just a fun question: what are your favorite portryals of writers/playwrights in movies/tv shows?
i love billy chrystal in "throw mama from the train." the parts where he's trying to finish the sentence "the night was..." feels so familiar, especially when he's distracted by a smudge & then starts cleaning rather than writing! as someone once said, "if it wasn't for writing, i'd never get any housework done at all."
i also love his students' attempts at writing. the woman who has the adventure story about the submarine is great.
and then there's the murderous sidney bruehl in "deathtrap." i can think of plenty of other writers i'd like to murder...
The play, “Otherwise Engaged” by Simon Gray. About a publisher, Simon Hench, but I think it merits mention. Saw Tom Courtney do it. Brilliance.
“End of the World” by Arthur Kopit.
And, it is dated, but Star Spangled Girl by Neil Simon, still has some charm to it about two young writers. ( Re-read most of Simon’s stuff about a year ago. A master.) And Oscar Madison from “The Odd Couple” is a sports writer. He also wrote a “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” about a bunch of writers in early TV.
Recent Movies:
“Adaptation” starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep. The wonderful Chris Cooper won the Academy Award for Supporting Actor. Brilliant.
“Stranger Than Fiction” starring Will Ferrell. Brilliant. (This is a neat twist on the writer’s story. Truly is a mystery. Just rent it. Don’t look anything up about it or it will be ruined for you.)
Older movies “Julia” by Lillian Hellman. Loved this movie.
Albert Finney plays Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, in a surprisingly good and even more surprisingly faithful adaptation of Breakfast of Champions.
Tim Allen does the same for Dave Barry in Big Trouble.
I also enjoyed Johnny Depp in Secret Window. Haven't seen him yet in Finding Neverland, but I hear it's good.
Arsenic and Old Lace pokes nice fun at writers -- dramatic and dramatic critics.
I seem to remember that one of Hitchcock's heroes was a writer, too. . . . To Catch a Thief, maybe? Can anyone recall?
But I agree with IMR. It's hard to top Adaptation or Stranger than Fiction.
"The Whole Wide World." Starring Vincent D'Onofrio, Renée Zellweger. (When Zellweger won her Academy Award she said, "I want to thank Vincent D'Onofirio for teaching me how to act."
