Today I welcome author Eamonn Griffin to Beadyjansbooks as part of the Blog Tour for his brand new "East Coast Noir" thriller - East of England.
He has written this fab article for my blog where he shares his thoughts on writing in movies ... It's hardly surprising that Stephen King features as it's clear the darkness in his books have seeped into Eamonns deliciously dark writing style.
Please read the article he has so kindly provided and then go read his dark and thrnew book. East of England which is available now in paperback and kindle editions.
The Blurb:
Dan Matlock is out of jail. He’s got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or just get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else. But it’s not as simple as that.
There’s the matter of the man he killed. It wasn’t murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half of what’s profitable and two-thirds of what’s crooked between the Wolds and the coast. Who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven’t touched him. Not yet.
Like Matlock found out in prison, there’s no getting away from yourself. So what’s the point in not facing up to other people?
It’s time to go home.
Author Eamonn Griffin
Find Eamonn on Twitter @eamonngriffin
Eamonn Griffin on movies about writing
Because I write, I’m interested in writing. There are loads of movies about writing and writers, for example.
Sometimes, it’s because the job (if it is a job in the ordinary sense of the word) seems to allow that character to have time to explore whatever the rest of the plot of that movie is. Sometimes, though, the movie is about writing itself, or at least about how writing is a struggle for that author. That’s there the conflict of such movies, is. A writer doing writing is pretty boring to watch. It’s indistinguishable from typing. But a writer not writing? There’s fun to be had there. So here’s a few favourite films that play with this idea:
American Splendor (2003): the true-ish story of Harvey Pekar, a lowly administrator who documents his dull life and his awkward romances in a series of graphic novels, and becomes a minor celebrity in so doing.
Prick Up Your Ears (1987): a film about the playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell, played by Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina. As Orton’s career takes off, Halliwell’s own writing stalls, and this is part of the collapse of their relationship, leading to murder/suicide.
Before Sunrise / Sunset / Midnight (1995/2004/2013): Richard Linklater’s trilogy of movies about Jesse (he’s the writer here) and Celine - played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy – who meet up for a few hours at different points in their lives. Not much happens, and that’s sort of the point.
Misery (1990): One of several Stephen King adaptations - like Secret Window, The Shining, and The Dark Half – that explore the horror in the writer’s life. Here, it’s
the obsessed fan story, as James Caan’s successful romance author gets himself held prisoner by superfan Kathy Bates who is insistent (really, really insistent) that he resurrects his recently-killed off series heroine for one last novel.
Adaptation (2002): Charlie Kaufman (played by a never-better Nicolas Cage) has writer’s block when trying to adapt a delicate novel into a screenplay, so he turns to his action genre-oriented brother Donald (also Cage), for reluctant help.
Wonder Boys (2000): Michael Douglas’s university lecturer character is stuck writing his second novel, years after having a single success, so he too looks for help ending up on a road trip with his literary agent and a talented young writing student.
There are plenty of others, of course, from biopics of famous writers (or sometimes, of the writing of a great novel or play) to stories which use the idea of a writer character as a way to explore the plot and character concerns of the movie in question. The crime writer as detective, for example is an often-used example.
If you’ve got a film that for you is interesting / funny / perceptive about writing, then mention it in the comments below!
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