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The Top 10 Films About Writers

By Martin Keady · March 31, 2015

Writing is the loneliest profession: ultimately, it involves being alone in a room while trying to create a whole universe. The difficulty for any writer is that they cannot just remain in that room; they have to come out sometimes, to engage with the outside world, or they run the risk that their work will become utterly solipsistic and therefore meaningless.

The challenge for any film about writers is similar: it has to get into that room to show the lonely reality of the writing process, but it must also get out of it, to show the writer’s struggles to live in and connect with the world that they are trying to document. Put simply, they cannot just show the writer hunched over their typewriter or keyboard but must also show them walking (or driving) the streets in rage, frustration or, on those wonderfully rare occasions, joy.

These 10 films achieve that tricky balancing act, showing writers both in magnificent isolation and in their stumbling, often fumbling, relationships with others.

 

10. HOPSCOTCH

(1980, Directed by Ronald Neame; Written by Bryan Forbes and Brian Garfield)

Of course, not all writers are writers their whole lives; some have lived other, more extraordinary lives before they finally sit down to write. Indeed, often their book or play is about that earlier, more interesting life. Hopscotch is the classic example of that, telling the story of a rogue CIA agent, played by Walter Matthau, who responds to being unfairly demoted by publishing his memoirs, telling all not only about the CIA but about the KGB and the world’s other great spy networks.

Made at the height of the Cold War, Hopscotch is a superb comic vehicle for Matthau, one of the great under-rated stars of late 60s and 1970s American cinema, who made classics such as The Odd Couple, Charley Varrick and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. It shows a man who deploys all the skills and experience he has gained in his previous life as a spy (disguise, deception and above all the ability to keep one step ahead of the opposition – hence the title of the film) to succeed as a writer. In fact, the whole plot of the film is about the publication of the book, as Matthau sends it, chapter by chapter, to his publisher while trying to avoid capture by his former employers. In our world of instant global communication, it is a reminder of the difficulties that used to exist for anyone trying to communicate with, and send material to, someone in another country.

Hopscotch also has one of the great endings of any film, let alone any film about writers. When he is finally cornered in Britain by both the CIA and KGB, Matthau has to devise a means of escape and the plan he comes up with is worthy of ending any story or movie. Matthau, perhaps the ugliest leading man in movies ever, is at his most cunning and rat-like as he makes his escape and publishes the book that will be the best revenge upon his stupid supposed “superiors.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naQO14SnbUc]

 

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9. THE NAKED LUNCH

(1991, Written and Directed by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by William S. Burroughs)

The Naked Lunch was the archetypal “unadaptable” novel: a book so dense, so purely literary, that for decades after its publication it was thought impossible to film.  Finally, it was David Cronenberg, the film-maker who cut up the human body just as Burroughs had cut up human language, who adapted and filmed it, incorporating elements of Burroughs’ own remarkable life to create a hybrid of novel and biopic that, like the book itself, may not always make sense but is never less than compelling.

A contemporary review of the film by the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum said, “It is…fundamentally a film about writing – even the film about writing.”  Cronenberg certainly seemed more interested in documenting the extraordinary story of the novel’s composition than in faithfully adapting the novel itself. His Naked Lunch is a writer’s nightmare brought to life: the young, drunken Burroughs accidentally shoots his wife dead when he tries to re-enact the William Tell story; he experiences drug-induced hallucinations, including a talking typewriter (it is fascinating to think of a 21st century film-maker creating a talking laptop or tablet and employing all the devices available on such a computer, including Twitter, Skype and voice recognition); and he is played by a stunningly deadpan (if that is not a contradiction in terms) Peter Weller, who is almost more robotic in this film than he was in Paul Verhoeven’s original Robocop.

The film of The Naked Lunch may not be an entirely successful adaptation of its source novel, but it is undoubtedly an incredible film about writing and writers, showing how the whole process of trying to create a book or play (or even a screenplay) can turn a mind in on itself, to the point that the interior mental world that is created becomes more real than the exterior world that the writer is fleeing from.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqfMiU8Fb9I]

 

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8. MISERY

(1990, Directed by Rob Reiner and Written by William Goldman, based on the Stephen King novel)

The Naked Lunch depicts an unknown writer who inflicts suffering on himself; Misery is the story of a successful writer who suffers at the hands of a supposedly devoted fan, thus proving that successful writers can suffer just as much as their unsuccessful counterparts.

