Movies about writers

Few things are more difficult to transfer to film than the process of writing. What’s cinematic about showing a poor slob staring blankly at a computer, a typewriter or a piece of paper? Nevertheless movies find writers fascinating.

Gonzo: The Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, currently navigating the art theater route, delightfully relates the misadventures of the maverick journalist whose Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ranks as a classic. The fall movie line-up will bring us Chris & Don: A Love Story, which explores the longtime relationship between portrait painter Don Bachardy and writer Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood’s most famous work, arguably, is Berlin Stories, which inspired the musical Cabaret.

Both these films are documentaries, but through the years, feature films have explored the writing ritual and its  colorful inspirations. Recently, both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Nicole Kidman won Oscars for playing writers. Among the many efforts to capture the literati onscreen:

• Hunter Thompson was anointed on film before Gonzo hit the screen. Bill Murray, whose glib exterior hides a literary bent, played Thompson as an agreeably outrageous charmer in Where the Buffalo Roam, while Johnny Depp, who narrates the current documentary, presented an earthier portrait in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

• On a more genteel level, Depp won an Oscar nomination as Sir James M. Barrie, wistful author of Peter Pan, in Finding Neverland. The well-mannered film softened the tragic aspects of the family that inspired Barrie’s famous work.

• Another seemingly discreet Brit, Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was brought to haunting life by Ian Holm in 1985’s shamefully neglected Dreamchild, which explored the obsessive relationship between Carroll and the real Alice.

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