5 Recommended Movies About Writers

by a slightly reluctant viewer

My partner is squeamish when it comes to hospital dramas and will invariably cover his eyes during scenes involving scalpel, snapped bone or spilling gut. I’m surprisingly immune — it’s tension and the creeping unknown that gets me. But there is something else I can be squeamish about when it comes to the screen: stories about writers. Perhaps that sounds odd for a writer, or does it make sense to you?

Thinking about that layer of reluctance I feel when a movie synopsis begins “Struggling writer Mary Scrivener . . .” or “When a thriller writer falls in love with a charming fugitive . . .”, I think there are two things I brace myself for. One is a romanticised or clichéd writing life — I don’t want to see something that makes me yell at the screen “That’s not what it’s like at all!” — and I suppose the other is a mirror, because god forbid I see myself in a portrait of a real piece o’ work.

As squeamish as I can be when the portrayal is too cheesy, when I’m in the right mood a film abou…