Follow Me Quietly: Movies about Writing

I quite enjoyed this short poverty-row noir directed by Richard Fleischer. A police Lieutenant is on the hunt for a serial killer who gives himself the name “The Judge”. His victims appear to be random, but his killing style is always the same and always during rain.

But enough about the lurid details of a fascinating killer. Let’s talk about writing!

First, I want to point out that one of the victims who survives the Judge’s attack Is the editor of a local paper. He survived by falling out a window, and even as he lies, broken on the sidewalk, he demands that one of his reporters take his statement for that day’s edition. I would say that’s dedication, but I’d say it’s more stupidity Especially since he was face-to-face with the killer and couldn’t ID him.

The character I’m going to focus on Is actually Ann, A reporter for a magazine, which the main character describes as worse than a yellow rag. She is so determined that she get an inside scoop, Ann starts following the lieutenant around, including breaking into his apartment. Her boss is only willing to print the story if she gets some information that no other print media has gotten yet. However, this would upset the investigation.

Eventually, she reveals that she knows her publication is trash, but she was desperate for a writing job. She agrees to use her inside knowledge of magazine distribution to help catch the killer without upsetting the case. My question is, she wanted so badly to be a writer, did she get a better job after the film was over?

Words and Music: Movies about Writing

Why does Mickey Rooney bug me so much? He’s weirdly gross. Sorry, Rooney fans. I just don’t get it. I will grin and bear it for a movie with Judy Garland and Lena Horne singing. Rooney plays Lorenz Hart (called Larry) based on the real life lyricist. Only in this film, his short lifespan does not include being an alcoholic or a closeted gay man. Tom Drake portrays Richard Rodgers before his time with Hammerstein (and also cutting down on his alcoholic tendencies for the sake of the Hays Code). Most of this movie is just famous people performing the songs with little interest in an actual plot. I’m going to be focusing more on the lyric writing for this blog.

Larry started off as a poet with a strange process that drives Richard nuts. Larry writes down words on old issues of Vanity Fair and takes measurements of people he likes. However, they still end up in a partnership because “a tune without a lyric is a lonely thing”. However, the “lonely thing” throughout the film is Larry, showing his depression and bouts of writer’s block as a result. Besides Larry’s mother, Dick and his wife Dorothy (played by Janet Leigh and based upon real-life self-help writer Dorothy Rodgers - a fact no mentioned in this film) are portrayed as the only people who understand both Larry as a person and an artist. They try to protect him, encourage him, and inspire him. Most importantly, they cover for him in a business full of depression and doubt, yet has no time for the anxieties of creatives.

The Year of Living Dangerously: Movies about Writing

Based on a novel of the same name, this movie takes place in the midst of Indonesia’s political and social upheaval in 1965. Yes, this is essentially a Cold War movie without the U.S. or the Soviets really being involved.

Guy (Mel Gibson back when we all still liked him) is a Australian reporter who has been dying for a chance to prove that he can handle tough and, shall we say, dangerous assignments. He immediately catches the attention of Billy Kwan, a Chinese-Australian photographer with dwarfism who is played by a white woman (that’s the only comment I will make about that because Linda Hunt really did do a good job- but really? There were no partially Asian people suited to the role? She still totally deserved an Oscar - Gah! This is such a hard quandary!). They team up as Billy sees something in Guy that he’s failed to find in the other journalists, a moral compass and passion for the work. The difference being that Billy has been stationed in Jakarta so long that he’s become close to the problems of famine and crime created by the corrupt government. Guy is much more interested in the stories he can share to make a difference and give him more clout as an foreign correspondent. Still, Billy likes Guy so much that he introduces him to Jilly, an English diplomat played by Sigourney Weaver and Billy’s favorite person. Guy and Jill fall in love in the midst of the turmoil and riots in the streets.

Billy acts as narrator for a majority of the film, typing out files on a rusty typewriter on everyone and the political system. Eventually, Guy disappoints Billy in that he wants to expose a story that could get him killed and potentially put Jill in a bad situation. The whole point of this is how Guy is more interested in getting the story than his own safety. As a writer, Guy has to decide what is worth losing and when it is time to give up on a story.

