Movie Reviews for Writers: Grace

This exercise of reviewing movies about writers and about storytelling has led me to quite a few wonderful films I wouldn't have probably noticed otherwise. Take this one, for example, Grace. Every writer I know (and those I don't) should watch this endearing and insightful flick. 

Charles Elliston is a writer who is unproductive in his solitude and unproductive with the assistants his agent sends him to help him with everything but the writing so he can focus on getting his overdue work done. So when "the Supreme Narcissist" the agent's wife's nickname for Ellison) runs off yet another helper, his agent send him Dawn -- a hard-assed, take no crap writer at the beginning of her journey -- to clean the house, run his errands, etc. Her initial take on his latest book -- "self-indulgent bullshit." Cue the obvious Odd Couple plotline without all the comedy sass.

Grace succeeds in exploring the dynamics between a writer's solitude vs. intrusion from others. It encapsulates the problem of how careful we writers can be regarding who we let into our solitude. We tend to divide our lives into the solitude of actually writing or being "in the zone" and the other, regular stuff of going to the grocery store or visiting family and friends. But we are notoriously picky about the folks we invite into the "zone" with us. That's a private, personal, proprietary space for us.

Dawn and Charlie clearly have preconceptions about each other when they begin their time together. Dawn sees the world through the eyes of someone who looks up to a "genius" whose work she enjoys, and Charlie though the eyes of a writer who expects people to want something from him and disturb his settled world.

Dawn: "Do you ever get lonely?"

Charlie: "Not really."

Dawn: "How'd you start writing?"

Charlie: "I don't remember not writing. Are you a writer?" 

...

Charlie: "Most writers write about their childhood, which is a travesty in my opinion. I write about what embarrasses me, what makes me nervous, what enrages me beyond the pale. Write for yourself first; worry about the world later."

He's right. Those who chase markets like cartoon lawyers chase car accidents are usually just behind each trend they're following. And those who chase their own catharsis create cocoons that may never hatch. But those who write from the heart, from the story that just has to come out -- markets be damned -- that's the voice that's authentic. That's the story that rings true for readers, at least ultimately. 

In terms of their burgeoning friendship, Charlie has his issues; of that there is no doubt. He prefers walkie-talkies to texting with Dawn. Because of his past with him mother, he doesn't allow Dawn access to the swimming pool. Before Dawn explains it to him, he can't run a dishwasher. He watches her from his window with binoculars during the day. And most bothersome to Dawn, he is acutely bad at being social with another human being. 

Dawn isn't without issues either. Prior to assisting Charlie, she had slept with Bernie, his agent, as a way in to show her work to an agent.

However, Dawn has hidden depth that Charlie notices when he asks her about her favorite author. "Faulkner," she answers, and he gives her a look that says "Just another student of college writing classes." 

Dawn is quick to set him straight about her interest in the popular southern writer: "When I read Faulkner I think of dirt," she says. She explains further that dirt can be hard and brittle and break apart in your hands or hard to dig through, but once you get through it, it can also be soft and cool. 

Consider Charlie intrigued. When he finds a copy of her draft on the kitchen table. She quickly snatches it back from him and they literally fight over the document. 

Dawn: "You're such an asshole. I hate you."

Charlie: "And you're a coward."

She tosses it back to him to let him read it after all.

"I'm not a coward."

That's a good lesson for us as creators. We have to be willing to put our work out there and risk it not being loved like we think it should. It's easier to believe it's awesome to an audience of just us than to be brave enough to face rejection "out there" -- or praise -- that's always a possibility too. 

Charlie does read it, and soon Dawn gets a one-on-one lesson from the best-selling Charlie. 

Charlie: "You've got opinion and action but no inner life, but the passage at the end, where she's alone in bed, there you're captured that private emotional landscape I'm talking about. Her shame, it's visceral in the in the halting rhythm of the sentences, the start choice of workds. It's, well, it's breathtaking." 

Dawn: "It just came out that way." 

Charlie: "Well, if you wanna be a writer, you've got to find your way to go deeper into those channels."

Dawn: "I don't know how to do that." 

...

Charlie: "You've got talent, a ridiculous amount of talent. You're just cluttering up the good stuff, the raw stuff."

When she insists that it all felt right to her and that she still can't quite see what he's talking about, he questions her approach to writing. 

"I'm not letting you off the hook," he says. "Do you want to be clever or do you want to be great?"

And that's when their friendship really begins. Dawn is able to get him out of his house ins what appears to be the first time in years. She plans a birthday party for him. She discovers that his agent is stealing from him. 

In turn she becomes his muse to create something unlike any book he has written before, a book called Grace.

Rather than spoil any more of the plot for you, there are four other quickies I want to mention that really jumped out at me while watching.

1. Writing is researching. Charlie has a bookshelf (a unit, not just a single shelf) of research for his "baseball book," one for his "guitar book," etc. He jokes with Dawn that it's a form of "Karmic payback. I got kicked out of high school, and now all I do is research."

2. Writing isn't just recording. It's transliterating. It's not enough to simply jot down what you see. It must be filtered through you before it hits the page. Says Charlie when critiquing Dawn's story, "If you want to be a writer you have to interpret the world around you, not merely regurgitate your tawdry life experience."

3. Writing is inspired by reality. But you don't put yourself in the book. Or others. Not fully, anyway. Dawn is convinced Grace is about her, and in a particularly bad fight, Charlies tells her, "It's not about you. You're just a muse. It's fiction." 

4. Writers can be weird. We just can. Don't try to deny it. Charlies escapes into him mind with headphones and air guitars. We each have our methods. Charlie would be lost in a dining room conversation at Thanksgiving. How many of us would (or are) also? I know I'd much rather talk about the latest book I've read, board game I've played, or existential point I've recently pontificated. Sometimes I just don't fit in with... well... normal people. 

This powerful indie flick takes you into the mind of a gifted writer, well, two of them at different points on their journeys, and it demonstrates with compelling drama just how one writer's iron can sharpen that of another.