Films for Writers

By: Uli Cain, Cinefid​el¹³

“I understand you fancy yourself as a writer; you should find a more… athletic hobby.” – Sir Alec Guinness in Kafka

Writers are an odd bunch, living life in their heads, living the “Life of the Mind.” Here are some films that writers should take a look at; films with writers as the protagonists, or at least feature writers in a important role.

“Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.” – William Goldman, Screenwriter King

Feel free to recommend other films.

We need more films about writers, and I recommend watching Tales from the Script, a great doc about screenwriting, and yes, it did quite depress me.

• 01
  Henry & June
  Philip Kaufman
• 02
  Naked Lunch
  David Cronenberg
• 03
  Kafka
  Steven Soderbergh
• 04
  Barton Fink
  Joel Coen
• 05
  Henry Fool
  Hal Hartley
• 06
  Tamara Drewe
  Stephen Frears
• 07
  Adaptation.
  Spike Jonze
• 08
  The Player
  Robert Altman
• 09
  Living in Oblivion
  Tom DiCillo
• 10
  Sunset Boulevard
  Billy Wilder
• 11
  Contempt
  Jean-Luc Godard
• 12
  Swimming Pool
  François Ozon
• 13
  Reprise
  Joachim Trier
• 14
  Hunger
  Henning Carlsen
• 15
  Barfly
  Barbet Schroeder
• 16
  Almost Famous
  Cameron Crowe
• 17
  Wonder Boys
  Curtis Hanson
• 18
  The Shining
  Stanley Kubrick
• 19
  Shakespeare in Love
  John Madden
• 20
  All the President's Men
  Alan J. Pakula
• 21
  Deconstructing Harry
  Woody Allen
• 22
  The Ghost Writer
  Roman Polanski
• 23
  Tom & Viv
  Brian Gilbert
• 24
  Anonymous
  Renato Pérez Arancibia
• 25
  The Words
  Brian Klugman