What Movies About Writing Don’t Tell You

More than one person has recommended the Dead Poets Society to me, or asked if I’ve seen that movie, when I tell them I write poetry. I haven’t seen it. I’d like to, I’ve heard Robin Williams is great. He’s remembered for being funny, but he could play a serious role as good as anyone.

Another writing movie I have watched, a recent Starz production, is a short, fictionalized examination of the real-life relationship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen. It is funny.

Other movies come to mind but not clearly enough worth mentioning. Always, it is who is writing or what they write featured, not their writing; that is the most boring and least notable part of it all. Yet, the writing is the glorious drudgery that unveils word by word excellence, punctuation sometimes the difference between one meaning or another. A movie is the exciting retelling, but I think you must find enjoyment in the unexciting in order to make it work writing.

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