The Thing From Another World: Movies about Writing

You know The Thing - the cult classic John Carpenter film which is a must for all horror movie collectors? This is not that. But it did inspire that film. In turn, all of this was inspired by a short story by John W. Campbell Jr. from a science fiction pulp magazine.

Ned Scott (called Scotty) is a journalist invited to interview a team of scientist and military personal stationed at North Pole. Weirdly, the air force led by Captain Pat Hendry greatly outnumber the men there for the sake of science. Maybe I miscounted, but maybe the science team just didn’t have as many lines of dialogue, other than Dr. Carrington and his secretary Nikki. The other aspect of the film even more unbelievable than the alien life form determined to destroy the men and women is how thin their clothing is! No one should have survived in those clothes!

Scotty is overwhelmed when the team find a flying saucer trapped in the ice. They free it, only for the object to escape, living behind a large, human-like form in a giant ice cube. It really does kind of look like an ice cube at first, then looks longer when they thaw it out some. As this is a horror movie, I don’t want to give away very much since so many people have not seen it. Understand that is WAY different than the John Carpenter movie, but it has some good jumps. Also, the alien is played by the guy from Gunsmoke, so I just kept yelling at the screen, “Marshall Dillon! Marshall Dillon”.

Therefore, I’m just going to focus on Scotty. At first, he is angry that no one will let him radio the story of the UFO and creature back to his editor. Really? He can read his editor from the North Pole? That is a good radio. This leads into an argument about protection of the people by the government versus the first amendment. Second, everyone teases Scotty about how gruesome his news story will have to me and he confesses to being pretty desensitized. He does not use these words, but almost jokingly explains how he got to see a couple executed by electric chair (an event really did happen some 20 years earlier). Lastly, when the creatures start killing people and (spoiler/trauma alert) sled dogs, Scotty lets go of his argument to focus on the problem at hand. He is not so obsessed with the “un-gettable story” as he is with helping to solve the crisis. At the end of film, he gets to have the last words because, after it all is over, it’ll be his job to share the encounter and convince the world that what they saw was real.

Whelp . . .

So I’ve been sick. Like hospitalization, missing mass amounts of work, whiny, hungry, bored levels of sick. So I’m going to take a break from my Truman Capote theme and put up some blogs I already wrote for this year. We’ll get back to Capote a little later this year.

Capote: Movies about Writing

Truman Capote is presented in the Oscar Winning performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in this movie about the writing of In Cold Blood. Catherine Keener plays his oldest friend Harper “Nelle” Lee, Bruce Greenwood as his boyfriend Jack Dunphy Chris Cooper plays Agent Alvin Dewey, and the killers are portrayed by Mark Pellegrino and Clifton Collins Jr.

This is very much a film about being a writer and where the line of morals blurs with telling the best story. When Capote hears about a grizzly murder of a Kansas family, he excitedly tells the presses that he will be covering the case, creating a new kind of true crime genre.

The movie starts with general investigation where Nelle acts as a buffer between the small town residents and Capote. He does manage to win over some witnesses, however he mostly rubs people the wrong way. A part of you can’t blame him for head butting against small mindedness, yet there are times he oversteps. He also strains his relationship with his boyfriend, Jack, by being away so long as well as his closeness to Nelle, who is celebrating To Kill a Mockingbird being bought by a publisher at that time. He does win over the lead agent on the case, Alvin Dewey, which gives him first hand insight.

However, it is when the two murders are apprehended that Capote starts to lose control over his own part in the story. He struggles with a connection he feels to one of the killers. He grows depressed and excited at the same time, withholding information from the killers in hopes of getting the full story out of them. The movie shows how Capote’s attempts to create a whole new genre breaks him.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Movies about Writing (Copy)

People often forget that Paul, the main character of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is a published writer.

