Kermode Uncut: Writing Lesson

www.bbc.co.uk/markkermode
How do you write for film? Not how do you write scripts, but how do you make someone look good when they are writing on film? In a new movie about the trial surrounding the first performance and publication of Alan Ginsberg's epic beat culture poem Howl, James Franco shows us one version. In Terry Gilliam's take on Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depp offers up another. The question is, can anyone write well on screen ever?

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Alan Ginsberg
• Alex Cox
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Howl
• Hunter S Thompson
• James Franco
• Johnny Depp
• terry Gilliam
• The Clash

[HamGreenandEggs]

Barton Fink

[psycomedia]

Naked Lunch

[FalconPunch256]

at the beginning there I thought you were rewriting the script for transformers 2

[Smithereen1]

The Social Network.

[Bassbait]

The Shining. End of story.

[queenrocks21]

The opening sequence of se7en

[CrashLanden]

Adaptation.

[vampireheart99]

Dr K, it has to be Misery, simply because the act of writing not only thrusts the story forward, and illustrates that writer's block and bad ideas are also present when a writer attempts to produce good fiction (rather than merely banging out a best seller in one draft and twenty seconds of mimed typing). Misery is perhaps one of the best films about the psychological, physical and mental strains about writing, topped with a cinematic edge of a psychotic, and ever present, number one fan.

[pauljeremiah]

opening of Atonement comes to mind, and how the sound of the keys typing is used as a percussion

[southpaw169]

8 mile. lots of shots with eminem on bus, of bus, at desk writing his music. the combanation of the soundtrackand the expresions on his face along with him mouthing the words as he writes helps keep it interesting. wether u like or dislike the film the fact is those scenes do work

[DulBeat]

The first few episodes of "Death Note"

...what?