much older. I did not start to collect her books and read others until I was in my late-twenties and through my thirties. It’s rather annoying how school actually turned me off of an author I love for almost a decade.

Mary Shelley - Anyone who has seen my house knows that it is full of references to Universal’s Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. These films coming in second after my love of the original Mummy, but they make less decent merchandise of that one. I know a lot of details of Mary Shelley’s life and family. When I was in my preteens, I already knew the tale of the dark and stormy night when she was dared to write a ghost story by Lord Byron. Between my boyfriend and myself, I think we’ve seen or read almost every dramatization of that night (by the way, if he dies before me I’ve already been told that I can’t keep his calcified heart like Mary did with Percy Shelley’s). I dressed up as her once for a spirit day where I work. Mary Shelley is featured on tee-shirts and notebooks that I own. I’ve even read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Okay, that’s a partial truth. I never actually finished this revered early piece of feminism by Shelley’s mom, but I’ll get back to it someday. I also own multiple biographies of Mary Shelley and watched many a documentary of her life. If I clearly was so obsessed this author, why do I say that we have a troubled relationship? Because for the longest time I claimed hated the book Frankenstein.

That’s right. The first time I actually read it was probably high school. *Side note: I wasn’t being forced to read it. I had independent study in an English class reading it so I thought I might as well figure out what they were talking about. I remember it was difficult to get through with all of the philosophy and the journal style prose, especially since at that age everything in my life was about Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My eighteen year old mind gave thanks to the episode of Wishbone in which the little dog played the mad doctor since it gave me a better background for understanding the book.

This having been said, if anyone said anything bad about this novel, I defended the crap out of it. If you told me that you hated how depressing it was, I retorted with reasons for each tragedy in the development of the creature’s character. When someone mentioned they were disappointed by the the creature’s wide vocabulary, I would violently exclaim the importance of him being so intelligent. And I would take it personally when others could not finish the book (even though I’m pretty sure I put it down and picked it back up again in my first reading).

The only time I didn’t defend the story was when my dad came to me after watching the Kenneth Branagh film. My bedroom door was pushed open with an irritated swing and he stood there looking aggravated. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Is that how the book ends?”

I nonchalantly shrugged at him. “Except for Elizabeth being brought back to live, pretty much.”

His eyebrows and rose and he spat, “That’s stupid.”

I didn’t argue with him. He’s my dad and he’s never really been a fan of the classics with the exception of Muppet Christmas Carol. By the way, I own that movie on a lovely Arrow bluray.

Anyway, by the time I was in my late twenties, I finally read Frankenstein again, deciding I’d been too young to judge it. Despite the utter hopelessness of the story, I loved it and have read it a few times since. The mother of science-fiction horror has a special spot on my bookshelf and my boyfriend bought me a fancy Penguin Cloth-bound edition covered in anatomically correct hearts. I also own copies of The Last Man, Lodore, and several of her short stories. That doesn’t mean my love of the Universal horror films has waned. I know there is no Bride in the book, but she’s too cool not to have all over my house.

Do any other people have strange reader-author relationships?

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.