In case you don’t know the story because you’ve been living under a rock, Paul (George Peppard) has been set up in a new apartment by the wealthy woman who keeps him as her boytoy. There, he meets the eccentric call girl Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) - also a very racist stereotype played by Mickey Rooney, but the less said about that, the better. The pair become friends, at first through his fascination of her personality and her insistence that he looks like her beloved brother Fred. Paul stands by her through parties, love affairs, her rather gross past (really - more people don’t talk about the fact that she was freaking child bride!) trips to Sing Sing, and, of course, visiting Tiffany’s. He falls in love with her despite her repeatedly saying that she could never belong to another human being just like her nameless cat (who lives in her apartment and is dependent on her for nourishment). This is Hollywood, so you know it will all works out okay. Let’s focus on Paul’s job as a writer.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Holly finds out what he does and calls him out for not having any ribbon in his typewriter. He says, “I’m a writer, I guess” and her fantastic response is, “You guess? don’t you know?” Let us all learn from that moment. Paul has one book of short stories which were dirty, “angry, sensitive, intensely felt, and that dirtiest of all dirty words - promising. Or so said The Times Book Review, October 1, 1956.”. Holly even convinces him to sign the library’s copy, which the librarian gets terribly bent out of shape about it. Most importantly, Holly gives Paul a typewriter ribbon. Even though his married girlfriend want him working on a great American novel, a project he’s been slogging through for years, Paul instead writes a short story about Holly. He earns his first paycheck for his own work for the first time in years. This and his feelings for Holly give him the liberty to break away from his sugar mama. And even when he no longer has Holly, he continues to write.

Truman Capote isn’t in this, but if you read the original book you can hear him behind the main character, a struggling New York writer who is observing his usual friend with both criticism and amusement. The film is much different, but at least in the story you know that Cat is okay in the end.

The Audrey Hepburn Story: Movies about Writing

Jennifer Love Hewitt and a very young Emmy Rossum play Hepburn at different stages of her life. The movie’s framing device is the filming of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Although the TV movie is based on Audrey Hepburn‘s memoir, it tries to make everything very obvious in what occurred in the creation of her career. The opening scene has her worried she’s going to mess up the part of Holly Golightly while Truman Capote is expressing to everybody that she’s already messing up and that Marilyn Monroe would’ve been a better fit. One of the other people on set points out that Audrey Hepburn is one of the nicest actors they worked with and Capote replies “I don’t write nice”. Therefore, Audrey Hepburn makes a bet with one of the other women on set that she will get a quarter if she can make Truman Capote smile. Michael J. Burg is playing Capote for the first time on the small screen in the Hollywood made-for-TV biopic. He plays the role as petulant, whiny, and pretty much how I image Capote was on set.

The rest of the movie goes into Audrey Hepburn‘s childhood and flashbacks with how she became an actress intermingling things that are happening on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (as well as the way she’s annoyed by Capote‘s dislike of her). She thinks back to her strong relationship with her mother, how they were part of the resistance in World War II, her father’s abandonment of them, and how ballet led to Audrey being a chorus girl. Finally, being a chorus girl led to her starring in her first play Gigi. I like this part because it also features Colette, the author of Gigi, telling Audrey Hepburn how perfect she is for the part. She also mentions that Anita Loos (author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) who is adapting Gigi is a “difficult woman”. That’s right, Collette, be catty. You earned it.

There is a lot about Hepburn’s own lack of self confidence about her looks as her film career and love life change. They portray fashion icon Givenchy as one of the people to make her feel beautiful. This is opposite of Capote, who makes all of the actors feel like they are doing something wrong. Audrey marches up to Capote at one point with the question about Golightly’s actual purpose as a call girl. He asks her what she thinks and she compares Holly to her her earlier self. Her answer makes his expression change slightly, but he tries not to react. Later, when an animal wrangler asks why Holly puts “cat” out into the rain, Audrey glances at Capote who raises his eyebrows at her with a challenge. She gives the satisfying answer about Holly and cat being the same and he says, “That’s right”. I don’t think this scene ever happened, but in reality, Audrey Hepburn did manage to make Truman Capote smile.

Tru: Movies about Writing

In 1992, a version of this “one man” play was aired on television. And I found this broken up on the internet with some awful audio. Still I’m grateful it was there.

