The first thing that comes to mind is His Girl Friday.
Also Humphrey Bogart’s screenwriter in In a Lonely Place. Now THAT is a good film about writing, and the insecurity of writers.
I’m gonna have to go with Possession too. I think I am the only person on the planet who truly loves that film. And it’s shocking that I love it, because it’s one of my favorite novels ever written – and the film does make some changes to AS Byatt’s novel – but somehow it works. They are two different stories – and yet the essentials are the same. The portrait of the two Victorian poets, speaking to one another through their poetry, is intensely moving to me and very well portrayed in the film.
It’s a good question, because it’s really challenging to make a good movie about a writer. Writers are solitary, they sit at desks, and unless you hear what it is they are working on … the whole thing can seem artificial.
We can leave out “Bright Lights Big City”, right?
Does Misery count? ;)
Dead Poet’s Society.
If Misery counts then so should Naked Lunch ;)
I think Misery is, perhaps, the greatest movie about a writer ever made.
Good one – it had slipped my mind.
Well, apart from Naked Lunch then, I’ll throw in 84 Charing Cross Road.. all about the solitary existence.. sitting at desks.. or in book shops.. and a wonderful movie.
Henry and June also comes to mind.
“Last Call,” about the final days of F. Scott Fitzgerald writing ‘The Last Tycoon.’
“Between the Lines,” set at an underground newspaper in Boston, focuses on the war between the craft (and having an independent voice) and the business. The staff are kooks. Jeff Goldblum is the original Max Orloff.
Writers becoming: “L’auberge Espagnole,” and “The Outsiders,” maybe.
and for the compellingly unsavory:
“The Door in the Floor”
“Henry Fool”
and, most of all:
BARTON FINK!!!!
Ooh, Door in the Floor and Barton Fink … good call!
I thought I was the only person who loved the film version of Possession!
Anne – I think you and I are the only ones.
Normally, I’m really skeptical about film versions of my favorite books – but when I heard Neil LaBute was directing, I thought: Hmmmm, okay, so that shows me they’re on somewhat the right track.
I know people who despised that movie – but I just love it.
I love Jeremy Northam especially.
Oh, man, I was going to say Misery, but then I thought, “No. This is a Serious Sheila post. Don’t try to be funny.”
JFH is braver than me.
Damn.
I’ll have to add another vote for Barton Fink.
If writing comics counts, there’s American Splendor.
Misery’s such a good movie, ain’t it??
I loved the movie of Posession too.
I love the part where they are reading the letters, and going back in time to the lovers. I got all excited, giddy and childlike at that point. Guess it tapped into whatever the book did.
Mitchell – awesome! Now there are three of us in the club!
I was hesitant to accept Gwyneth in the part. The woman in the book is much more … substantial … I saw her as more of a Kelly McGillis (back in the 80s). Like – she’s a substantial and pissed-off feminist who happens to also be drop-dead gorgeous, and she hates her own beauty because it doesn’t go with her feminist image. Gwyneth didn’t seem BIG enough for the part – but I ended up being convinced. I liked her in it.
My favorite scene: when she and Aaron Eckhart lie in bed and talk about poetry and love. You can hear the sea outside. It’s so rare that a movie just lets people TALK. You know? That scene goes on and on … and it feels like “one of those conversations” … that intellectual people have. You live by your brain, you live in your brain, but that conversation shows how intellectual folks fall in love. You have to fall in love with the other person’s BRAIN. That’s what the whole book is about, too. I loved that scene.
Count me in the (small, but elite) group of people who liked Possession!
Was Possession the Sylvia Plath film?
Adaptation is another film about writing, although not the best. And don’t forget Throw Mama From the Train. While esentially a fluffy comedy, it does contain some writing wisdom in it.
Scott – No, that was “Sylvia”.
“Possession” is fictional – about two modern-day literary scholars who uncover a treasure-trove of love letters between two famous Victorian poets (2 poets who had never been known to be connected. It would be like discovering that Henry Longfellow and Emily Dickinson had had a long and passionate love affair. You would have to completely re-look and re-examine all of their poetry – you can imagine the flurry in academia.) The film goes back and forth between the present and the past, as the scholars put together the mystery of what happened between the poets.
Ohhhh, yeah. I saw that one. Don’t remember much of it but Netflix says I gave it 4 stars.
would it be social suicide to say that I actually found the utterly fluffy “Alex and Emma” vaguely entertaining (albeit predictable)?
it would?
well, forget that, then.
how about “Wonder Boys”? the book kicked the film’s ass (as usual), but it wasn’t a bad movie.
Dave, please. You are talking to the woman who watches Kate and Leopold on an almost weekly basis.
Wonder Boys! I must have giggled inanely for 15 minutes when I saw the page number Michael Douglas typed on his ms in the beginning.
The episode on the Brady Bunch where Marcia nominates her stepdad for father of the year – oh, the angst, the handwriting, the flowing pink-tinted liquid paper – never has a truer depiction of the writer’s experience been committed to videotape.
Shakespeare in Love does come to mind, as well as the spun-off Lucas in Love…
The Shining
Little Women
Under the Tuscan Sun
Barfly.