20 Greatest Movies About Writers
Feb 1 2010, 6:02 AM
|
I first came
to Los Angeles many years ago with the hopes of doing a lot of writing, but
instead I did a lot of walking. Given
the profoundly accustomed car culture of the landscape, I was an anomaly as I
walked everywhere and glimpsed at apartments I would never live in, restaurants
I wanted to eat at but never got around to, and bars where I wanted to drink at
with friends I didn’t have yet. Los
Angeles was my compromise, one of many in a lifetime. Los Angeles is the city where people who are
too afraid to go to New York end up, in the same way that Chicago is the
city where people who are too afraid to go to Los Angeles end up. But in my heart, New York was supposed to be
mine. I had always wanted to be a writer
living in the Big Apple – it was a desire straight out of a Woody Allen
movie. The mosaic colors and mental
acoustics were so vivid with this dream that it painted me as occupying a nice
apartment in upper Manhattan with my junior editor at VOGUE Euro-Asian
girlfriend who had enough style to make up for my lack thereof, while I labored
away at my great American novel, at my desk under my framed Velvet Underground
poster, in the evenings after a full day’s work on the staff of THE NEW YORKER
magazine. Well, ahem. In the cosmic battle of dream versus reality,
reality won, and instead, I ended up in Hollywood, suffering writer’s block on
an untitled science fiction screenplay I couldn’t for the life of me figure out
the ending. So instead of hunkering down
to finish my script I walked everyday to my local video store and rented movies
about other people writing. Something about watching movies about writers
inspired me. I remember a former
creative writing professor once told our class that when you sit down to write
you should surround yourself with books by your favorite authors. It’s akin to the philosophy that being around
smart and creative people will only challenge you to elevate your own
game. “Hang out with your heroes,” the professor would
trumpet. And hung with my heroes I did –
some of them characters from these movies, some of them filmmakers of these movies. Not only did movies about writers put the
fire to my ass but it also kick-started a prodigious creative period that led
to my first writing assignment at a studio.
Oh Hollywood, compromise and all, I’ve finally arrived.
The
art-critic Robert Hughes once wrote, “There is no tyranny like the tyranny of
the unseen masterpiece.” For us
writers, that it is what inspires us to put pen to pad at our desks at home, in
our cubicles at work in between spreadsheets, and in our beds before
surrendering to slumber. When our muse
heads for the door, we follow her outside to park benches, to cafes and
restaurants, or as Chuck Palahniuk once did, wrote the pages to his novel FIGHT
CLUB underneath the cars he was fixing or as Michael Martin who wrote the pages
to his script BROOKLYN'S FINEST while working the New York subway system. David
Mamet deplores writers who write in public.
“When did writing become a performance art?” He bitingly asked in one of his essays. As per usual, Mamet is right. Writing is not a performance art. Insular and singular in its act of cerebral
stewing, writing lacks the dynamism of dance or the force of slam poetry. The act of writing is dull to everyone but
the writer. Sometimes it’s even dull to
the writer. Nothing is more boring than
filming someone writing. But yet there
have been many great films about writers and about what inspires them and what
tortures them. Here is my list of the 20
GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT WRITERS.
Please note,
I intentionally did not include movies that focus on journalists as characters
like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN , STATE OF PLAY , HIS GIRL FRIDAY , or SALVADOR . Those movies are of their own
genre and deserve a different discussion.
20 GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT WRITERS
20. “MRS.
PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE” (1994) – written by Alan Rudolph and Randy Sue
Coburn. Directed by Alan Rudloph.
Director
Alan Rudolph’s colorful and vivid portrait of writer Dorothy Parker, played by
Jennifer Jason Leigh with a spot-on boozy rasp. Parker is considered one of America’s greatest
wits and was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table . Much of the dialogue in the film was
improvised and has a free-flowing feel.
Peter Benchley (who wrote JAWS) is the grandson of Robert Benchley
(humorist and friend to Dorothy Parker) appears in the film.
19.