Tru takes place later in Truman Capote’s life when he (as he describes it) is more famous for being famous than his writing. Robert Morse place Capote as someone both untouchable by criticism and self-flagellating. As the fictional Capote talks to the audience and various telephoning friends about his latest work “Answered Prayers” and his life.

He jumps back and forth between topics from his family being more open to him being a dancer versus a writer to his sexuality to researching In Cold Blood to who in the literary circle is NOT an alcoholic (Arthur Miller, by the way). He laughs to himself quite a bit and follows up the saddest stories with the wittiest retort and cleverest jokes.

It’s revealed as the play goes that Tru is talking to an audience at Christmastime as many of his friends are angry he’s written a story that gives away their great secrets in a fictional setting. He feels this story was one of his best and he simply tells his friends that he “forgives them”. He also states that something similar happened when he wrote his first story about his neighbors when he was eight years old.

I rather enjoyed his rambling. It felt like being in a famous writer’s mind. But I was disappointed that he had mention of his childhood with Harper Lee. Then again, maybe Lee requested this. Either way, according to this play, Truman Capote had great taste in music.

Snow White Christmas (2018)

Again, not a movie about writing, but the streaming algorithm won’t leave me alone because I watched the Cinderella Christmas movie.

Blanca is going to inherit half of her father’s money and control of his candy business/shop when she turn 25 on Christmas. Her step mother, Victoria, and Victoria’s overly-flamboyant sidekick, Zane (I’m just saying, you’re a villain dude. Tone it down), hypnotize Blanca so will forget everything except her deceased father. They place her in a small town, knowing that if she does not claim her side of the candy business by Christmas, the money goes to Victoria. There, Blanca meets seven men and women in a Christmas band, the Holly Jollies, who are going help her spread Christmas cheer . . . or something. Honestly, the “dwarf” characters didn’t really do much, but I liked their music. The dialogue keeps trying to make it seem like she and Holly Jollies live in a seedy motel, but it’s more like a cute little inn. I mean, her room has a kitchen!

However, as this is a rip-off of a Hallmark movie, there are two male leads. The first is Lucas Prince, a wealthy and eligible designer who falls for Blanca’s beauty. They go on a couple of dates before she loses her memory, but honestly, I like it sooooooo much better when he thinks he’s coming to rescue her from the small town. On the one hand, he keeps offering to take her to a doctor, which is totally fair, but on the other hand, he keeps objectifying her and being negative about things she enjoys. Blanca continually tells him off and tries to get him to leave. The other young man is Hunter, an artist Blanca knew through a mutual friend. He’s sent by Victoria to keep an eye on Blanca as a part of her “evil scheme”.

You get it right? Victoria is the evil queen. Zane is her mirror and servant. Hunter is . . . the hunter. There are even ceramic deer and other woodland critters like in the Disney film in the motel Blanca lives in. A key prop is a compact mirror belonging to Victoria. Throw in lots of apples (candy apples, apple shaped bells, apple red dresses, etc) and you have a Snow White adaptation.

SPOILERS:

Prince continues to blow his chances with Blanca by dissing the Holly Jollies, but she’s still too polite about it. Stand up for your friends!

Hunter feels guilty that he’s been sent by Victoria and Zane to keep Prince away from Blanca. He realizes he’s done the wrong thing when the step-mother and toady do not give him instructions to bring Blanca home. That’s what tipped you off, dude! Not that she has selective amnesia and they don’t want her taken to a hospital! Hunter, you might be the hotter of the two men, but you are clearly aren’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

Anyway, he sticks around because he has feelings for her (if you had feelings for her, you’d call a doctor!) and paints her a frame for a photo of her father. The magnificence and her gratitude of the frame causes the pair to make out and Blanca remembers everything. However, there’s still twenty minutes of this thing.

Blanca tries to distant herself from Hunter thinking he was being paid by Victoria until the Holly Jollies convince her to listen to him. That’s right, their whole role besides singing is to be their relationship counselor. They all rush back to the unnamed city to save Blanca’s inheritance and punish Victoria. Oh yea, and she and Hunter make-out some more. Blah blah blah.

