Two days ago, TVE aired a film about a fictional writer (or a film about literature, or the art of writing itself) that has left us a bit perplexed. The Words is one of those artifacts worth watching. But for reasons, mind you, different from those suggested by its creators. How a 2012 film manages to cram practically every cliché about a writer's life into an hour and a half of runtime (and without any sarcastic intent) is both a mystery and an opportunity to dedicate a few lines to the subject. A fantastic handbook of clichés in films about writers. Even mud can yield results.
If yesterday at Postposmo we savored the sweetness of cinematic perfection with the masterful Parasite , today we descend into a dark basement. But a necessary one. Hell, The Words is even on YouTube . That must be a sign of something.
Bradley Cooper in a still from the film about writers 'The Thief of Words'
Anyone looking for good films about writing and literature would do well to give a chance to * In the House *, *Howl* , *Trumbo* , *History of a Crime*, * Dead Poets Society* , or *The Tenants *. Anyone wanting to learn which elements should be avoided under any circumstances in a work that aims to combine film and literature, anyone wanting to discover, in a concise way, the catalog of happy clichés responsible for the growing number of people wanting to publish their essential novel , should prepare themselves for what's to come.
To absorb what a genuine popcorn movie is capable of spewing forth when, instead of explosions and Bruce Willis , the plot revolves around rejection letters from publishers and Bradley Cooper. As if there weren't already enough movies about writers and rejection letters from publishers.
Moving to Manhattan is a 'must'
If we take into account what The Words teaches us , to be a writer you have to go to New York. Preferably to a Brooklyn loft where you'll move with your beautiful girlfriend to live very poor , but very happy. A Hemingway-style, you know.
During the day you will take long walks in Central Park. At night, while she sleeps, you will scribble a novel that you will give birth to without apparent effort, like someone who washes dishes. And she, so faithful, so helpful, with no other job than to support you, cook, put up with your drunkenness and tell you how good you are, will be the only one who manages to punctually distract your virile creative genius between the sheets, forcing you to park for a few minutes. minutes the previously easy and now tortuous search for words with which to fill in the blanks of your second novel, an impossible imitation of the first, a piece of garbage that you started writing the day you decided that the only thing you could be in life is a writer.
The loft , of course, is fifty busloads big and it pays for itself. When Dad gets tired of it, you'll find a job as an errand boy at a publishing house. Obviously, that's where you'll make it big.
A true story
Interestingly, Bradley Cooper also starred a year earlier in the film Limitless , also related to writing. Here we find practically the same character. This time the premise is somewhat more entertaining but just as crazy. The writer Eddie Morra discovers a drug that makes his literary talent explode, almost to the point of being secondary, since the drug stimulates his brain so much that he decides to become master of the world. The girl finds the whole thing only mildly amusing.
The relationship between the couple in the more recent True Story is somewhat more developed. The film, which is still a thriller with a bit more polish than The Words , uses the absence of affection to show us the journalist's obsession with the book he's working on (clearly inspired by Truman Capote 's In Cold Blood ).
In True Story (starring James Franco and Jonah Hill), although the man and woman live together, they barely speak. Throughout the entire film, we only see one kiss (a goodbye kiss), and overall, they are a lonely couple who seem to share only a better past and a probable fear of loneliness, which they remedy with a superficial, short-lived relationship. Since the protagonist is a New York Times columnist , it seems a bit more believable that he can afford such a large house in the countryside, far from Manhattan.
Ah, credibility. At the heart of his misery as a writer, Bradley Cooper (who is believable as a Vegas reveler, as a bipolar lunatic in Silver Linings Playbook , or even as a great American con artist FBI agent, but not even remotely as a novelist) resorts to the number one cliché found in Hollywood's discarded screenplay drawers: stealing someone else's book. And for that, nothing beats an antique dealer.
