Fictional Writers of Fiction

 Annamaria on Tenterhooks

 On Wednesday, I am leaving NYC for two and half months.  I still have a maelstrom of a to-do list that must be completed before I go.  To keep myself now-and-then relaxed in face of that storm, I have been spending my exhausted evenings watching movies where the main character is a novelist.  In the couple of hours I have left today, I will give you a peep at a few of such flicks I have been watching.  (A homage here to Kwei for the inspiration of his film reviews.  And to Wendall, for all her amusing and fascinating info about screen writing.)

In no particular order:

Goodbye, Columbus 

This is the 1959 biographical novella that won Phillip Ross the National Book Award for Fiction when it was his first book and he was only in his 20s. His main character, Neil Klugman, is not presented as a writer or even aspiring one, but knowing the about Ross's ensuing career, one has to think of Neil Klugman's a potential writer. As beautifully portrayed by Richard Benjamin, it's easy to see the future brilliant novelist in his character.  Klugman is certainly obsessed with themes that Ross wrote about during the following several decades. I recommend the book highly and the movie even more.  The portrayal of the times and the setting (Newark, NJ) is highly sarcastic, but I grew up in New Jersey in 195os, and I can attest that Northern New Jersey looked exactly like what you will see.

Wonder Boys

This 2000 film offers us more than one novelist and publishers and other hangers on. Fortunately, they are played by people like Rip Torn, Frances McDormand, Philip Bosco, Michael Douglas, and Robert Downey, Jr. Including a brilliant turn by a very young Tobey Maguire! Most of the time, this stellar cast does a very good job of convincing us that characters really are people who can do what the script writers have them doing. With one exception: the main character, the one played by Michael Douglas, claims to write only when he is completely stoned. In that era, the drug of choice was marijuana. I don't have a lot of experience with pot, but I can't imagine that anyone could write an award-winning and best selling novel in that state of mind. When the story begins, that initial success is behind the protagonist, but the book he is then writing is ridiculously unpublishable. 

A big surprise for me was what a good performance Michael Douglas gives.  I liked him in The Streets of San Francisco on TV, but once he hit the big screen, he played a lot of roles that were uninteresting and unconvincing, as far as I was concerned. Wonder Boys rescued him from my list of actors whose work I always skip. Wonder Boys  is an interesting and entertaining movie.

American Dreamer

I own this flick, and whenever I watch it with a friend, I say, "This is the best most fun movie you've never heard of.”  Especially if the friend in question is also a novelist, he or she fully agrees.  It is delightful.  The script, which delivers lots of twists and tons of laughs, introduces us to a housewife who is obsessed with a thriller series. The characterizations are wonderful. She has two totally believable and completely charming sons.  Their mom wins a a trip to Paris by writing a fan chapter of a "Rebecca Ryan novel." Chaos ensues - all convincing, mostly hilarious, and deeply romantic. The movie stars JoBeth Williams as the aspiring writer and the irresistible Tom Conti as the man she meets when she arrives win Paris.

I have more films to cover, but it is late, and I need to keep my strength for the things I still have to do before I sit down for this evening's movie. I expect I will get back to this theme again one day. Next week, I will show you my Italy. In the meanwhile: Buon divertimento, tutti