In Misery, the great James Caan plays a famous novelist, Paul Sheldon, who is involved in a car-crash and apparently “rescued” by his self-professed “Number One Fan,” nurse Annie Wilkes, played by Kathy Bates. However, Sheldon discovers that for a writer (or indeed any artist), there is perhaps nothing more dangerous than an obsessive fan, as Annie holds him captive and forces him to rewrite his work, in order to bring back to life (literally) a beloved character he had killed off.

Misery is many things: a domestic horror story; a career rebirth for James Caan nearly 20 years after The Godfather (it wasn’t just Sonny Corleone who was brutally slain at the turnpike but Caan himself, at least artistically); and an unsettling portrait of the strangely symbiotic writer-reader relationship. Perhaps most importantly, it is an insight into the mind of the man who, with the possible exception of J.K. Rowling, is the world’s most commercially successful contemporary writer. Misery may not be directly autobiographical, but Stephen King obviously knew all there is to know about the dangers of commercial success, including obsessive fandom, and he channelled it into this amazing story. Fascinatingly, the screenplay was by another contemporary great, William Goldman, legendary screenwriter and author of the screenwriting “Bible”, Adventures In The Screen Trade. With two such great writers working on it – one writing the original novel, the other superbly adapting it for the screen – it is hardly surprising that Misery is such an authentic portrait of the writer’s life and mindset.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSA-o9ShQoQ]

 

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7. TOM & VIV

(1994, Directed by Brian Gilbert and Written by Michael Hastings and Adrian Hodges, based on Hastings’ play)

Writers are parasites, feeding on – indeed, feasting upon – the experiences of others, even those supposedly nearest and dearest to them. The novelist Philip Roth summed this up when he said, “When a writer is born into a family, that family is finished.” Similarly, when a writer marries someone else, especially someone who may initially inspire them but ultimately proves mentally or physically weaker than them, that marriage is finished. And Tom & Viv exemplifies that.

The titular “Tom” is T.S. Eliot, probably the 20th century’s greatest poet, while “Viv” is Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, his first wife and reputedly the inspiration – indeed, in the opinion of some, the actual author – of some of his greatest poetry, including parts of The Waste Land. The film shows how Eliot is at first driven to unimaginable heights of personal satisfaction and artistic achievement by Viv, but as her health deteriorates (due to a gynaecological problem that was untreatable at the time) their marriage founders and Tom is ultimately forced (as he sees it) to commit her to a mental institution.

Balzac claimed that “behind every great fortune there is a great crime” (a view enthusiastically endorsed by, among others, Tony Soprano). The same may be true of literature, and art in general: behind every great book or work of art, there is often the great crime of betrayal, as a writer or artist uses the experiences of others as the basis for their supposedly fictional “creation.” No film that I can think of shows this better than Tom & Viv, and it is summed up in its final image. As Tom descends in a lift (even as his literary career is finally on the up), he is forever haunted by the memory of the woman who had inspired him, but who, he believed, he ultimately had to sacrifice.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryoOtlty8go]

 

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6. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

(1961, Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman)

Through A Glass Darkly shows that the parasitic tendency of writers to prey on the experience, even the tragedy, of others is not reserved for romantic or sexual partners: it can even extend to family members. Effectively, for a writer blood is not thicker than water: all other human beings, even their own children, are “fair game” when it comes to the business of finding inspiration.

Through A Glass Darkly comes from Bergman’s “golden period” of filmmaking, which extends roughly from Smiles of a Summer Night in 1955 to Persona in 1966, but Bergman’s is a black gold, as he often depicts the harshest realities of human existence. Through A Glass Darkly takes its title from the Biblical phrase, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face”, which outlines the whole process of ageing and the transition from innocence to experience. It is a fitting title, as Bergman’s film tells the story of a middle-aged writer who is so obsessed with his work that he neglects his children, including his daughter, who is suffering from a horrendous mental illness that is so acute it threatens her life. It is only when he has lost her (like Vivienne Haigh-Wood in Tom &Viv, she is taken to an asylum) that he realizes he has to try and save his son.

