Any documentaries or other inspirational movies about creative writing?

Born Into This- Charles Bukowski's documentary. It is more inspirational than you can imagine- Just avoid adopting his drinking habits.

posted about 11 years ago

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Cass Simpson‭

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I haven't actually seen any movies specifically about writing that are particularly inspirational. Writing is not the most movie-friendly of activities.

I find the movies that give me inspiration are the movies that are mostly bad, but have a couple of good ideas contained within them. This tends to get me thinking in a direction of "fixing" the bad movie, or even inventing a new story with the same objectives, or about the same themes, that doesn't suck so bad.

Generally speaking tightly constructed and well made movies are enjoyable but they already exist as they are so I don't get any inspiration from them.

I wish I could give specific examples but usually any end product influenced by something comes out unrecognisable. I have a lot of time for the concepts surrounding the physiology and nature of angels in "The Prophecy" but nothing I have ever written is an attempt to "fix" that movie as much as it just lifts the good concepts out of the surrounding problematic structure.

Television series often have loads of great unused ideas because the writers leave avenues open for taking the stories in one direction or another that, in the end, they fail to develop. I feel free to take these "redundant plot concepts" as well. Again, I could not point to anything specific.

posted over 12 years ago

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One Monkey‭

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Misery.

ETA Allow me to explain my facetiousness. Misery is a Stephen King story about Paul, a writer of a popular series set in Victorian times starring Misery Chastain. Paul finally gets tired of the character and kills her off in what he believes to be the final book of the series.

He gets into a car accident in a snowstorm and is rescued by Annie, who's a nurse, and a fan of Misery, and also rather out of her mind. Annie reads the new book, is devastated that Misery is dead, and ties Paul up (among other abuses) and forces him to write a new story — with no tricks — bringing Misery back. The novel features a typewriter which slowly disintegrates a key at a time until Paul, feverishly caught up in his own story, has to resort to longhand to finish it.

I mention the story for two reasons: one (jokingly), that when you get really devoted fans, you don't ever want to piss them off. But more seriously is a quote from Annie which I still remember.

Misery is dead and buried at the end of the "last" book. When the writer resurrects her without explanation, Annie is furious. She screams at him that he's cheating, the way the filmmakers of the Saturday-morning serial movies used to reset the cliffhanger endings to allow the hero to get out of the impossible scrape by making it not impossible at the beginning of the new film.

"Misery's in the grave. You'll have to start from there," she tells him.

That line forces Paul to be creative, to really think, in ways he had allowed himself to stop doing out of laziness. It's a challenge. If you're looking for a writing prompt, that's a good one.

While I'm adding to my answer, I'll also mention the films Dead Poets Society (both for its love of language and the general goad to Seize the Day) and Shakespeare in Love, to watch the process of a play (a story) being built one familiar couplet at a time.

posted over 12 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

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