Movie Reviews for Writers: Secret Window

This movie begins with plagiarism. "You stole my story," says John Shooter to published author Mortimer Rainey. And from there, Shooter does everything in his power to get revenge on Mort for that theft... maybe. 

But that's all I'm going to say about the plot, other than Mort (Johnny Depp) and his wife (played by the amazing Maria Bello) are in the middle of a divorce after the loss of a child, and he has gone off to live in their mountain cabin and write. Then Shooter (John Turturro) shows up. So, right off the bat, there's a fantastic cast with lots of room to play in a sparse story. 

But we're here to talk about what it says about writing and the writer's life. 

There are quite a few major points of interest for writers that this movie really bangs a drum about (typical of a Stephen King story). 

The first is the fear of inadvertently copying bits (little or much) from things you may have seen before. There are no original stories, as the saying goes, just your personal way of telling them, but even knowing that, we don't tend to steal outright from existing works, at least not to the degree of flat-out plagiarism. 

After being accused of stealing Shooter's story, Mort denies the accusation. 

John Shooter: You stole my story.

Mort: I'm... I'm sorry, do I... I don't believe I know you.

John Shooter: I know that, that doesn't matter, I know you Mr. Rainey, that's what matters. You stole my story.

[holding out his manuscript to Mort]

Mort: You're mistaken. I don't read manuscripts.

John Shooter: You read this one already. You stole it.

Mort: I can assure you...

John Shooter: I know you can. I know that. I don't want to be assured.

Mort: If you want to talk to somebody about some grievance you feel you may have, you can call my literary agent.

John Shooter: This is between you and me.

[sees Chico under him]

John Shooter: We don't need no outsiders, Mr. Rainey.

Mort: I don't like being accused of plagiarism, if that is in fact what you are accusing me of. Chico, inside.

[Chico goes back inside]

John Shooter: I don't blame you for not liking it but you did it.

Mort: You're gonna have to leave. I have nothing more to say.

John Shooter: Yeah, I'll go. We'll talk more later.

[hands the manuscript to Mort to take it]

Mort: I'm not taking that.

John Shooter: Won't do you no good to play games with me, Mr. Rainey. This has got to be settled.

Mort: So far as I'm concerned it is.

Later, in the lonely warmth of his sofa in the cabin, Mort wonders, if he may have actually stolen it, but inadvertently or during a drunken stupor. 

But here's the wild part of all this, just as Mort's story, "Secret Window," is about a man who kills his wife and buries her in a garden through her secret window, he himself is harboring anger and bordering on rage toward his unfaithful wife. 

Writing echoes life, and particularly writing echoes the life of writers. Pain, anger, loneliness, family issues, job losses, unrequited love, etc., they're all real and they all end up in our stories. But because so many experiences are shared by so many, it's only natural that bits and pieces from one end up in several stories -- both simultaneously and/or across a number of years. The law of probability backs it up. 

Similar experiences and emotions can trigger similar stories. 

The trouble for Mort is that he has done it before and had to pay off another author for his trouble. The movie drives this home even with his "stealing" the words from a Talking Heads song when he looks at the home his estranged wife lives in: "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. Anymore." 

But in most cases, the comparisons are merely random coincidences, different writers pulling from a fixed circle of possible stories, and sharing a few details in common. No matter how much you lock your manuscripts away or refuse to share details while simultaneously asking other writers for help will help avoid this eventuality. Sorry. 

The second bit I gleaned from a scene where Mort is staring at a paragraph and reading it aloud. "This is just bad writing," he says to himself. After deleting the entire paragraph, he added. "No more bad writing." 

But he really misses the point here. Sometimes bad writing is the catalyst for the truly inspired words to come. Sometimes we have to work through the stuff we're not happy with in order to trigger the good writing we live for. Nobody gets it perfect right out of the gate. That's what editing is for. 

Perhaps the one that hits closest to home is that writers live in their heads... a lot of the time. While arguing over the phone, Amy tells him "You were always gone," and he responds "I worked from home, Amy." She tells him that he knows what she means, he wasn't there really -- he was in his head all the time, not with her. 

Sadly, there's a lot of truth in that, and that's why it's important for writers to learn some kind of balance between family, regular life, and their writing worlds inside their heads. 

Finally, and this is the biggest one in the movie -- the important thing is the ending. Says Mort: "You know, the only thing that matters is the ending. It's the most important part of the story, the ending. And this one... is very good. This one's perfect."

I love the sort of self-deprecating wink and a nod from King in this line. It's no secret that plenty of reviewers have accused him of botching his endings -- or rushing them. So to have his lead character make this statement is a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek moment. 

And he's dead-on. The ending is the important thing. When a typical reader closes the book and puts it down, the only thing on his/her/their mind is the ending. Was it worth it? Did it come out of nowhere? Was it satisfying?

A "bad" ending can ruin an otherwise perfectly good book for readers. What is a good ending? Or a "perfect" one to quote Mort. It's going to be different for each story and each writer. It's something both personal and shared with an audience of readers. It's a way of writing "The End" without having to write "The End" at all. I know that's a sort of spiritual answer rather than a practical one, but "them's the breaks" my writer friends.