Neglecting one’s family, even one’s children, is obviously an occupational hazard for all artists, including writers and filmmakers: in the new documentary, Altman, Robert Altman’s son, Stephen, bitterly complains, “For the most part, we were not his priority.” It is this tension between artistic success and parental failure that Through A Glass Darkly examines, and it is a fitting testament to Bergman’s unique genius that this bleakest of films has a happy ending that is somehow not utterly incongruous. Realizing that he has lost one of his two children, the writer finally tries to engage with his remaining child, who is so startled when his father talks to him properly that he simply smiles and says to himself (and the camera), “Papa spoke to me.” There cannot be a parent or child alive, especially a parent who is an artist or a child who is the son or daughter of an artist, who does not recognise and respond to that simple, magnificent scene.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwu80rk5xds]

 

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5. IN A LONELY PLACE

(1950, Directed by Nicholas Ray, Written by Edmund H. North and Andrew Solt, based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes)

Bogey the writer? It shouldn’t work but it does, in Nicholas Ray’s stunning Hollywood suspense-drama, which is not so much a “whodunit?” as a “didhedoit?” Indeed, in perhaps the only example of one great movie star writing about another, Louise Brooks, the silent era goddess, wrote of the performance of Bogey, the greatest male movie star ever, in this film, “The screenwriter’s pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart.” (Clearly, Brooks was a fine and astute writer as well as a fine actress.)

Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a struggling Hollywood screenwriter given the proverbial “one last chance” to adapt a successful pot-boiler of a novel into a movie. Typically, he is not even interested in reading the book, and so enlists the help of a hatcheck girl, who he has seen reading it, to summarise it for him. Unfortunately, said hatcheck girl is found dead the next day and Bogey, having been the last to see her alive, is the number one suspect.

It is fitting that so many of the films on this list, including this one, are about screenwriters, because of all writers screenwriters have the least control over their work: while a novel, poem or play (even before it is performed) are essentially complete works of art, a screenplay, however good it may be, is ultimately only a blueprint for the movie that is to be made from it. Bogey’s Dixon Steele feels that lack of autonomy acutely; indeed, it may be the source of the violent rages that consume him and that put him in the frame for the hatcheck girl’s death.

Incidentally, the story behind the making of In A Lonely Place itself cries out to be made into a film. The director, Nicholas Ray, was married to the glorious Gloria Grahame and insisted that she play the female lead, the young actress who Bogey hopes can redeem him until she too is exposed to his uncontrollable temper. Ray and Grahame’s marriage fell apart during filming, but they still completed the film, which is one of the finest they ever made. However, it was only a stay of execution, as two years later they finally parted, allegedly after Ray found Grahame in bed with his teenage son.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq9VYIrFy3M]

 

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4. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

(1998, Directed by John Madden, Written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard)

It remains almost inconceivable that there is yet to be a genuine Shakespeare biopic, although that may well change next year, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Until then, Shakespeare In Love is the next best thing, and despite its obvious absurdities (including a plot that hinges on the close involvement of Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare’s early literary career), it is strikingly accurate about the true artistic nature of the greatest writer who ever lived.

Shakespeare In Love is particularly good in showing how Shakespeare, like every other writer before or since, did not exist in isolation but instead drew directly from the world in which he lived. At one (admittedly absurd) extreme, we see him overhearing a Puritan preacher proclaiming, “A plague on both their houses,” and making a mental note to incorporate the line in one of his plays; at the other (much more plausible) extreme, we see him seeking and receiving advice on writing from his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe (memorably played by Rupert Everett).

Perhaps the best scene in this respect is when he is outlining (in modern-day parlance, “pitching”) the plot of his new play, “Romeo and Juliet,” to his assembled company of actors, and Ned Alleyn (equally memorably played by Ben Affleck), suggests that there is something missing. When an incredulous Shakespeare asks what it is, Alleyn replies that it is the love scene – the consummation of Romeo and Juliet’s marriage. Shakespeare is initially stunned, then utterly receptive. Although in reality Ned Alleyn probably never worked for Shakespeare’s company (he was the star of a rival company), this scene is nevertheless highly suggestive of the collaborative nature of theatrical work, whereby actors often suggest lines or even plot developments to writers in rehearsals. The real William Shakespeare almost certainly benefited from such insights from the members of his remarkable company, who included his own leading man, Richard Burbage, and the two men who would eventually become his literary executors (indeed, his literary saviours, as much of his work would not have survived without them), John Hemings and Henry Condell.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrxIR2uja8w]

 

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3. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

(2011, Written and Directed by Woody Allen)

Woody Allen is not just a man of cinema but a man of letters, having written numerous jokes, short stories and pastiches for everyone from Sid Caesar to The New Yorker magazine. Consequently, it is fitting that he should write so well about writers. He does so in numerous films, including Play It Again Sam, The Front and Bullets Over Broadway, but the finest by far, in my humble but Woody-obsessed opinion, is Midnight In Paris.