I was disappointed that true love’s kiss could break the hypnotism. Pick up a book, people! Snow White was saved by someone dropping the glass coffin and she coughs out the apple. Yes, I really wanted someone to just give her the Heimlich maneuver. Is that so much to ask? Also, her hair wasn’t dark enough! Dark as ebony, people! Dark as ebony.

A Cinderella Christmas

This one isn’t about writing, but it is about women in a creative field.

Emma Rigby (shout out to those Hollyoaks fans - which I’m really not, but I liked her in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland) is Angie, a woman who runs a successful catering business belonging to her uncle. The problem is that she shares business with a lazy, gold digging cousin Candace and she won’t be able to get full control until Candace is married. This is Candace’s rule and their uncle has no clue that Angie does all of the work. Also, I’m fairly certain they live in the Matthews house from Boy Meets World.

They cater a party for the wealthy businessman, Nikolaus Karmichael (according to imdb that’s how it’s spelled), who desperately wants to run his family company his own way or start his own company with his inheritance. However, he can’t have control of his inheritance until he’s married. I know, it all sounds like the film takes place in 1904, but it’s supposed to be 2016. Anyway, Candace suffers from a facial peel mishap and can’t attend the Christmas function as a guest (Nikolaus invited her for some reason), so Angie of course goes in secret because it’s a masked ball! Always with the masked balls. I do like the game they place at the ball where attendees bring a stocking with items related to their personality. The anonymous stockings are hung on a tree to be picked out by other people and then they have to match who they belong to. Naturally, Angie and Nikolaus choose each other’s stockings and hit it off, only for Angie to run back to the kitchens before the unmasking.

All of this is hinted at being the mastermind of Zelda, a dress shop owner in town played by Mindy Cohn. You know, Natalie, from the Facts of Life. Mrs. Garrett must’ve taught her to butt her nose into people’s loves lives.

The ball happens in the first thirty minutes of the film, which was a nice touch instead of dragging out the abuse she’s suffering from her cousin. Oh wait, now we have to fill up the other hour of the film with Nikolaus’s gross marriage proposal. That’s right, he does the actual fairy tale thing and proposes to the woman the Christmas stocking belongs to. He hires Angie and Candace to plan a Christmas Eve wedding in hopes that his mystery woman shows up.

Angie discovers that Nikolaus drives her nuts and agrees to trick him into thinking that Candace was her at the ball. Of course, this is Candace’s plan and she tries to behave like Angie leading up to the wedding. And so the story turns into Cyrano. Candace wears an earpiece on her dates with Nikolaus and Angie feeds her what to say while realizing he’s not such a bad guy. He also starts to realize that Angie is the one he gets along with and worries about Candace’s type A behavior. And thank the Hallmark Christmas movie gods that Nikolaus is not a complete moron. He figures out with almost thirty minutes left of the story that Angie is who he met, but is upset that she cares so little for him that’s she’d let him marry Candace. That’s a legit upset.

SPOILERS!

Angie’s friends, who are barely in the film, turn on Candace’s microphone so everyone at the wedding hears her and Angie argue about the business and Nikolaus. Nikolaus (who doesn’t hear any of this) tests Candace by proclaiming that he will give up her inheritance and calls off the wedding based on her negative reaction. His mom than tells him that he’s earned his inheritance without getting married because he’s shown maturity. Apparently, she let’s him help run a multi-million dollar company, yet does not trust him to spend his own money. Angie’s uncle also apologizes because he feels like her and Candace constantly lying to him makes him a bad father. They are two grown-ass women! You aren’t responsible for their actions, man. Candace also gives Angie a bullshit apology of being jealous of her. Then Nikolaus shows up and he and Angie go to be young, hot entrepreneurs together. The end.

Things that were super annoying in this made-for-cable Cinderella holly, jolly schlock were Emma Rigby’s American accent, the use of Christmas phrases as swear words, and the over sentimentally of the dialogue. What I loved besides the stocking game - Angie quotes Oscar Wilde.