“MISERY” (1990) – written by William Goldman.
Based on the novel by Stephen King.
Directed by Rob Reiner.
Exploring
the nightmare scenario of a best-selling writer’s life, MISERY takes us into
the twisted mind of Annie Wilkes (an Oscar-winning performance by Kathy Bates)
who is the #1 fan of captive author Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan). According to screenwriter Goldman, many
actors passed on the role of Sheldon because they felt the role of Annie Wilkes
would overshadow them. Warren Beatty
declined the role and commented that the (now famous) hobbling scene made Paul
Sheldon, “a loser for the rest of the movie.”
18. “DEATHTRAP”
(1982) – written by Jay Presson Allen. Based on the play by Ira Levin. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
Sidney Bruhl
(played by Michael Cane) is a famous writer of mystery plays but hasn’t
produced anything good for awhile. When
he reads a play by an old student (played by Christopher Reeve), Sidney
instantly recognizes it as a surefire hit.
He cooks up a theme to invite his student over, murder him, then steal
the play as his own. But when the
student finally arrives, things are far from what they seem. One of
the most cleverly constructed thrillers ever.
17. “THE PLAYER” (1992) – written by Michael Tolkin,
based on his novel. Directed by Robert Altman.
Michael
Tolkin’s THE PLAYER is one of the greatest Hollywood novels that ranks among
Fitzgerald’s THE LAST TYCOON and Budd Schulberg’s WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? Robert Altman captures perfectly the desperate
and belittling status of the screenwriter who are often scrapping for every
opportunity to pitch their ideas to the gatekeepers. THE PLAYER proves that Hollywood is a
zero/sum game.
16. “MY BRILLIANT CAREER” (1979) – written by
Eleanor Witcombe. Based on the novel by
Miles Franklin. Directed by Gillian
Armstrong.
Judy Davis gives one of her best performances as
Sybylla, a woman torn between society’s expectations and her own ambitions as a
writer. Simple yet universal themes told
with charm, wit, and vulnerability.
Director Gillian Armstrong was only 27 when she made this film and makes
a cameo as a cabaret backup singer
15. “AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE” (1990) – written by
Laura Jones. Based on the
autobiographies of Janet Frame. Directed
by Jane Campion.
Jane
Campion’s haunting portrait of an artist highlights Kerry Fox’s stunning
performance as New Zealand author Janet Frame .
The movie is told in three parts and takes the viewer through Frame’s
impoverished childhood, awkward adolescence, and horrifying adult years where
she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia (later changed to shyness and
depression) and was sent to a mental institution for eight years of electric
shock therapy.
14. “PRICK UP YOUR EARS” (1987) – written by Alan
Bennett. Based on the book by John Lahr. Directed by Stephen Frears.
PRICK UP
YOUR EARS is the story the spectacular life and death of British playwright Joe Orton. Gary Oldman plays Joe Orton with
a dangerous swagger and infuriating charm.
The film is framed by sequences of John Lahr (played by Wallace Shawn)
researching the book the film is based on.
13. “CAPOTE” (2005) – written by Dan
Futterman. Based on the book by Gerald
Clarke. Directed by Bennett Miller.
William F. Buckley once appeared on the TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON and the topic of
capital punishment came up. Buckley told
Carson, “Well, we’ve only had a certain number of executions in the last few
years, and two of them were for the personal convenience of Truman Capote.” The brilliance of this film is
how it made Capote’s completely selfish motivation to finish IN COLD BLOOD with Perry Smith's death not only palpable to the audience, but totally
understandable.
12. “SATANSBRATEN” (1976) – written and directed
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Fassbinder
was the anarchist of German cinema and SATANSBRATEN (translated as SATAN’S
BREW) is a natural extension of his uncompromising vision. Probably his most gonzo film and most
under-rated, SATANSBRATEN tells the dark humorous story of a German poet who
suffers from crippling writer’s block and spends all his money on whores. When his publisher decides not to give him an
advance, the Poet ends up shooting one of his mistresses and cashing in on her
life insurance. Of course he must then
contend with the police who begin to investigate him. A grim
and absurd tale of when art fails the writer.
