Of the countless movie montages that aired during the 79th Annual Academy Awards telecast, one in particular stood out: The celebration of writers writing on film. But as several movies demonstrate, including The Hoax starring Richard Gere, it isn’t easy putting words to paper.
The Hoax, which opens in theaters nationwide April 6, tells the real-life story of writer Clifford Irving (Gere), who in the ‘70s lied through his teeth about having the rights to pen legendarily reclusive Howard Hughes’ autobiography.
Other films about writers include:
1. Adaptation: Real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman dramatization of adapting a book for the big screen.
2. Bullets Over Broadway: A playwright has his boring play secretly rewritten and transformed into a hit by a mobster’s henchman.
3. Quills: The Marquis de Sade’s imprisonment and torture over his titillating words.
4. Shattered Glass: The true story of journalist Stephen Glass, who passed off fictional pieces as fact to a prestigious magazine.
5. Stranger Than Fiction: An IRS agent who finds out he is actually a character in a novelist’s book.
6. Capote: The inner workings of Truman Capote as he wrote his seminal nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.
7. Misery: The horrific look at how obsessed a popular writer’s fan can get.
8. The Hours: Spans the life of three women intimately connected to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.
9. Barton Fink: A 1940s writer who is corralled into coming up with a formulaic screenplay.
10. Wonder Boys: An English professor/former great American novelist tries to overcome his serious writer’s block.
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