Wonder Boys

(Curtis Hanson, 2000)

Last summer I took a job as a classroom assistant for the Humber College School for Writers in Toronto. Classes ran for five days, but it was a full week-long to-do that featured some of Canada’s most regarded writers and publishers. Each afternoon, those enrolled could listen to hour-long lectures and participate in Q&As to discover what were often some cold hard facts about getting a written work published in this country. The more interesting moments, however, were provided by the writers, who passed on the advice they could to a hall full of wide-eyed students with knowing smiles cocked and loaded.

Behind the scenes, I spent some time with the men and women who organize the week. It instilled in me the desire to hunt down a copy of "Wonder Boys", a film I’ve seen countless times since its release in 2000. I was finally experiencing a burgeoning writer’s dream, the kind that has less to do with writing than it does with envisioning what could and might be written and the life that a writer leads. I enjoy films about writers, though they seem few and far between. The world of writers fascinates me. It intrigues me to watch writers as characters put on the other side of the pen.


Professor and author Grady Tripp is Michael Douglas’ best role. He bookishly mopes around Pittsburgh at its most dreary, smoking pot to escape reality and fuel his artistic temperament, emitting low-key reactions to mishaps that would keep most people indoors for the weekend. Grady’s editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.) is in town for Word Fest, the university’s annual event “for writers and wannabes”. Grady’s seven-year opus (and it is that, in length) is Crabtree’s meal ticket, but Crabtree’s raison d'être is lit parties attended by prominent writers and fresh young prospects. In Grady’s opening narration, he reveals that his wife had left him that morning with not so much as the nonchalance of a drive-thru order delivery. His mutual feelings for the university’s chancellor Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) keep him grounded, even if she is married to his boss.

The story is driven by Grady’s developing mentor/protégé relationship with student James Leer (Tobey Maguire). The two drive around the greater Pittsburgh area as Grady attempts to sort his life out and experience what it might be like to be a father, a reality he discovers is arriving a lot sooner than expected. At a party, James opens fire on the Gaskells’ dog and steals the jacket that Marilyn Monroe wore on her wedding day from Dr. Gaskell’s private memorabilia collection. This is the stuff of fiction, for a writer – characters who have interesting, expressive traits and little moments that seem to escalate into a story. Looking back, they happen all at once without realizing it, and it’s what allows Grady to write the book he needs to write, not the one he thinks he should write.


The belief that a romantic career as a writer is not only possible but probable is the gasoline for many students of English and creative writing. The writers do nothing to shatter the illusion save warning against the improbability of their own success, but any real writer shuns such warnings. In a scene in Wonder Boys, the prolific author “Q” (Rip Torn) begins a lecture by announcing that he is a writer and pausing for applause, which he is bound to receive in this environment. Grady and James exchange a look of raised eyebrows. As Q goes off on a metaphor of how a writer sees an idea through, James Leer lets out a high-pitched giggle that resonates throughout the auditorium.


This is the kind of note that Wonder Boys hits perfectly throughout. Getting a book published is hard. Hardly anyone has the talent for it. Most kid themselves into believing that what they write will matter in an important way. But what is the alternative? To have written nothing at all? To not believe that a piece of writing can affect another person, even change their life somehow? All of the characters in the film believe in the possibility, and because they do, we care about them. Grady has spent seven years writing the follow-up to a novel that made him famous in literary circles. His struggle isn’t to finish his book; it’s to reaffirm his belief that stories are still worth telling. James is finding his voice as a writer, but he doesn’t know who he wants to be apart from that; he fictionalizes his own life while spending most of his time in old movie theatres and memorizing the morbid details of celebrity suicides.


The humour in "Wonder Boys" arrives in observing how these characters perceive their own eccentricities and recognize the opportunity to make their own stories more interesting. Grady’s novel, titled “Arsonist’s Daughter”, which is just appropriately perplexing enough to sound like the prototypical novel taught on English university syllabi, established him as a god to the novice writer, yet he writes in a ratty old woman’s bathrobe for reasons that “aren’t particularly interesting”. James Leer talks of an incestuous relationship between his parents, who keep him locked in the basement - a room that turns out to be decorated with hard-to-find Hollywood items and strewn with overdue library books.

For all his schizophrenic ideas and immature efforts to promote mystique, James is talented. I identified with his descriptions of writing stories in his head while trying to fall asleep at night. These and other poignant observations made about the mania of a writer are virtues of Steven Kloves’ smart script. These people think like writers. They narrate lives for the people they meet, but never to a tiring extent. They use accessible metaphors and talk in sharp descriptions as though it was as natural a process as breathing, and that’s a refreshing quality in a film.

There’s a pleasure in hearing people talk about simple yet extraordinary things in the movies. In one scene, James and Grady discuss old films starring actors who went crazy. They make no additional observations; they just let it hang in the air like the snow flurrying lightly around them, confident that they both understand the implication and significance of what they’re discussing, knowing where to put their words and when to leave them aside. In another scene, my favorite, Grady calls up his boss at 3:30 in the morning to tell him that he’s in love with his wife. "Wonder Boys" is at its best when its writers become characters.


Five more reviews to go.

More reviews here: Ottawa Art: Film