11. “THE SQUID AND THE WHALE” (2005) --- written
and directed by Noah Baumbach
Literary
types have been a constant thread through Noah Baumbach films, from the
emotionally and creatively paralyzed Josh Hamilton character in KICKING AND SCREAMING to the sardonic arrogance of Chris Eigeman’s character in MR. JEALOUSY. But it’s with THE SQUID AND
THE WHALE that Baumbach places literary family life under an intense microscope. Unfolding with the coy disquietness of Jonathan
Franzen’s THE CORRECTIONS, Baumbach’s film reveals itself with tiny gestures
and acute details.
10. “THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY” (1961) – written and
directed by Ingmar Bergman
THROUGH A
GLASS DARKLY is the first of Ingmar Bergman’s famous “God’s Silence”
trilogy. The film describes 24 hours in
the life of a family spending their holiday on an island in the Baltic. Harriet Andersson’s character is a latent
schizophrenic whose father sees in her mental deterioration the idea for a
novel with which to achieve belated literary fame. Brutal in its emotional inquisition, Bergman
subjects his characters to a ruthless scrutiny rarely seen in cinema. Winner of the Academy Awards Best Foreign
Film.
9. “DECONSTRUCTING HARRY” (1997) – written and
directed by Woody Allen
Woody Allen
writes about New York writers in the way that Stephen King writes about Maine
writers, with love and brutal honesty.
In almost every Woody Allen film there is a writer character, but it’s
with DECONSTRUCTING HARRY where Woody is at his most naked. And it’s not a pretty sight. Arguably Woody’s best film of the 90’s, HARRY
is a study of a hopelessly immature and narcissistic novelist (played by Woody
himself) who leaves a wake of misery and heartbreak to his friends and family as
he loses the inspiration to write. One
of the funniest “spiritually bankrupt” movies around.
8. “THE HOURS” (2002) – written by David
Hare. Based on the novel by Michael
Cunningham. Directed by Stephen Daldry.
THE HOURS
spans multiple timelines and geographies to describe a trio of women’s lives
simultaneously. But it is the story of
author Virginia Woolf that takes center stage with the help of Nicole Kidman,
who gives arguably one of the greatest female performances ever. Her interpretation of Virginia Woolf is as
complicated and nuanced as the author’s writings, at times eerily serene with
moments of overwhelming madness.
7. “THE FRONT” (1976) – written by Walter
Bernstein. Directed by Martin Ritt.
Set in the
1950’s, Woody Allen plays a hapless man of little talent who agrees to by the
front for a group of blacklisted writers.
But it’s the magnificent Zero
Mostel, playing a black-listed comic, who brings heart and profundity to the
film. A savage indictment of the
McCarthy-era.
6. “ADAPTATION” (2002) – written by Charlie
Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Based on the
book by Susan Orlean. Directed by Spike
Jonze.
The metatextual
nature of ADAPTATION speaks to all of us writers on so many levels. It is about the despair of a writer trying to
be passionate about a project that doesn’t mean much to him. It’s also about the difficulties of having
too much creative freedom. Much has
been written about how Kaufman’s script adaptation took form – and much of it
is Hollywood lore – but the final product, a perfect marriage with Spike
Jonze’s vision, makes ADAPTATION one of cinema’s best exploration of an
artist’s vulnerabilities and ultimate triumph.
5. “NAKED LUNCH” (1991) – written by David
Cronenberg. Based on the novel by
William S. Burroughs. Directed by David
Cronenberg.
NAKED LUNCH
is an unguided tour through the hallucinations of author William S. Burroughs. Sometimes writers write intoxicated or high –
some do it because it loosens them up and uninhibits their thoughts, while
other, like Burroughs, do it because it makes them feel like they’re going to
war and sneaking behind the enemy lines of sanity. The novel is the complete literary
incarnation of Burroughs dreams and addictions and is made of loosely connected
fantasy sequences. NAKED LUNCH has long
been considered unfilmmable – that was until David Cronenberg first got the
notion to adapt it back in 1981 and was going to film it in Tangiers, but the
Iraq invasion of Kuwait scuttled those plans and they ended up shooting
entirely in Toronto. Cronenberg wrote
the screenplay during his time acting in Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED.
