{"id":4784,"date":"2015-08-27T06:57:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T10:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4784"},"modified":"2015-09-25T06:59:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T10:59:44","slug":"movies-about-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4784","title":{"rendered":"Movies about Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4786\" style=\"width: 231px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4786\" class=\" wp-image-4786\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/4063109507_ab9b84c033_z.jpg?resize=221%2C259\" alt=\"Dickens, writer\" width=\"221\" height=\"259\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4786\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: Alan Weir, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Writers in the throes of creating fiction might appear to be one of the duller conceits for a movie (gazes into distance, writes\/types a few words, gazes into distance again, gets up for fifth cup of coffee, writes a few more words, tears hair out). Yet, writers\u2019 lives apart from the actual writing often prove fertile ground for cinema&#8211;a combination perhaps of interesting friends and the life disarray that results when your focus is totally elsewhere. Stimulated by positive reactions to the new film about David Foster Wallace, <em>The End of the Tour<\/em> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DBk1Mrb4RyM\">trailer<\/a>), starring Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, Book Riot has produced a nice list of <a href=\"http:\/\/bookriot.com\/2015\/08\/24\/truth-stranger-fiction-favorite-films-authors\/?utm_source=Book+Riot+Subscriptions&amp;utm_campaign=c7c4b74958-RIOTRUNDOWN_SUNDAY&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_ffcca77bbb-c7c4b74958-320350249&amp;mc_cid=c7c4b74958&amp;mc_eid=8d5c6b7c97\">favorite films about authors<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Several films I\u2019ve seen and would recommend are on the Book Riot list, which includes advice about the number of tissues needed to get through them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>American Splendor<\/em> &#8211; about comic-writing genius Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis)<\/li>\n<li><em>Iris<\/em> &#8211; Iris Murdoch (Judi Densch and Kate Winslet)<\/li>\n<li><em>The Last Station<\/em> &#8211; Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren)<\/li>\n<li><em>Miss Potter<\/em> \u2013 Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ve missed a number of notable author biopics in the list, including those about Lytton Strachey, Dorothy Parker (although after reading a lengthy biography of her last year, I\u2019ve had enough), Sylvia Plath (three tissues), J.M. Barrie, and C. S. Lewis. Here are a few more enjoyable ones that did not make the Book Riot list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div id=\"attachment_4787\" style=\"width: 227px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4787\" class=\" wp-image-4787\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/hans_christian_stories_converted.jpg?resize=217%2C240\" alt=\"Danny Kaye, Hans Christian Andersen\" width=\"217\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/hans_christian_stories_converted.jpg?w=417&amp;ssl=1 417w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/hans_christian_stories_converted.jpg?resize=271%2C300&amp;ssl=1 271w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 217px) 100vw, 217px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4787\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Bright Star<\/em> \u2013 a rather sweet costume drama about 19th c. poet John Keats<\/li>\n<li><em>Julia <\/em>\u2013 half biopic, half self-aggrandizement based on <em>Pentimento<\/em>, a memoir by playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) that includes relationships with her lover, detective author Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, Jr.), and her enigmatic childhood friend \u201cJulia\u201d (Vanessa Redgrave), who IRL probably lived very near me in central New Jersey.<\/li>\n<li><em>Hans Christian Andersen<\/em>, the musical starring Danny Kaye (1952)\u2014I\u2019ve never forgotten it!<\/li>\n<li><em>Cross Creek<\/em> \u2013 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings\u2019s misadventures in 1930\u2019s Florida that led to <em>The Yearling<\/em> (Mary Steenburgen, Peter Coyote)<\/li>\n<li><em>Out of Africa<\/em> \u2013 Danish author Karen von Blixen-Finecke (Isak Dinesen) and her days in Kenya (Meryl Streep, Robert Redford)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Enormous Charles Dickens fangirl that I am, ditto Ralph Fiennes, I have to admit that his <em>The Invisible Woman<\/em>, a 2013 film about Dickens\u2019s relationship with actress Nelly Ternan is, sadly, ho-hum. But, to end on an upbeat, coming this fall is <em>Trumbo <\/em>about screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=n0dZ_2ICpJE\">trailer<\/a>) who stonewalled the House Un-American Activities Committee and would not \u201cname names.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writers in the throes of creating fiction might appear to be one of the duller conceits for a movie (gazes into distance, writes\/types a few words, gazes into distance again, gets up for fifth cup of coffee, writes a few &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4784\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Movies about Writers - interesting friends and disarrayed lives","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,265,57,104],"tags":[416,28],"class_list":["post-4784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-biography","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-real-life","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1fa","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4788,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4784\/revisions\/4788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}