Love Actually: Movies about Writining

Unless you are five or living under a rock, you know the movie Love Actually. But just in case - it’s several relationship stories revolving around Christmas most of which aren’t the healthiest (you know it’s true). Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy writer Richard Curtis’s stuff a lot of the time (Vincent and the Doctor is one of the best historic episodes of Doctor Who ever written), but this was more fun than it was practical. The best romantic love story in it is the couple who work as body doubles for filming sex scenes.

But that’s not the story I’m focusing on in this short holiday blog. Colin Firth plays Jamie, a thriller author who finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother. Instead of sorting out the drama, he escapes to France for a writing retreat. Already healthy. We’re doing well. A Portuguese woman named Aurelia (Lucia Moniz) is hired to keep house for him while he works. Despite them not speaking each other’s language they fall in love and he proposes. Yes. He proposes to a woman who doesn’t understand him! I’m not sure how that works outside of arranged royal marriages of the 1100 to 1700s.

Anyway, she does take an interest in his book after half of the pages fly away into the local pond. This is because he writes on a typewriter and (as they both point out with annoyance) he doesn’t make copies. All I think of is the first book I tried to write on a floppy disk which got corrupted. It’s fine. I’ve since rewritten the book 10 times. I should really finish it one of these days.

The Holiday: Movies about Writing

I’ll keep this one short. The Holiday is a film by Nancy Meyers about two women who switch houses and lives for the holidays. Cameron Diaz’s character is Amanda, a trailer editor whose boyfriend cheated on her. Kate Winslet’s character Iris and her brother Graham (Jude Law) are a newspaper columnist and book editor respectively whose parents are also in the writing industry. Beloved unto me, Jack Black rounds out the cast as Miles, a film composer who befriends and potentially dates Iris. Amanda and Graham start dating too and discussing his work and family but . . . I like Iris’s plot better so let’s focus on that.

First, there is Iris’s toxic relationship with her ex, Jasper, played by he who does not smile, Rufus Sewell. Despite breaking up and him being engaged to someone else, they still work together and he relies on Iris to be his support and editor. He even sends her pages from his book while she’s on vacation TO GET AWAY FROM HIM. This is a douche writer who no-one should want to be like. That having been said, you know he’s probably a very successful author. The douches always are.

The positive relationship Iris finds (besides Miles) is also with a writer and it’s my favorite part of the movie. Eli Wallach plays Arthur who wrote screenplays during the golden age of Hollywood. He and Iris instantly bond and she finds out about his life and late wife, Marion, who he based all of his female heroes on. Arthur says Marion had gumption, something he want Iris work on so she can move on from Jasper. He recommends movie after movie to her featuring some of the best written leading ladies - Stanwyck, Russell, Bacall, etc. He tells her to be “the leading lady of her own life” which is a great line.

P.S. Why do Graham’s kids say they never have grown-up ladies visit them? What is Aunt Iris? A penguin?

A Christmas Memory: Movies about Writing (Copy)

Netflix. You need to learn to think for yourself. But no. You keep canceling some of your best shows in favor of spending money on Hallmark holiday ripoffs. Luckily, there’s still some class on streaming.

I found the 1997 version of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote on Kanopy. Eric Lloyd (from the Santa Clause) plays young Capote in the form of Buddy who is excited for “fruitcake season” with his best friend/ spinster cousin Sook (Patty Duke). They send the cakes to everyone including F.D.R. For several years, Buddy has lived with the Southern cousins Sook, Callie, Seabone, and Jennie (Piper Laurie) (as well as a dog named Queenie and visits from a Cherokee housekeeper named Anna and a neighbor girl named Rachel - not Harper Lee, or is it, I’m not sure). Other than Sook, the cousins make snide comments make about his mother back in New York and his absentee father. Jennie worries that Buddy is not going up to be “a man” since he spends all of his time with Sook.

Despite the protests from the other three cousins, Jennie is determined to send Buddy away to military school. Still, Buddy and Sook go through their Christmas adventures of tree chopping, gift delivering, kite flying, and visiting bootleggers. In the end, Buddy is still sent away in hopes that the military school will give him a better education. It gives Sook opportunities to stand up to Jennie and both she and Buddy grow up a little. It’s kinda dark for a Christmas story.