4. “HENRY FOOL” (1997) – written and directed by
Hal Hartley
Idiosyncratic
filmmaker Hal Hartley has built a loyal cult following by showing life on the
fringe and HENRY FOOL is his masterpiece, a poetic and haunting examination of
friendship and literary dreams found and lost.
James Urbaniak plays a socially challenged trash man who meets Henry
Fool, played by the immensely under-rated Jay Ryan, a drinking drifter who
claims to have written a novel that would change the world, if he allowed it to
get published. With subtle allusions to
Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, HUMBOLDT'S GIFT, Hartley’s HENRY
FOOL defines the literary soul like few films does.
3. “WONDER BOYS” (2000) – written by Steve
Kloves. Based on the novel by Michael
Chabon. Directed by Curtis Hanson.
Michael
Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a distracted and downtrodden professor who is
suffering from an epic case of writer’s block.
Life’s little surprises and academic politics aren’t helping the
creative process either. Every writer
has been there: when life seems to be
wildly spinning away from you, the only thing you can control is your
writing. WONDER BOYS thus asks the
question, what happens when you lose control of the writing too? Michael Chabon’s novel skips along with a
rueful comic sensibility and director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Steve
Kloves captures its literate warmth.
2. “BARTON FINK” (1991) – written and directed
by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
BARTON FINK
is the most audacious film about the writing process. John Turturro plays Barton Fink, a successful
playwright who wanders into the bleak nightmare that is known as
Hollywood. Fink wants to write for the
common man, but the common man wants to watch hackneyed wrestling films. So to write for the common man, Fink sells
his soul to a Hollywood studio. But at
what price is selling your soul? Joel
and Ethan Coen started the BARTON FINK script when they suffered from a block
during the writing process of their gangster classic, MILLER’S CROSSING. They loosely based Barton Fink on the
playwright Clifford Odets, and claimed the movie was inspired by Roman
Polanski’s thriller, THE TENANT.
1. “SUNSET
BOULEVARD” (1950) – written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D.M.
Marshman Jr. Directed by Billy Wilder.
William
Holden plays Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter swimming in debt who is on
the verge of returning to his hometown to work in an office. Gillis ends up in the dangerous web of Norma
Desmond, played iconically by Gloria Swanson.
Desmond is a former silent film star who woos Gillis into her home and
convinces him to write a comeback script for her. She soon sinks into a downward spiral of
jealousy and insanity when Gillis falls for the younger screenwriter, Betty
Schaefer. SUNSET BOULEVARD deserves
every bit of its classic status. The
film is filled with memorable lines and unforgettable noir images, all anchored
by some of the most amazing performances ever captured on film. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece is a bitter and
tragic tale that proves Hollywood is where dreams go to die, literally.
Honorable Mentions: FACTOTUM, I
CAPTURE THE CASTLE, A FACE IN THE CROWD, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, IN A
LONELY PLACE, PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, THE MUSE, THE DYING GAUL, HANNAH AND HER
SISTERS, MANHATTAN, MY FAVORITE YEAR, THE TV SET, THE SHINING, THE LOST
WEEKEND, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, QUILLS, EPIDEMIC, MOVERN CALLER, REDS, SECRET WINDOW, REPRISE,
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, THE STORY OF ADELE
H., SWIMMING POOL, 8 ½, MY LIFE AND TIMES WITH ANTONIN ARTAUD, SIDEWAYS,
HAMMETT, JULIE & JULIA.
Mike Le is a writer/producer living in Los Angeles. He is also the creator of the Hollywood webcomic DON'T FORGET TO VALIDATE YOUR PARKING.
