Moving Picture Monday: Writing Films

Writers have featured in so many films over the years,  but I have a few favorites I can watch over and over, and not all of them are critical or commercially successful.

Oh sure, we have Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend, Finding Forrester, Misery, Capote, and Adaptation among others--they are all wonderful films that I've seen more than once.

Spoiler Alert - sort of.  These movies have all been out for awhile, even Midnight In Paris.

1. Throw Momma From The Train:  a comedy version of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train starring Danny DeVito, Billy Crystal, and Anne Ramsay. And for you Star Trek fans out there, Captain Janeway makes an appearance as Billy Crystal's ex-wife. This movie tickles me for some reason--but there are some great moments about writing and plotting and procrastination.

2.  Midnight In Paris:  This is one of my all-time favorite movies. Owen Wilson plays a Hollywood screenwriter who wants to be a novelist and finds inspiration during his midnight walks in Paris. I won't go into the details, but he meets some fascinating people that many writers would love to meet and hobnob with. There is so much more to the movie than I'm writing here--a must see.

3.  Funny Farm:  no heavy lifting with this movie, but this is back when Chevy Chase was kind of funny, well on the way to being boring. You have to admit Fletch was pretty good (probably his last decent role). Anyway, Funny Farm is about a newspaper sports writer who quits and moves to the country to write a heist novel.

4.  Gentlemen Broncos:  brought to you by the director of Napolean Dynamite--but nowhere near as funny. It's strange, really strange, but enjoyable for all the writerly bits.  Basically, it's about a kid who writes a novel, submits it to a contest and a sort of washed-up writer he idolizes steals his idea.

 If you were going to watch just one of these, I'd say Midnight In Paris. Throw Momma From The Train would be a decent second choice. The other two you can skip, but they're fun background type movies for me.

My wife and I watch Midnight In Paris quite a bit and dream of being in Paris in the 1920s.

One more guilty pleasure:  Her Alibi --I'm a huge Tom Selleck fan, and while she can't act, looking at Paulina Porizkova for an hour and a half is pretty easy on the eyes.

What are your favorite movies about writing or have a writer as a protagonist?