Midnight in Paris
And where do American lovebirds go on their honeymoons? To antique shops in Paris, of course. Everyone knows that. Even Woody Allen. But in Midnight in Paris (a 2011 satire, but intentionally made and incomparable to The Words), at least Scott Fitzgerald and his friend Ernest make an appearance. While not exactly a film about writing, Midnight in Paris is a beautiful ode to nostalgia and a manual on how to combat the romanticism inherent in it. The Words is a bad joke told in haste.
Antiquarian in Paris. She to him: –Do you like that beautiful old bag, darling? I don't work, you even pay me for tampons, but it doesn't matter, I don't even pay attention to the price, I give it to you.
As is well known, among the routines of antique dealers is not the act of refurbishing (not restoring, but simply giving their wares a quick wipe) their wares. Let alone inspecting their contents. And what a masterpiece! What a happy coincidence! The guy Cooper just ripped into by publishing his book (written 70 years ago (?)) also lives in New York, and decided to become a writer after reading Hemingway 's The Sun Also Rises . A man who needed only two weeks of writing to produce a masterpiece and, once it was rejected, gave up on being a writer.
The man today is an old man who seems happy watering plants (in Central Park). The old man has only written that one book (like Finding Forrester or The Great Beauty , one of the best films of the decade ), and if he were a little smarter, he could easily make a few coins by revealing his other secret, one much more unsettling than the express production of masterpieces: the secret of his immortality. It's hard to swallow, no matter how much your name is Jeremy Irons , that you fought in World War II, and that in 2012 you're still alive to tell the tale while watering plants in Central Park with seemingly impenetrable health. Just a few coughs.
Speaking of Hemingway, the old man is even given a youthful air, and his entire flashback looks too much like a cross between A Farewell to Arms (with apologies to the First World War) and Love in Troubled Times : why is the mid-twentieth century almost always sepia-toned in cinema?
in third person
The old man, who suddenly begins to cough more, and from coughing so much he dies, is lazy about the envelope of bills that Cooper, now super famous, super awarded and super sorry, offers him in compensation. No, the old man just wants to talk. She's chased Cooper for a whole morning, bus ride included, only to sit on a bench with him and bore him with the French love affair she based the autobiographical chorizo novel on. How were they going to make a movie about writers without a good chase?
This is where the film takes a turn, perhaps devoting too much time to a new storyline that almost makes us forget the main one, in a game of meta-narratives with the same risk (but less success) as that of Third Person (also starring Olivia Wilde!). We haven't mentioned it, but in The Words, there are actually three narrative planes. Bradley Cooper's entire story is nothing more than the visual narration of a public reading in which another Bambi-like writer, Dennis Quaid, who fills auditoriums, manages to charm a sensual graduate student. The most beautiful of them all. After the reading, he takes her to his duplex. For wine.
Bryan Cranston gave life to the great Dalton Trumbo in 'Trumbo'
That the thing was about love and not about books was something that could be seen coming. The spectators who are still alive in the room, with their hearts in rubble and their hands stapled to the couple's, helplessly attend the triple drama: a life destroyed by a dead baby (elderly), a relationship in the process of being demolished because of a plagiarized book (Bradley Cooper, up to that point his wife trusted his talent!) and another in the making, Quaid and Wilde, the only relationship that still shows a bouquet of hope by suggesting that perhaps the student has ended up in the duplex with touching intentions beyond the literary codpiece. Only the last shot, the best moment of the film, leads us to think that there is something else to clarify. Just when the movie starts to get interesting, it gives up.
Last cliché: no writer reads. We only ever see this one skimming John Fante 's Ask the Dust . We insist: anyone who wants to see good films about the art of writing would do well to give a chance to the films mentioned in the headings of this article, and also to In the House , Howl , Dead Poets Society , or The Tenants.
An ordinary day in the life of the protagonist of Million yen woman.
If, on the other hand, you'd prefer to dive right in, give the series Million Yen Woman (Netflix) a try: several beautiful young women unexpectedly move into the home of a young writer. The guy wins a literary prize. The young women pay him an exorbitant amount of rent. One of the girls is naked all the time. The series is Japanese, so don't get too caught up in trying to understand it. Being a writer in the world of audiovisual fiction is probably the best job in the world.