You can follow Mike Le on Twitter: @DFTVYP
You can also see Mike Le's list of THE 20 GREATEST EXTENDED TAKES IN MOVIE HISTORY and his TOP 10 FOOT CHASES IN MOVIE HISTORY.
I first came to Los Angeles many years ago with the hopes of doing a lot of writing, but instead I did a lot of walking. Given the profoundly accustomed car culture of the landscape, I was an anomaly as I walked everywhere and glimpsed at apartments I would never live in, restaurants I wanted to eat at but never got around to, and bars where I wanted to drink at with friends I didn’t have yet. Los Angeles was my compromise, one of many in a lifetime. Los Angeles is the city where people who are too afraid to go to New York end up, in the same way that Chicago is the city where people who are too afraid to go to Los Angeles end up. But in my heart, New York was supposed to be mine. I had always wanted to be a writer living in the Big Apple – it was a desire straight out of a Woody Allen movie. The mosaic colors and mental acoustics were so vivid with this dream that it painted me as occupying a nice apartment in upper Manhattan with my junior editor at VOGUE Euro-Asian girlfriend who had enough style to make up for my lack thereof, while I labored away at my great American novel, at my desk under my framed Velvet Underground poster, in the evenings after a full day’s work on the staff of THE NEW YORKER magazine. Well, ahem. In the cosmic battle of dream versus reality, reality won, and instead, I ended up in Hollywood, suffering writer’s block on an untitled science fiction screenplay I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the ending. So instead of hunkering down to finish my script I walked everyday to my local video store and rented movies about other people writing. Something about watching movies about writers inspired me. I remember a former creative writing professor once told our class that when you sit down to write you should surround yourself with books by your favorite authors. It’s akin to the philosophy that being around smart and creative people will only challenge you to elevate your own game. “Hang out with your heroes,” the professor would trumpet. And hung with my heroes I did – some of them characters from these movies, some of them filmmakers of these movies. Not only did movies about writers put the fire to my ass but it also kick-started a prodigious creative period that led to my first writing assignment at a studio. Oh Hollywood, compromise and all, I’ve finally arrived.
The
art-critic Robert Hughes once wrote, “There is no tyranny like the tyranny of
the unseen masterpiece.” For us
writers, that it is what inspires us to put pen to pad at our desks at home, in
our cubicles at work in between spreadsheets, and in our beds before
surrendering to slumber. When our muse
heads for the door, we follow her outside to park benches, to cafes and
restaurants, or as Chuck Palahniuk once did, wrote the pages to his novel FIGHT
CLUB underneath the cars he was fixing or as Michael Martin who wrote the pages
to his script BROOKLYN'S FINEST while working the New York subway system. David
Mamet deplores writers who write in public.
“When did writing become a performance art?” He bitingly asked in one of his essays. As per usual, Mamet is right. Writing is not a performance art. Insular and singular in its act of cerebral
stewing, writing lacks the dynamism of dance or the force of slam poetry. The act of writing is dull to everyone but
the writer. Sometimes it’s even dull to
the writer. Nothing is more boring than
filming someone writing. But yet there
have been many great films about writers and about what inspires them and what
tortures them. Here is my list of the 20
GREATEST MOVIES ABOUT WRITERS.
Please note,
I intentionally did not include movies that focus on journalists as characters
like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN , STATE OF PLAY , HIS GIRL FRIDAY , or SALVADOR . Those movies are of their own
genre and deserve a different discussion.
20. “MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE” (1994) – written by Alan Rudolph and Randy Sue Coburn. Directed by Alan Rudloph.
Director
Alan Rudolph’s colorful and vivid portrait of writer Dorothy Parker, played by
Jennifer Jason Leigh with a spot-on boozy rasp. Parker is considered one of America’s greatest
wits and was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table . Much of the dialogue in the film was
improvised and has a free-flowing feel.
Peter Benchley (who wrote JAWS) is the grandson of Robert Benchley
(humorist and friend to Dorothy Parker) appears in the film.
