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Adaptation. 'nuff said

Naked Lunch

#1: Seconded! Although that's more about filming writer's block surely? In the same breath what about "Barton Fink"?

The Shining

also vaguely remember a Holden/Hepburn film I saw many a year ago called Paris When It Sizzles

'Paul Sheldon used to write for a living, now he's writing to stay alive'.

I've seen Howl.... it's a good film, great great performance from James Franco, some of the animation works very well, some doesn't.

Films about writing.... Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas does it very well, Cronenberg's vastly underrated Naked Lunch, Barton Fink (obviously...) but one that nobody will mention is Barfly... which is Barbet Schroeder's greatest film which stars Mickey Rourke as Charles Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski, it's one of the greatest "biopics" ever cause it just makes a small part of Charles Bukoski's life and it's just about this short period, it shows the frustrations of a writer very well and alcoholic, it's much much better film than Factotum which is sadly the only one of the Bukowski adaptation available on dvd in the UK, I have a VHS of Barfly.

The most obvious answer to me is the 1996 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" starring Nick Nolte and Alan Arkin. For literally the entire story, Nolte's character sits in front of a typewriter telling his story as he waits for his execution. These scenes are shown in black and white, and the scenes he writes are shown in color, and only cut to the black and white scenes while he isn't typing, such as taking a break or changing the paper. Key passages from the novel are told in voiceover.

If you want a story that involves characters typing, here is a movie where typing is the only thing that really happens.

I think a similar problem afflicts films about music production I guess the problem is that, with some notable exceptions, making art can be a slow, deliberate and often tedious endeavour.

This is also why we must endure the "Chubby, Hmmm?" moments Mark often comments about; how can they embody the whole significance of a subject without a pithy throwaway placeholder to do the work for them? At least music biopics have the option of a raucous live performance (where, inevitably, the band only play one song per gig!).

No wonder that most biopics about an artist focus on the human element (drink/narcotic abuse, spousal/family strife, disillusionment with fame) rather than on the art itself, namely the thing they are famous for in the first place.

I think the greatest example a film about writing is actually in the dictation sequences in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, where Jean-do Bauby struggles to dictate a word to his scribe let alone construct entire passages.

Each sequence is done with immense care and sympathy. You feel so on edge and moved as he spells out each word he wants to put down on paper. However, I seem to remember the film moving away from those sequences when he is recounting memories and then moving themselves in a live action sequence of the events Jean-do describes.

Even though I think the best parts of that film were the sequences where he is trying to construct words, I think the makers did a very good job in illustrating the events he was describing.

The Shining, great example since Torrence doesn't do much of it. He simply is distracted and gets aggresive with his wife. However its the results that turn out to be memorable.

Another example is Schindler's List. Stern (played by Ben Kingsley) is writing a list of 1100 names and the scene is intercutted with a scenes involving Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) setting the wheels in motion of buying and transporting the 1100 Jews he wants for his factory.

I don't like the sudden wave of anti-snobbery concerning animation among critics. Not everyone is unjustly prejudiced against animation.

I think it's presumptuous to say that Hunter S Thompson "thought animation would undermine his work" - I would say what is more likely is that he didn't want one of his most famous METAPHORS expressed LITERALLY (in whatever medium). I happen to agree with him that seeing him surf along a wave of new culture would look crap. However the film we end up with, also looks a bit crap too.

@TheFunMachine Excellent chouce with Diving Bell, I was just coming on here to mention that one,really nicely handled. Perhaps it works so well simply because the makers could not resort to the old typewriter trick as Bauby was completely paralyzed, Schnabel was forced to be imaginative.

How about being controlled by something or someone else entirely?!! I'm thinking of Romero's The Dark Half based on Stephen King's novel. Which Kind of links in with @thelesseroftwoweevils Shining suggestion above!

Having a Mugwump's head as a type writer will never be a cinematic bore.

Actaully The Dark Half The Shining and Secret Window all have a similar theme and are all based on Stephen King stories/novels!

FINDING FORRESTER showed the writing, but also the criticism of that writing, the part of the process that comes before the page, showcased characters who loved the process and put it all to a minimalist Miles Davis score. Well done, I think.

Since you've seen HOWL, is there a reason that Franco's beard looks so fake? It looks like he speckled it on with paint.

@ MargeGunderson

You forgot the all time classic movie, Misery.

p.s.

From IMDB.

"Clash of the Titans director Jonathan Liebesman has disclosed that Christopher Nolan has agreed to convert Inception into 3D."