I did also watch the 1966 version narrated by Capote himself which includes more of his fantastic descriptions, but depicts the Native bootlegger talks in broken English like a reject from a 1950s western. Buddy doesn’t go to military school on screen in that one either, just in an epilogue.

By the way, I know Truman Capote did go to military school, but I don’t know if the cousins sent him or his mother did. Either way, there is mention of Buddy’s future as a writer. He gives a notebook and pencil to Rachel so she can write down tall tales she tells about her family. And everyone talks about how they’ll miss hearing his “little stories”. And those little stories would someday be about them.

A Thanksgiving Visitor: Movies about Writing (Copy)

Although this is not about writing, it is based on Truman Capote’s happy childhood memories staying with his “spinster cousin”, a woman in her 60s named Miss Sook (Geraldine Page). Young Capote is called Buddy (Michael Kearney) in these childhood tales while adult Capote in all of his lispy glory narrates.

Buddy is being horribly bullied by a classmate named Odd Henderson (I’m not kidding, that his name). Miss Sook is the only person in the household who understands that academic Buddy does not know how to fight back against a bully like the other cousins want him to (yes, everyone else in the house keeps telling him to punch this kid back - oh, the good ole’ days). As a more progressive adult, Miss Sook then invites Odd Henderson to Thanksgiving dinner.

There are other childhood traumas such as one of the cousins trying to force Buddy to kill a turkey and jealousy over attentions of a pretty young female cousin. Hey, Truman Capote could have been curious about pretty girls as a child.

SPOILER ALERT: Of course, a drama occurs when Buddy sees Odd steal Miss Sook’s cameo. Buddy tries to reveal the theft in front of everyone at dinner and Miss Sook tries to cover for Odd because she states that “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Buddy humiliating Odd didn’t help the situation. However, Odd does return the cameo when Miss Sook lies that the cameo was not missing.

Miss Sook is clearly an inspiration for a writer’s voice. The way she talks is very poetic yet simplistic. She is also a woman trapped in a family who does not understand her and dreams of leaving for a new life. But a single woman in Great Depression South is not a person able to escape those with small minds. Of course, the cameo she planned to sell for her freedom was worthless and she never has the heart to tell Buddy.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Movies about Writing

I know, know. Technically, this movie isn’t about writing or Truman Capote - TECHNICALLY - so I’ll keep this short.

If you don’t know, To Kill a Mockingbird is the award winning 1962 film based on the novel by Harper Lee (her only novel published with her consent - you hear me, Go Set a Watchman people)! In case you didn’t have to read the book in high school or watch the movie in film class, it’s a from the point-of-view of Scout. Scout is a lawyer’s daughter living in Great Depression Alabama. She is telling the tale of the big moments of her childhood including when she and her brother Jem tried to make friends their mysterious neighbor and her father defended a Black man wrongly accused of assaulting a white woman.

The book/film is presented like a memoir, with and unseen adult Scout narrating over the top of each change in season or introduction to a crucial moment. Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is the perfect father in so many eyes, however no more than in his daughter’s. I do get chills throughout this movie at the little moments. Still, you see it differently at different times of your own life, especially when one is viewing racism, the justice system, gender roles, and parental roles. As a screenplay, the adult Scout only gives you snippets of her own feelings, choosing to show instead of tell (as they constantly tell you to do in writing class).

The book is loosely based on author Harper Lee’s own childhood where she witnessed racism and discontent in her own hometown. Scout’s next door neighbor during summer vacations is Dill, a talkative and awkward little boy. Lee’s next door neighbor as a child was Truman Capote, a talkative and awkward little boy. Capote supposedly used to call the pair of them the “apart people”, because other children didn’t always get along with the two bookworms. They had a lifelong friendship that needs to be stated before I can continue these blogs because in talking about Capote, I’m going to be talking about Lee a lot too.

Truman Capote Theme: Movies about Writing

Most of the next few months I will be writing about films about or by Truman Capote (off and on). Why Capote, you may ask? Because I want an excuse to watch Murder by Death. But Murder by Death has nothing to do with Capote as a person or writer, you say. Shut up - I say.