In Midnight In Paris, Owen Wilson is the classic writer in movies: a novelist who becomes a screenwriter. Ostensibly, he does so to fund his “art,” but in reality he finds that the day job takes over his life, to the extent that he can no longer write anything at all. It is only when he visits Paris with his fiancée and her parents that he is reminded of what real writing is all about. The vehicle for this transformation is an old-fashioned car that picks him up from a deserted street corner at midnight and magically transports him back to the legendary “Paris in the Twenties,” where he meets (and is influenced by) such luminaries as F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

Midnight In Paris is one of Woody’s great fable-movies, alongside the likes of Purple Rose of Cairo, and exactly like Purple Rose of Cairo it shows both the allure and the drawbacks of absolute artistic obsession. Initially, Wilson’s screenwriter is completely captivated by the past he has been transported back to, but eventually (when he wants to do something as mundane but modern as buying aspirin) he realises its limitations. Woody literally shows us the importance of living in the present, which every writer, however seduced they are by the supposed perfection of the past or future, must do.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAfR8omt-CY]

 

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2. SUNSET BOULEVARD

(1950, Directed by Billy Wilder and Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D. M. Marshman, Jr.)

Sunset keeps cropping up in these Top 10s, but only because it is such a marvellous and versatile film, as accurate about writing as it is about acting, Hollywood and artistic creation in general. In effect, it is the great screenwriter’s lament, memorably summarised by William Holden’s screenwriter, Joe Gillis, when he complains (in his ultra-cynical voice-over) that audiences don’t realise that movies are written but just imagine that the actors make up the lines themselves (an illusion that persists in some uneducated quarters to this day). And even if audiences do realize that screenwriters write a movie’s dialogue, often they do not realise that a screenwriter usually provides a movie’s entire story, assuming instead that it is provided by the director.

There is so much to love about Sunset, but the scenes about writing are especially instructive, ranging from Holden’s subtle reworking of the original screenplay for “Salome” that was written by Gloria Swanson’s deranged-but-magnificent Norma Desmond, to the simple but beautiful scene in which he completely reworks script-girl Nancy Olson’s idea for a movie about teachers by suggesting that the two teachers share a room, indeed share a bed, but never meet, because one of them works during the day and one at night.

Ironically, in a film that is so much about credit and where it should lie for a movie’s success (or otherwise), Sunset Boulevard is itself a testament to the enduring, and perhaps permanent, power of directors in cinema. The film was co-written and co-produced by Wilder’s writing partner, the older and more patrician Charles Brackett, in a relationship that bore similarities to that of the Coen Brothers today. However, while every Coen Brothers film is absolutely a Coen Brothers co-production and credited as such, the early Billy Wilder classics, such as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard itself, are today only remembered as “Billy Wilder” movies, even though many people, including Brackett’s descendents, believe they should be billed as “Wilder-Brackett” movies.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3hajwRww6I]

 

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1. BARTON FINK

(1991, Written and Directed by the Coen Brothers)

And so, appropriately, we come to Barton Fink, the greatest movie about writers, and if that accolade is arguable, I think it is unarguable that it is the greatest film about screenwriters

Of course, Barton would not describe himself primarily as a screenwriter. He is a playwright, and a successful one at that, who, like so many playwrights, novelists and even poets from the 1920s onwards (from F. Scott Fitzgerald in the thirties to Martin Amis in more recent times), is seduced by Hollywood’s wealth. (As the old saying goes, “When artists dream, they dream of money.”) Of course, he pays the price for that seduction, as he is stuck in a seedy, sleazy hotel, with only mosquitoes and madmen for company, confronted by the tyranny of the blank page.

It is this aspect of the movie that I think makes Barton Fink so successful in its depiction of writers and writing. Most writers (myself included) naively believe that they can write anything – plays, screenplays, novels, poetry, even advertising slogans – when in reality they are incredibly lucky if they can write anything at all. Having succeeded as a playwright, artistically if not commercially, Barton is downright stoopid to give up his hard-won success in the theatre to try and succeed in another medium, which, though superficially similar, is in reality entirely different.

It reminds me of the great line from William Goldman’s Adventures In The Screen Trade (I said it was the Bible of screenwriting and I shall quote it now), when he says that no screenwriter should just be a screenwriter: either they should become a writer-director, like Woody Allen and Billy Wilder, and control how their words are realised on screen, or they should continue to write poetry, fiction or plays while trying to write screenplays as a sideline. Barton’s mistake is not in going to Hollywood, but in forgetting that he is first and foremost a playwright. As in love, so in writing: if any of us are lucky enough to succeed in one form of writing (or in one relationship), we should cling to it and cherish it, and not be easily seduced by another form (or another lover).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPtE1WPg6u4]

 

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