19. “MISERY” (1990) – written by William Goldman. Based on the novel by Stephen King. Directed by Rob Reiner.
Exploring
the nightmare scenario of a best-selling writer’s life, MISERY takes us into
the twisted mind of Annie Wilkes (an Oscar-winning performance by Kathy Bates)
who is the #1 fan of captive author Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan). According to screenwriter Goldman, many
actors passed on the role of Sheldon because they felt the role of Annie Wilkes
would overshadow them. Warren Beatty
declined the role and commented that the (now famous) hobbling scene made Paul
Sheldon, “a loser for the rest of the movie.”
18. “DEATHTRAP” (1982) – written by Jay Presson Allen. Based on the play by Ira Levin. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
Sidney Bruhl (played by Michael Cane) is a famous writer of mystery plays but hasn’t produced anything good for awhile. When he reads a play by an old student (played by Christopher Reeve), Sidney instantly recognizes it as a surefire hit. He cooks up a theme to invite his student over, murder him, then steal the play as his own. But when the student finally arrives, things are far from what they seem. One of the most cleverly constructed thrillers ever.
17. “THE PLAYER” (1992) – written by Michael Tolkin,
based on his novel. Directed by Robert Altman.
Michael Tolkin’s THE PLAYER is one of the greatest Hollywood novels that ranks among Fitzgerald’s THE LAST TYCOON and Budd Schulberg’s WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? Robert Altman captures perfectly the desperate and belittling status of the screenwriter who are often scrapping for every opportunity to pitch their ideas to the gatekeepers. THE PLAYER proves that Hollywood is a zero/sum game.
16. “MY BRILLIANT CAREER” (1979) – written by
Eleanor Witcombe. Based on the novel by
Miles Franklin. Directed by Gillian
Armstrong.
Judy Davis gives one of her best performances as Sybylla, a woman torn between society’s expectations and her own ambitions as a writer. Simple yet universal themes told with charm, wit, and vulnerability. Director Gillian Armstrong was only 27 when she made this film and makes a cameo as a cabaret backup singer
15. “AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE” (1990) – written by
Laura Jones. Based on the
autobiographies of Janet Frame. Directed
by Jane Campion.
Jane
Campion’s haunting portrait of an artist highlights Kerry Fox’s stunning
performance as New Zealand author Janet Frame .
The movie is told in three parts and takes the viewer through Frame’s
impoverished childhood, awkward adolescence, and horrifying adult years where
she was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia (later changed to shyness and
depression) and was sent to a mental institution for eight years of electric
shock therapy.
14. “PRICK UP YOUR EARS” (1987) – written by Alan
Bennett. Based on the book by John Lahr. Directed by Stephen Frears.
PRICK UP
YOUR EARS is the story the spectacular life and death of British playwright Joe Orton. Gary Oldman plays Joe Orton with
a dangerous swagger and infuriating charm.
The film is framed by sequences of John Lahr (played by Wallace Shawn)
researching the book the film is based on.
13. “CAPOTE” (2005) – written by Dan
Futterman. Based on the book by Gerald
Clarke. Directed by Bennett Miller.
William F. Buckley once appeared on the TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON and the topic of
capital punishment came up. Buckley told
Carson, “Well, we’ve only had a certain number of executions in the last few
years, and two of them were for the personal convenience of Truman Capote.” The brilliance of this film is
how it made Capote’s completely selfish motivation to finish IN COLD BLOOD with Perry Smith's death not only palpable to the audience, but totally
understandable.
12. “SATANSBRATEN” (1976) – written and directed
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Fassbinder was the anarchist of German cinema and SATANSBRATEN (translated as SATAN’S BREW) is a natural extension of his uncompromising vision. Probably his most gonzo film and most under-rated, SATANSBRATEN tells the dark humorous story of a German poet who suffers from crippling writer’s block and spends all his money on whores. When his publisher decides not to give him an advance, the Poet ends up shooting one of his mistresses and cashing in on her life insurance. Of course he must then contend with the police who begin to investigate him. A grim and absurd tale of when art fails the writer.
