FILM: Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Wonder_boys_ver4.jpg

Wonder Boys is based on a novel by Michael Chabon and adapted to the screen by soon-to-be Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves. It centres on Grady Tripp, a novelist and writing professor who over has been trying to complete his novel for the past seven years. Ah, the procrastinating writer! If what Hollywood says about novelists is true, then it is a wonder that any novels get written at all, as the movies would have us believe that most writers walk about in our dressing gowns, watching quiz shows, knocking back Jack Daniels and occasionally looking guiltily at the typewriter in the corner. (The reality is, of course, that only half of this is true).

Tripp’s problem is not that he can’t write – he can’t stop writing. The manuscript has waffled on for hundreds of pages and he can’t seem to grasp hold of the narrative. He has a body of work, but even he struggles to call it a ‘novel’.

The plot takes us around a weekend from hell, in which Tripp picks up his agent who is hungry for the promised manuscript, babysits a troubled student, accidently bumps off his lover’s dog, and tries to avoid sleeping with his lodger. It is all excellently written and played, and the performance by a pre-Spiderman Tobey Maguire of the depressed and dramatic student James Leer who appears to be the next Big Thing, is one to be noted.

The screenplay has a great charm and memorable scenes, in what could have been played out as a Fawlty Towers-type farce. Kloves manages to get us to like both the pot-smoking Tripp and the almost catatonic Leer as they act disgracefully. One of my favourite films and one which every writer with an interest in great characters should make time to watch.

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FILM is a series of posts looking at the representation of writers in movies.