BEFORE: Well, I've made it through the Golden Globes, the People's Choice Awards, the SAG Awards, Critics Choice Awards, even the Kennedy Center Honors and the Pro Bowl. Thank God there are no major cultural or sporting events this coming weekend, because that would really screw up my schedule.
Linking from "Ted", Mark Wahlberg was also in a film called "The Big Hit" with Elliott Gould (last seen in "American History X").
THE PLOT: A novelist struggling with writer's block finds romance in a most unusual way: by creating a female character he thinks will love him, then willing her into existence.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Stranger Than Fiction" (Movie #387)
AFTER: Well, I mentioned how they changed the silver slippers from the book "The Wizard of Oz" to ruby slippers for the movie, because they were much more cinematic that way. In much the same way, Hollywood loves to show writers clacking away on a typewriter, because it looks great, sounds great, and is much more dramatic. However, it's not realistic at all. The last writer who used a manual or electric typewriter was Jimmy Breslin, I believe, and that was back in 1979. Who would risk losing their entire manuscript these days by placing the only copy on fragile, tearable, flammable paper?
I'll say this one last time, Hollywood screenwriters, because you don't seem to get it. Any modern writer worth his salt would NEVER use a typewriter over a laptop or word processor. Why? Because ONE spelling error would require the retyping of an entire page. And adding ONE paragraph would require the retyping of the entire manuscript for the purposes of repagination. It just doesn't make any sense - it would be like a movie character saying "Let's go get some food," and instead of heading to a restaurant or grocery, they would grab a spear to hunt a wild boar.
Yet we see it time and time again - "Adaptation", "Love Actually", and so on, and again in tonight's film. What gives? The next time I see this in a movie made in this century with someone using a typewriter, I'm going to fly to Hollywood, find that screenwriter, and bash his head in with a Smith-Corona. Or maybe hang him with a typewriter ribbon, if I can find one.
I remember using a typewriter when I was in college (86-89), but that was only because I couldn't afford a computer, plus I was not a professional writer - this character is an established successful writer, with a house and everything, so there's no excuse. If you remember typewriters, you remember how much they sucked. Ever try to find a new ribbon at 2 am? Or, like me, did you just rewind it, or flip it over and try to use the other side? Yeah, we had Wite-Out or Liquid Paper, but nobody could ever wait for that stuff to dry, so they'd go ahead and type into the sticky stuff, gumming up the keys and creating a character on the page that doesn't exist in any language. Is it an "S" or a "D"? Kinda both.
The only thing worse in Hollywood's depiction of writers is showing a blocked writer, staring at an empty page - because THAT'S entertaining. Correction, the only thing worse than that is showing a writer with no ideas, who eventually writes a story about a writer with no ideas, which you're watching RIGHT NOW. Arrgggh.
Tabling that nonsense for a moment, tonight I'm presented with a character who's a writer, and may be even more neurotic than Woody Allen (I'll get to his films next month, finally). He wrote a successful novel when he was in high-school, and has been unable to write a follow-up for 10 years. Since then, he's had a long-term relationship that failed, so he's wracked with self-doubt and low self-esteem on a few levels. His therapist suggests that he write something about the woman he would like to date, and after doing this, she appears in the real world.
It's an intriguing idea, but it made me try to guess the story's end-game right from the beginning. Is this a dream? A prank? Or does this guy actually possess the power to type something that will then manifest itself in the real world? And if he can do it, how did he do it? And if this is possible, why doesn't he write a story about world peace, or write a story about how easy it is to sell his next book idea?
Also, when he does determine that what he writes controls his girlfriend, why can't he make her act the way he wants her to? Is this a reflection of his lack of conscience, manifesting itself as a secret desire to fail? Or are we supposed to learn from this that we should not try to control our mates, but just let them be who they are?
Tabling the discussion over the reality of the situation, if we take it as metaphor, does it have more meaning? Don't all single people do this, to some degree - imagine who they want in their life and then look for a way to bring it about? First you have to visualize what/who you want in order to get what/who you want, right?
Once again, I'm going to fall back on "The Wizard of Oz" - was it a dream or was it real? I think this could work either way, which I think gives this story a bit of a boost. I didn't know that the ultimate message would be about the nature of romance, but I'll let this serve as something of an introduction to my February programming, which is only a few days away, after all.
Also starring Paul Dano (last seen in "Looper"), Zoe Kazan (last seen in "It's Complicated"), Chris Messina, Annette Bening (last seen in "Open Range"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"), Steve Coogan (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), with cameos from Aasif Mandvi, Wallace Langham (last seen in "The Social Network").
RATING: 5 out of 10 swimming pools
No, it isn't off-base that a novelist would write using a typewriter. Neil Gaiman (who's moved a few paperbacks) writes his first drafts in longhand. The first draft is just the rough shape of the thing. Once you reach "The End," you transcribe it into a word processor and start rewriting and editing.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that most writers work exclusively with a word processor. But longhand or typewriting is actually a useful trick. The difficulty of editing or even just making corrections is actually a plus: it prevents you from getting fussy about details and shifts your focus to "just get the whole story down." You can fix typos and change paragraphs once you've moved it into a Word file.
I didn't kickstart my fiction until I tried writing longhand. I found that it was way more satisfying to have five or ten new, handwritten pages in front of me at the end of a session and yes, writing in ink finally broke me of the "rewrite the same first three paragraphs over and over again" syndrome.
I completely agree with you on those movies and books in which the writer is writing about a writer who's trying to write. It's almost always deadly bad. The process of writing is never as interesting as a writer thinks it will be, and the writer's "problems" are never appear to be anything nearly as heroic as they fantasize.
And: HOW creepy is this screenwriter's work? Through the script, he's kind of fantasizing about:
ReplyDelete1) A writer who produced a hugely successful work;
2) A man who controls a woman utterly;
3) A writer who produces a second hugely successful work.
Ew.