11. “THE SQUID AND THE WHALE” (2005) --- written
and directed by Noah Baumbach
Literary types have been a constant thread through Noah Baumbach films, from the emotionally and creatively paralyzed Josh Hamilton character in KICKING AND SCREAMING to the sardonic arrogance of Chris Eigeman’s character in MR. JEALOUSY. But it’s with THE SQUID AND THE WHALE that Baumbach places literary family life under an intense microscope. Unfolding with the coy disquietness of Jonathan Franzen’s THE CORRECTIONS, Baumbach’s film reveals itself with tiny gestures and acute details.
10. “THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY” (1961) – written and
directed by Ingmar Bergman
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY is the first of Ingmar Bergman’s famous “God’s Silence” trilogy. The film describes 24 hours in the life of a family spending their holiday on an island in the Baltic. Harriet Andersson’s character is a latent schizophrenic whose father sees in her mental deterioration the idea for a novel with which to achieve belated literary fame. Brutal in its emotional inquisition, Bergman subjects his characters to a ruthless scrutiny rarely seen in cinema. Winner of the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film.
9. “DECONSTRUCTING HARRY” (1997) – written and
directed by Woody Allen
Woody Allen writes about New York writers in the way that Stephen King writes about Maine writers, with love and brutal honesty. In almost every Woody Allen film there is a writer character, but it’s with DECONSTRUCTING HARRY where Woody is at his most naked. And it’s not a pretty sight. Arguably Woody’s best film of the 90’s, HARRY is a study of a hopelessly immature and narcissistic novelist (played by Woody himself) who leaves a wake of misery and heartbreak to his friends and family as he loses the inspiration to write. One of the funniest “spiritually bankrupt” movies around.
8. “THE HOURS” (2002) – written by David
Hare. Based on the novel by Michael
Cunningham. Directed by Stephen Daldry.
THE HOURS
spans multiple timelines and geographies to describe a trio of women’s lives
simultaneously. But it is the story of
author Virginia Woolf that takes center stage with the help of Nicole Kidman,
who gives arguably one of the greatest female performances ever. Her interpretation of Virginia Woolf is as
complicated and nuanced as the author’s writings, at times eerily serene with
moments of overwhelming madness.
7. “THE FRONT” (1976) – written by Walter
Bernstein. Directed by Martin Ritt.
Set in the
1950’s, Woody Allen plays a hapless man of little talent who agrees to by the
front for a group of blacklisted writers.
But it’s the magnificent Zero
Mostel, playing a black-listed comic, who brings heart and profundity to the
film. A savage indictment of the
McCarthy-era.
6. “ADAPTATION” (2002) – written by Charlie
Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Based on the
book by Susan Orlean. Directed by Spike
Jonze.
The metatextual
nature of ADAPTATION speaks to all of us writers on so many levels. It is about the despair of a writer trying to
be passionate about a project that doesn’t mean much to him. It’s also about the difficulties of having
too much creative freedom. Much has
been written about how Kaufman’s script adaptation took form – and much of it
is Hollywood lore – but the final product, a perfect marriage with Spike
Jonze’s vision, makes ADAPTATION one of cinema’s best exploration of an
artist’s vulnerabilities and ultimate triumph.
5. “NAKED LUNCH” (1991) – written by David
Cronenberg. Based on the novel by
William S. Burroughs. Directed by David
Cronenberg.
NAKED LUNCH is an unguided tour through the hallucinations of author William S. Burroughs. Sometimes writers write intoxicated or high – some do it because it loosens them up and uninhibits their thoughts, while other, like Burroughs, do it because it makes them feel like they’re going to war and sneaking behind the enemy lines of sanity. The novel is the complete literary incarnation of Burroughs dreams and addictions and is made of loosely connected fantasy sequences. NAKED LUNCH has long been considered unfilmmable – that was until David Cronenberg first got the notion to adapt it back in 1981 and was going to film it in Tangiers, but the Iraq invasion of Kuwait scuttled those plans and they ended up shooting entirely in Toronto. Cronenberg wrote the screenplay during his time acting in Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED.