What say you Mr. Kermode?

Adaptation. No other film about writing comes close.

Misery, Barton Fink, The Shining and Starting Out In The Evening are all great films, also. Frank Langella is outstanding in that last one.

One that I loved that was panned by both critics and audiences: Funny Farm with Chevy Chase as the sports writer that moves to a quiet country community (along with his wife) to become a novelist. I wonder how Mark felt about that one.

@Stuart Yates Ah Yes. Well remembered. Can't believe I forgot that one!

How about Memento? Instead of writing a diary of events he tattooes himself. Or more left field how about Never Ending Story?

I think adaptation is the stand out movie about someone writing, its clever, its funny and moving all at once.

I would have to agree with mirrorbus, Memento definitely made the act of writing endless notes exiting and appealing. In fact the writing was woven into the plot so well that it even increased the tension of the movie when it happened.

I think you nailed it Dr K. Fear and Loathing did a fine job, thanks in no small part to Johnny Depp's mesmerising turn as Hunter S Thompson.

I am a fan most anything James Franco, especially as of late so yes I am very interested in Howel (the film). Secondly It seems that maybe the act of NOT being able to write or writers block, which should be even less exciting, is very cinematic. Examples include Cronenbergs Naked Lunch, The Coen Brothers best film, in my opinion, Barton Fink, and Adaptation, one of the best movies of the last decade.

Curtis Hanson's "Wonder Boys" is worth mentioning for the fact that it solves the alleged problem by simply showing the writing for what it is; in the case of Michael Douglas' climactically challenged Professor Tripp, a dreary, never-ending exercise in futility. The scene where we first see him sit down by his typewriter, typing out the page number "261" only to, after a brief pause, complete it with another "1" is a wonderful, sublime demonstration of dry humour.

Barton Fink is probably the best. The most exciting typing ever committed to screen is arguably in the opening 10 minutes of The Social Network, where due to fast editing, punchy music and accurate dialogue to the process of writing code and writing in general is brought to life and looks like an action sequence.

Many of Woody Allen's films qualify as an example of how to write on screen. Certainly the opening of Manhattan, with its constant corrections and changes, captures the creative process. Deconstructing Harry has the actual recreation of the Woody Allen character's stories: the cannibal tale and the trip to hell outline this particularly well.

its already been said but the social networks many scenes of typin at a computer and writing code were some of the most exciting times I experienced at the cinema last year

After watching this blog I saw the trailer for Howl and I now have zero desire for seeing it. I don't care that Ginsberg and Kerouac broke down a lot of social barriers with their work, the film depicting them looks aimless, artsy-fartsy and seems so in love with its subject that all its characters are reduced to self-obsessed preening bozos who talk like Jim Morrison. If you want to see a film about obscenity, go and watch The People vs. Larry Flint, or The Chatterley Affair on TV.

As for favourite film with writing, am surprised no-one's mentioned Capote yet.

2 more; All The President's Men and Ace in The Hole.
Woodward and Bernstein are seen writing in every scene either on notepads or the typewriter.
Also Wonder Boys.
It would be hard not to mention Stephen King as his protaganists are nearly always writers.

The film that solved the problem of showing a writer write was 2004s "Secret Window" the Johnny Depp picture about a writer with writers block.

It didn't bore the audience with writing scenes because it didn't have any. The only scene of him writing, was to erase his writing.

You don't want to bore the audience with writing scenes, don't show writing scenes.

鈥淭he World According to Garp.鈥� Through his window Garp sees a man playing a saxophone in the apartment across the way. He closes the blinds and opens them again to see memories from his life playing outside the window. Unable to find inspiration in his own life experiences, Garp walks down the street and sees a piano being lowered out a window, a couple fighting, and a pair of gloves left on the sidewalk. He then returns home and turns these details into an original work of fiction, 鈥淭he Magic Gloves.鈥� As he types out his story we see bits of the story enacted and even re-imagined as he makes revisions. When Garp finishes the story he glances out the window to see the saxophonist still playing. A beautiful sequence depicting a writer at work.

I thought the scene in Atonement when Robbie writes the love letter was very well done. The way it is crosscut with (the lovely) Keira Knightley and all... It works beautifully.

The End of the Affair, though not a cinematic masterpiece, was brilliantly done - the lead writing the novel through the movie.

This was done best on the small screen.... the opening titles to Murder She Wrote.

If anyone has seen Sex and Lucia (2001) you'll see a fairly interesting way making writing cinematic, as the writer is immersed in his work o the point he actually is visualised as part of the narrative to help personalise the work.

