Authors as Movie Stars?

“Let’s make a thrilling (suspenseful, joyous , touching) movie based on a famous writer’s life,” said no Hollywood executive ever. As least I don’t think so. Movies require action and while there are writers who  lived action-packed lives, most don’t. The truth is, what makes  a writer’s life interesting and exciting It is what goes on at the desk and ends up in covers. Pretty boring to watch.

 This not-at-all original  comment is inspired by the fact that I recently watched several movies, by coincidence,  about famous writers, and have at least two more coming up. To my surprise, I enjoyed them too. They were fun on the screen and made with some imagination.

Most recently viewed was The Man Who Invented Christmas. It’s the story (or  a story, anyway) of the writing  of A  Christmas Carol. Dan Stevens plays the youngish Charles Dickens, struggling to come up with a hit after a few unsuccessful books. Jonathan Pryce as Charles father, the embodiment of a character from a different Dickens novel,  and a few other real people, like Thackeray, appear briefly.  

We see Dickens in his very full  family and social life, and also struggling with some devastating memories, struggling to find the next story, struggling to get the names just right, struggling to get the beginning right. Some familiar bits start to appear. And then Mr. Scrooge shows up in his study. In person.

While most of us have never had a character appear, fully formed, looking and sounding like Christopher Plummer (then again, most of us are not Dickens), the movie was a charming and amusing depiction of the writing process. Yes, it is sort of like that. It’s not exactly a spoiler to add that once Dickens got started, he miraculously wrote it white-hot and published it in record time for  Christmas sales.  It was a great success.     

Good-Bye Christopher Robin used a somewhat similar approach, and it too is charming, but fundamentally, accurately,  sad. There was a real Christopher Robin, he was A.A. Milne’s son, and he had a bear. His father’s inspired books and the beloved illustrations of E.H. Shepherd, made them, and him, famous and did not provide him with a  happy childhood. Far from it. At the same time, the story of how they began, and why they became so beloved, is told by combining live action and animation. There are moments of real loveliness bringing to life the way stories do come to life for children.  

Colette is the exception to everything I just wrote.  Her life would have been entertaining  just as a period drama, but still, it was the books she wrote that made it matter. This is not a movie about where the stories came from; it is about where the writer came from, as the provincial but interesting  girl turns into a woman in charge of her own life.

 

An older movie, Saving  Mr. Banks is quite different.I was fascinated enough to write a blog about it for a now closed group blog I belonged to. (You might find it here: http://www.womenofmystery.net/2014/06/28/place-holder-2/)   It is the story of P. L. Travers , author of the beloved Mary Poppins books, and her intense disagreements with the Disney studio over the  beloved Mary Poppins musical. So far, so good. It really happened and the characters are pretty accurate.  However, the story is – um – the Disney version in more ways than one. My old blog post concluded:  “Best for us to enjoy the Mary Poppins books, enjoy the Mary Poppins movie and enjoy Saving Mr. Banks while recognizing that they are, mostly, separate works of powerful imaginations.”   

To watch next? All Is True, a tale of Shakespeare at the end of his life, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, who has starred and directed in acclaimed  films of some of the plays. This will be interesting. There isn’t a lot known about Shakespeare’s late life, or, indeed, any part of his life, and I am curious  to see how Branagh imagines that setting into persuasive life. If anyone can to it, I think he can.

Finally, there is the just released Tolkien. I’ve read a full biography and seen the current detailed exhibit on his life at the Morgan Library and Museum. He would seem to be the quintessential author who  could never have a movie bio because, after his tragic childhood and service in World War I, nothing happened!  He married his first sweetheart, had children and spent the rest of his life as professor of Anglo-Saxon, linguistics  and literature. Oh, and he wrote some memorable books. Was the first quarter of his long life  enough to make a movie? 

And it was made without the approval of his estate. Might it give us a glimpse of a great  imagination just getting started?  Or be literary gossip, fun perhaps but not meaningful? Or be charming but with little relationship to the actual life, as in so many Hollywood biographies? Finding Neverland would be a good example.

I am looking forward to finding out.

Did you see any of these?  What did you think? Is there an author bio movie you really loved? Or really hated?
Do tell!

New (ish) Answers to “Where Do You Get ideas?”

“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s probably the most asked question at author events. Some authors dislike it but I don’t mind. People genuinely want to know. Why not discuss? We’re not giving anything away. What the questioner makes of our responses will be his or her very own, and not a problem for us.

I believe it was Ray Bradbury who claimed there was a factory in Schenectady that manufactured all the ideas and sold them for a modest fee   

but the most common answers are “Newspaper stories” and “Eavesdropping.” True for me. A tiny bit of information, almost an urban legend, was the start of my first Brooklyn book, and a series of news stories about a very odd crime- thefts of valuable stained glass from neglected cemetery chapels – was the germ, remembered for years, of the second.   

A character in the third was inspired by a newspaper clipping in a library file, so that was newspaper, once removed.

Here are some of my recent discoveries:

My local paper is the New York Times which has a big real estate news section on Sunday. Real estate is big news in this always changing city.   

Through the section  covers major development and trends in depth, lately I find some of the best stories are in the 

Q & A column. People are desperate to  know how to deal with the difficult – noisy, nosy, threatening, rude, cat hating -or cat adoring! -  neighbors.  After love in all its forms, what can make people crazier than the spot where money and “my home, my castle” meet? And clash?

Recent gems were questions about the mice and insects coming from the apartment of a hoarder, a renter who does not understand why owners in the co-op building object to his free-roaming cat, and a belligerent neighbor who has taken to dropping  in on every open house for possible home purchasers. You think that one might discourage a buyer?  How about people who illegally occupy a cheap, rent-controlled apartment in this expensive city? How about the guy who makes his living investigating such cases?  

The possibilities are endless.

Eavesdropping?  I recently waited at a bus stop where an older man, friendly, cheerful and probably somewhat substance impaired, was flirting with a similarly aged woman. Far from being annoyed, she seemed thoroughly entertained. When he said, “But how can I marry you if I don’t know you’re a good cook?” she promptly said she was from Trinidad and starting telling him about the wonderful Caribbean delicacies she could make him. There was a lot of laughter.

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My most surprising source recently was my very own files. I found some notes about a long ago crime wave in a small, farm-country town near where I grew up, perpetrated by the illegitimate  children of the police chief.  I thought, “Wow. I’ve just been handed a plot.”

 

 I have absolutely no memory of ever writing those notes, and no source at all for the information. Did I read it in the hometown paper? Did someone just tell me a story? Was it accurate or just gossip?   And does it even matter?

I can just make it up. It is fiction, after all.  In the end, it doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s all about what we do with it.