Shame on you.

By sheer happenstance, I watched two of Noah Baumbach's movies in the last two days. The first one, The Squid and the Whale, I've seen a number of times. I think it's pretty well done and very well acted, but as I am NOT a New Yorker, some of the local culture and class stuff is lost on me. Tonight I saw his latest effort, Margot at the Wedding. I was a little underwhelmed. Not so much that the movie was more than a little odd. I can handle odd. I generally tend to like odd. However, I was let down in that the two movies have ridiculously similar plot elements. Both deal with New York writers in failing marriages. Both have kids who are trying to sort things out as the marriage is breaking down. Both have familys that WAY over-share when it comes to sexual news and events. While the first movie is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, this one just seemed a bit more derivative, and didn't have a lot to offer as far as anything new or exciting.

One other thing popped into my head as a result of seeing this movie, and that's the depiction of professional writers in movies. It seems like all of Hollywood would have viewers think that writers are all eccentric, anti-social, self-absorbed, and mentally unstable. These two movies both paint writers in that light, the same with movies like Running with Scissors, The Tenants (which oddly pairs Dylan McDermott with Snoop Dogg), or even Sideways. So here's my cynical slant on the whole thing: chances are, most of these screenwriters had aspirations to be authors at some point in their careers, but somehow fell into the practice of screenwriting instead, so they feel it is necessary to paint fiction writers or poets in a negative light. Before you call me on it, yes, I realize that The Squid and the Whale and Running with Scissors are both autobiographical, so there has to be some degree of truth to the whole thing, and Sideways is based on a novel, but try to think back to a movie in which the main character is a professional writer and was just a good person and talented at what they did. No, Shakespeare in Love doesn't count, smartass. I think it's a conspiracy. Who's with me?