Naked Lunch - not Cronenberg's best work but seeing the typewriter transform into a giant bug is one of the more memorable moments.

Barton Fink - don't think Barton Fink does any actual writing, which I think is the point, but it's a brilliantly cinematic film. Not sure why, just is.

Different question Mark, and maybe aimed for Mrs Kermode who is an expert in the field.

Why are adult films called "blue" movies?

Oh, easy.

THE SHINING. Not a very good horror movie, but a terrific film about overcoming writers block.

Woohoo. Great opportunity for me to plug one of my fave underrated films - Point of Origin directed by Newton Thomas Sigel and starring Ray Liotta. (I won't give the imdb link because I've had posts pulled for doing that).

It dramatises the true story of John Orr, a fire investigator who was a fire setter. One of the pieces of evidence against him was a ms he wrote detailing the string of arsons that he had committed. There is an amazing scene where Orr is writing his ms which combines his typing with his reliving of the events both as a fictional character and as his real character. Not quite animation but almost there.

Amazingly imaginative cinematography in this movie, good performance by Ray Liotta and very faithful to the incredibly unbelievable facts of the case. Someone on imdb said (I think adopting a Danny Dyer voice in your head at this stage would be appropriate) "this was completely unbelievable - as if you would get someone's partner to investigate whether they were involved in the crime" - who else are you going to get to investigate whether a fire investigator is an arsonist except the guys who catch arsonists????

I say this movie is the hands down winner for depicting the act of writing in an engaging manner.

i agree with Barton Fink and Adaptation as my faves, but I just want to mention John Carpenter's In The Mouth Of Madness too...

Wim Wenders' Hammett. I seem to remember that every cinematic trick in the book was used to make writing look interesting including shooting up through the keys of the typewriter from underneath. Also, it contained a line something like: "I've lived in this city for 10 years and my only friends are a cab driver and a librarian with a smart mouth".
Michael Maxwell

@24: Howel? Is that the lesser known version by noted Welsh/jewish poet Alun Gynsberg-Jones?

"The night was humid."

Watching Billy Crystal trying to finish writing that sentence was hilarious in Throw Momma from the Train. Memento also deserves a mention, but the best for me is The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. Whilst I acknowledge it was not writing in the conventional sense; the scene in which Jean-Do spells out the word "Death" is truly heart-wrenching.

Allen Ginsberg not Alan Ginsberg, Mark.
And you call yourself a pedant!

The learned Dr. Kermode also misspelled Graham Greene's first name ("Graeme" [sic] if I remember correctly) in the preamble to his post on "Brighton Rock", so he's developing quite a track record for this sort of thing.

As for the conversation at hand, Bresson's movies have at least a couple of good examples of written introspection, simply and effectively done, in "Diary of a Country Priest" and "Pickpocket".

Doctor, you're forgetting about the incredible Finding Forrester, in which Sean Connery tells his student to PUNCH THE KEYS, FOR GOD'S SAKE!
A near-perfect example of filmmaking. Much overlooked.



YOU'RE THE MAN NOW, DOG!

Doogie Howser MD. Seemed to work every week from what i remember...

A little known film about a writer of crime novels "Her Alibi" starring Tom Selleck and Paulina Poriskova. Sure, the movie ends up being a bit of a thiller/romcom, and the writing scenes are a bit cheesy and sleazy. Again a writer has a block and finds inspiration in the woman he lets into his house.

I've watched the film, and it's fantastic, this is the best film about a particular author since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Even though the animation did come off as a bit Pink Floyd The Wall, and personally I think Gerald Scarfe would have been a better choice. All three threads from the trial, the interview, to the poetry reading all flow with ease.

It would be interesting if there was a British film about the trial of Last Exit to Brooklyn, which could be a sort of companion piece to Howl.

there is a french comedy/spoof of a nerdy pulp best-seller writer played by Jean Paul Belmondo who fantasizes of being a super secret agent
the French title is Le Magnifique - directed by Philippe De Broca
and I've just learned that the English title is "How to Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent..."

the film scenes alternate between real "dreary" life in a Paris apartment, lots of typing and the fantasy life of the books. But the fun arises from the fact that there are no rules about those 3 worlds interacting and invading one another. Everything is possible. And the typing scenes played out in various ways by Belmondo with great physicality are the doorways from one to another world.