4. “HENRY FOOL” (1997) – written and directed by
Hal Hartley
Idiosyncratic
filmmaker Hal Hartley has built a loyal cult following by showing life on the
fringe and HENRY FOOL is his masterpiece, a poetic and haunting examination of
friendship and literary dreams found and lost.
James Urbaniak plays a socially challenged trash man who meets Henry
Fool, played by the immensely under-rated Jay Ryan, a drinking drifter who
claims to have written a novel that would change the world, if he allowed it to
get published. With subtle allusions to
Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, HUMBOLDT'S GIFT, Hartley’s HENRY
FOOL defines the literary soul like few films does.
3. “WONDER BOYS” (2000) – written by Steve
Kloves. Based on the novel by Michael
Chabon. Directed by Curtis Hanson.
Michael
Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a distracted and downtrodden professor who is
suffering from an epic case of writer’s block.
Life’s little surprises and academic politics aren’t helping the
creative process either. Every writer
has been there: when life seems to be
wildly spinning away from you, the only thing you can control is your
writing. WONDER BOYS thus asks the
question, what happens when you lose control of the writing too? Michael Chabon’s novel skips along with a
rueful comic sensibility and director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Steve
Kloves captures its literate warmth.
2. “BARTON FINK” (1991) – written and directed
by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
BARTON FINK
is the most audacious film about the writing process. John Turturro plays Barton Fink, a successful
playwright who wanders into the bleak nightmare that is known as
Hollywood. Fink wants to write for the
common man, but the common man wants to watch hackneyed wrestling films. So to write for the common man, Fink sells
his soul to a Hollywood studio. But at
what price is selling your soul? Joel
and Ethan Coen started the BARTON FINK script when they suffered from a block
during the writing process of their gangster classic, MILLER’S CROSSING. They loosely based Barton Fink on the
playwright Clifford Odets, and claimed the movie was inspired by Roman
Polanski’s thriller, THE TENANT.
1. “SUNSET
BOULEVARD” (1950) – written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D.M.
Marshman Jr. Directed by Billy Wilder.
William Holden plays Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter swimming in debt who is on the verge of returning to his hometown to work in an office. Gillis ends up in the dangerous web of Norma Desmond, played iconically by Gloria Swanson. Desmond is a former silent film star who woos Gillis into her home and convinces him to write a comeback script for her. She soon sinks into a downward spiral of jealousy and insanity when Gillis falls for the younger screenwriter, Betty Schaefer. SUNSET BOULEVARD deserves every bit of its classic status. The film is filled with memorable lines and unforgettable noir images, all anchored by some of the most amazing performances ever captured on film. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece is a bitter and tragic tale that proves Hollywood is where dreams go to die, literally.
Honorable Mentions: FACTOTUM, I
CAPTURE THE CASTLE, A FACE IN THE CROWD, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, IN A
LONELY PLACE, PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, THE MUSE, THE DYING GAUL, HANNAH AND HER
SISTERS, MANHATTAN, MY FAVORITE YEAR, THE TV SET, THE SHINING, THE LOST
WEEKEND, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, QUILLS, EPIDEMIC, MOVERN CALLER, REDS, SECRET WINDOW, REPRISE,
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, THE STORY OF ADELE
H., SWIMMING POOL, 8 ½, MY LIFE AND TIMES WITH ANTONIN ARTAUD, SIDEWAYS,
HAMMETT, JULIE & JULIA.
Mike Le is a writer/producer living in Los Angeles. He is also the creator of the Hollywood webcomic DON'T FORGET TO VALIDATE YOUR PARKING.
You can follow Mike Le on Twitter: @DFTVYP
You can also see Mike Le's list of THE 20 GREATEST EXTENDED TAKES IN MOVIE HISTORY and his TOP 10 FOOT CHASES IN MOVIE HISTORY.
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