Lights, camera, write!
In real life writers are admired, but in films they often meet a sticky end
Writing is a lonely art, and as a result films about writers need to be spiced up. Writers onscreen either turn mad or fall for someone unsuitable, then end up dead or emotionally wounded.
Interestingly, two of the creepiest movies about the profession are based on books by bestselling author Stephen King. Any aspiring writer who has seen Misery, the story of a romance novel writer (James Caan) abducted and tortured by his number one fan (Kathy Bates), or The Shining, which charts the transformation of a writer (chillingly played by Jack Nicholson) from a loving dad to an axe-wielding maniac, must surely have been dissuaded from pursuing that career.
A writer in love is another popular approach. Cyrano de Bergerac, the 1990 Academy Award-winning French film starring Gerard Depardieu as a big-nosed Parisian poet, is a classic example. He helps a handsome young man write love letters to the woman he himself loves. It is not until the end of his sad life of unrequited love that he professes his love.
Another romantic movie about writing is Il Postino, the 1994 Italian-language film directed by Michael Radford. The film tells a fictional story about the real-life Chilean poet Pablo Neruda teaching a postman (Massimo Troisi) to win the love of a beautiful lady by using poetry. Swayed by the communist ideals of the poet, the postman dies in a protest march.
In real life, Troisi, who was reported to have postponed a heart surgery so that he could complete the movie, suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after filming was completed.
Writers can also be cold-blooded schemers. In Shattered Glass, a 2003 film about the rise and fall of journalist Stephen Glass, the writer (played by Hayden Christensen) is portrayed as a calculating con-man who unashamedly invents stories for success.
A more unsettling example is Capote, the 2005 biographical film about Truman Capote writing his non-fiction masterpiece In Cold Blood. Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is portrayed as a complex and twisted individual who creates his best work with a combination of compassion and malice and during the process shatters his and others' lives.
But there are happier examples. Dr Wai and the Scripture Without Words (1996) is a local action film that stars Jet Li as a writer escaping reality by living vicariously through his lead character's quest for a mythical scripture, during which he has to fend off sumo wrestlers and ninjas.
Balzac once said: 'What [Napoleon] could not achieve with the sword I will accomplish with the pen.' Unlike many other onscreen writers, Li's character proves this is true.