I will probably pause this theme for some other upcoming events/seasons, but you get the idea.

Also, I did watch the new season of Feud, but I planned out these blogs before that - I swear.

IT'S HALLOWEEN!!!!

LEAVE ME ALONE! I’M DOING STUFF!

Character Study - Hollywood and Ghosts (Copy)

For this first list, I'm mainly looking at a couple of ghost films. There's a reason for this. Keep reading and you'll see. Also, I only picked films that as a writer I could also recommend watching for character study reasons.

Hollywood and the history of film in general has a strange relationship with ghost stories. Today we think of ghosts falling into the genre of horror with box office and critical successes like The Conjuring, the Others, and the Sixth Sense. But it was not always like this. 

Ghosts in silent and early talking film were usually comedies. The spirits were slapstick foibles meant to be an excuse for the hero to do silly double takes. This continued into the 1930s and 40s where witty ghosts humorously tortured the only human who could see them such as in the Topper films.

The other type of early ghost films would be more serious mysteries or dramas where the ghost turned out to be a living man in a mask. Think Scooby Doo where the owner of the abandoned amusement park actually kills people. There were naturally some exceptions, but most of those were not from the United States, for example Swedish film The Phantom Carriage (1921) which inspired Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick to be creepy.

So what changed ghosts from being comic fodder and murderers in masks? In 1941 Irish author Dorothy Macardle published Uneasy Freehold, an atmospheric and eerie ghost story that sold extremely well. Three years later it was made into a film under the U.S. title, The Uninvited. It’s the story of a brother and sister, Ray Miland and Ruth Hussey, purchasing a gorgeous house atop an English cliff. In doing so, they get to know Stella (Gail Russell), the daughter of the people who built the house. She is drawn to the house, even in adulthood, and the new owners must solve a mystery to save her life. 

But this is a character study and I promised you ghosts. What makes The Uninvited a shift in the genre was the way it handled its ghosts - one who cries and one who brings the cold. I don’t want to give away the mystery, but let’s focus on how these 2 ghosts have distinct personalities while barely showing them on screen.

The ghost who cries is, besides clearly being depressed, is established as gentle and having a clear connection to Stella. The ghost who brings the cold is established as violent and bitter. All of this is shown to the audience/reader through actions and sounds, not facial expressions or jump scares.

As a writer, showing instead of telling can be one of the most difficult tasks. But it creates a better bond with the character for the audience. They get to figure out the character on their own and that stirs up emotions. 

The Uninvited is somewhat forgotten now, despite it causing a shift in how to make ghosts scarier and complex without the cornball. Comedy ghost movies were still prominent in the 1940s/50s, but by the 1960s movie goers got goosebumps from films like Carnival of Souls, The Haunting, and The Innocents.

There was one where they combined the two idea: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), based on the book of the same name (but I confess the movie was better). In this film the ghost is a prominent character who establishes his personality the first time he laughs to frighten potential buyers away from the house he haunts. While this gruff sea captain spirit provides chills at first, he also is a part of the comedy of the story and his relationship with Mrs. Muir, the independent single mom who moved into his house, reveals his softer side. This is not a horror movie, but the ghost is not a joke. He's a former human who still has clear emotions and motivations.

Now let’s get to 1 modern film from a director who was inspired by The Uninvited: Guillermo del Toro ’s Crimson Peak. Again I am only focusing on the ghosts as a character study.

Within the film there are multiple spooks but only some are really given clear personalities. Both are seen on screen, but their character traits are based on what isn’t told outright. The first is the ghost of the former mistress if the house, Lady Beatrice, who had been killed by an ax while taking a bath. She is described as a harsh, strict, and abusive woman, yet this could come across in a description of her ghostly face. The way she sits in the bathtub with wrists up suggests her uptight attitudes. Her only words in the film are accusing and in no way helpful to the main character.

The other ghosts who gets to show some personality are three young women named Pamela Upton, Margaret McDermott, and Enola Sciotti. Instead of explaining their traits as presented in the film, watch it for yourself. Pamela Upton and Enola Sciotti have the most revealed about who they were when they were alive. What character traits do you find?