Portraying the written or spoken word cinematically is obviously not an easy thing to do. Howl's that rare case of a film where a lot of typewriter crunching and a voice-over intercut with Franco doing club readings would almost do. God know the poetry is interesting enough on its own. The problem is people would be expecting, well, more. The King's Speech can get away with it because of the conflict inherent in King George speaking publicly.

In Howl, the solution, for the most part, is animation that, while stylish, typically does not offer new insight. It feels like it's there just because something has to be, like shots of people walking in a news report on TV. I know, the animation is more artistic than that, but for it to really add any substance it would have to interact with the poetry in some way, adding meaning to the words rather than just accompaniment. I like Howl, but the next time I watch it, it might as well be with my eyes closed for large portions of it.

84 Charing Cross Road....


Similar 'issue' is people playing the piano. That tends to look naff on film.

it's not quite on topic, but Nic Refn's Bronson had exactly what you say regarding animation, a go-to moment of it in order to suggest the infinite nature of a character's imagination and artistic sense.

Unfortunately it was the one false note in the film. Much had been said about how the real Charlie Bronson had found an artistic outlet in his drawings, but animating them and flying the audience through them did nothing in terms of accentuating their importance. It just looked out of place. Not to mention that it would take more than a passing montage of animation and classical music to endear the audienc to a character who, until this point, was habitually violent and unnervingly straight-faced about it.

MArk is absolutely right.
Showing poetry with animation actually undermines the power of poetry itself. Poetry works because you can't translate it and you shouldn't visualize it.
Check out my review of Howl

On the subject of showing people writing, Social network did manage to make people sitting down typing on computers quite exciting.
Another film which successfully depicted the art of writing and made it exciting was "Misery"

American History X

I think this great film is worth mentioning.
Edward Furlongs character was tasked to write a paper on his brother (played by Edward Norton) by his school principal (played by Avery Brooks).

This film shows how a teenager recaps his memories of his brothers and puts them into words to give a broader outlook on life.

Synecdoche, New York, by Charlie Kaufman, although being about a theatre director shows quite compellingly the workings of a mind when creating/writing. Most if not all of Kaufmans scripts are basically on the same subject on some level.

Also just had to mention Total Eclipse, with DiCaprio as Rimbaud and Thewlis as Verlaine. It's quite nice and it made me want to check out their writings and it also captured the anarchic nature of writing anything. "A slow, dusty business" a Dorothy L. Sayers character called it.

Interesting footnote re Barfly. Bukowski didn't want to make the drunk a writer, Schroeder demanded it...

Perhaps, to paraphrase Zappa, cinema about writing is like dancing about architecture? Writing about cinema on the other hand...

@ Carole Crawford - Good film. Perdictable (sic).

How about Kind Hearts and Coronets? Though I suppose they use the writing to string the plot together rather than a film about writing.

For my third year Writing for the Screen option at uni I have three short writing scenes and one of the them is the main set piece of the film. I tried to take my inspiration from the scene from watching how Fincher did it in 'The Social Network'

Click on the link below to see the film and tell me what ya think, all comments good or bad are welcome, cheers :D

It seems to me a lot of films with writers in them aren't about writing but, instead, about not being able to write. In The Shining Jack Torrence is sent insane by his overbearing writers block, Grady Tripp has been working on his novel for 7 years in Wonder Boys, Peter Krause's character in We Don't Live Here Anymore can't write a single page and Barton Fink spends most of his time staring at that bloody picture. Away from film, Hank Moody (David Duchovny) in the TV show Californication spends too much of his time sleeping with women and not much time writing.

When these characters do finally write something it comes in a quick flourish of genius that is shown off screen (Barton's brilliant but commercially nonviable script, Hank's book ****ing and Punching and Jack's All Work and No Play diatribe).

Perhaps, in films at least, the image of a character writing is fairly dull but someone struggling with writer's block really leaps of the page (Bad pun intended).

Well Cronenberg (the exception to every rule) did a great job with The Naked Lunch:

You have good old Roy tearing his way out of a nude woman suit (amazing and better than animation)

You have someone actually making love with the typewriter (beat that!)


In many ways Naked Lunch is a good example of how you can do anything to distract from the fact that watching someone type is boring, but you do inevitably through this effort force attention back on how boring and tedious it really is.


The best way is to make a film about writing where the writer doesn't actually write anything he/she just walks around and experiences life etc and spends perhaps the duration of the credit roll putting it all down?

I believe you don't need animation to fill in, i take the opening of 'the hours' where Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf writes her suicide letter, and Kidman just voicing the letter was enough for me.

Basketball Diaries.

Jim Carroll's writings are given life through Leonardo Dicaprio's voiceover and great complimenting visual imagery, such as the scene where Leo describes how the drugs in his system feel, the rush he has, with a clip of him running through a field of purple flowers, and the camera distorts...always stays with me that bit.

The obvious two 'writing films' are Barton Fink and Naked Lunch.

I vaguely remember watching either a film or a television play where a man is writing, at a typewriter, which used a variation on the animation concept. There was a voice-over narration for each piece, accompanied by a stylised (think Sky Captain or Sin City) section of film. I can't remember the name of the film/programme - I did say it was a vague memory! And didn't several Dennis Potter plays use a similar conceit?

Speaking of The Social Network, there were two other nerd movies that managed to make people typing in code look cinematic (and I don't mean Mark's favourite, Hackers, where uploading a virus went quicker if you scrunched up your face and typed more furiously).

Wargames sidestepped the problem of having the camera spend too much time focusing on a screen by giving the computer an actual voice and also by having Matthew Broderick narrate his typing to the other people in the room. There's also Sneakers, where David Strathairn's Whistler is blind, and so he needs to actually tell everyone else what he's typing and reading.

It's a voiceover by another name, but doesn't break the illusion within either of these films.

The first two films that came to mind were 84 Charing Cross Road and All The President's Men. In 84CCR they soon dispense with the typewriters and stenographers and end up with conversational shots to camera.



Unfortunately, I found the whole film rather boring.

In All the President's Men they are doodling on notepads and bashing away at typewriters most of the time but it never drags. One memorable writing scene is when Redford catches Hoffman pinching his copy.



Another one is where after a late night meeting with deep throat Redford returns to Hoffman's apartment and uses a typewriter to tell him that they are being bugged and their lives are in danger.


(go to about 2:35 into the clip).

[It was a bummer that deep throat turned out to be a relative nobody instead of Al Haig, wasn't it?]

Some inventive depictions of writing occur in Quills where Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade has to improvise with bedsheets, clothing, wine and blood in prison after his writing materials are confiscated and then has to smuggle it to his publishers with the help of the prison laundress (Kate Winslet).

And if you can't do the writing yourself you could always employ an amanuensis



(couldn't find an appropriate clip from Ken Russell's Song of Summer but I am sure there is one).

i thought that the writing in Barton Fink was Well-Done. not much of it Despite John Turturro Learning To Type write only for 4 minutes of the film.

In Kind Hearts and Coronets, Louis is writing for the whole film as he is in prison waiting to he hanged. But since the scenes of him writing are only at the beginning and the end, it just becomes a narrated film not one about someone writing.

I suppose the whole of Mr Holland's Opus is a distraction from Richard Dreyfus trying to write his piece of music.

Best example of a film with entertaining scenes involving typing would have to be The Hudsucker Proxy for me, although this is probably due as much to the witty, mile-a-minute, verbal jousting going on between Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bruce Campbell as it is to the actual typing.

And yes, All The President's Men is an absolute master class in how to make the extremely tedious business of investigative journalism look like it's edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Even though the film didn't show any actual writing but Finding Neverland works as it is about the inspiration that helped create Peter Pan. It is never about the writing but the story around the writing that makes this film work.

This is why it is hard to dramatise films about writers and writing. It should be about the writing but the story around the writing.

It all depends I suppose on what is at stake with what is being written. Shindler's List hinges on a 'writing sequence' as Oskar and Itzhak draft from memory, a list of those who will be redirected from Birkenau to Zwittau-Brinnlitz. The intercut action revolves around a typewriter and as well as intensifying the film's pace, the scene is harrowing and indelible.

The Social Network. Although it is cheating, Zuckerburg is still writing all be it writing code.

Everyone is raving about The Social Network, when they should be looking back to Fincher's earlier exploration of journalism... Zodiac.
Again, people thinking of King's, Misery, should instead be looking to The Shining, which has arguably the most chilling typewriter reveal in cinema.

Finding Forrester is excellent - not least for the red-penned corrections and criticisms that Jamal has to deal with. Is this the best piece of film on *editing* writing?

However, my favourite writing scene of all doesn't involve writing a language. For me, the best scene in 'Amadeus' is that moment near the end when Mozart and Salieri are seen collaborating on his Requiem. It's Salieri's realisation of the sheer scope of Mozart's genius and unconventionality, and then his enthusiasm to continue working with him, his sworn enemy, that makes the scene so extraordinary: