{"id":590,"date":"2006-01-08T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-08T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=590"},"modified":"2006-01-08T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-08T23:16:00","slug":"590","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=590","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer’s ego<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are no really good movies about writing. What is there to show? I did try to fire up my magazine-writing class last semester by showing the first 45 minutes of Almost Famous<\/em><\/a>, both for protagonist William Miller’s persistence in getting the interviews and for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s<\/a> wonderful portrayal of the late Lester Bangs<\/a>, editor of the music magazine Creem<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(To be truthful, Terry Chen<\/a> as Rolling Stone’s<\/em> then-news editor, Ben Fong-Torres<\/a>, was fun too.)<\/p>\n

“That’s because we’re uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don’t have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we’re smarter,” says Hoffman as Bangs.<\/p>\n

Hoffman is back as Truman Capote in Capote<\/em><\/a>, which M. and I saw last week. He is an actor<\/em>, as opposed to someone who merely plays a glamorized version of himself in different costumes (John Wayne, Tom Cruise, many others.)<\/p>\n

Capote was a chameleon with a typewriter, and we see him creating different personae for different situations, all the while collecting material for the most famous work of creative nonfiction of the last century, In Cold Blood<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want to see Capote himself playing a sort of self-caricature, find the 1976 spoof-murder mystery Murder by Death<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or watch Hoffman, who is 5’9½”, use every actor’s trick to suggest Capote’s short stature (5’3″). Hear him mimic Capote’s creepy-childish voice and display lip twitches and gestures to create Capote’s flamboyantly gay public persona. Capote biographer Gerald Clarke suggests<\/a> that Hoffman’s cinematic Capote is truer to its original than Capote’s own.<\/p>\n

You can’t make a movie about writing. But as a movie about a writer, this one is tops.<\/p>\n

Tags: Writing<\/a>, Philp Seymour Hoffman<\/a>, Truman Capote<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The writer’s ego There are no really good movies about writing. What is there to show? I did try to fire up my magazine-writing class last semester by showing the first 45 minutes of Almost Famous, both for protagonist William Miller’s persistence in getting the interviews and for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s wonderful portrayal of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-590","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":528,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=528","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":0},"title":"This post is fillerI don't\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is fillerI don't normally let a week go by without blogging, but thing happened, like being asked by a magazine-editor friend to write a 2,000-word \"think piece\" on the dilemmas of a being an \"evacuee\"--from a forest fire in my case, but with obvious relevance to Katrina and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1242,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1242","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":1},"title":"Fate Magazine Reanimated","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When pre-writing the blog post on dining above the dead (something best done while walking the dogs), I was thinking about how it was perfect for Fate magazine.Digression 1: Dog-walking is not all that meditative, because Something Always Happens, like this morning when they charged off through nine-inch-deep snow to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1284,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1284","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":2},"title":"Too Much Pagan Writing is Too Bland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wish Pagan writers would stop giving advice and writing bland how-to articles. A lot of what makes Pagan magazine publishing is its bias towards advice-giving. That and poor graphic design, in some cases.Look at Circle magazine, for example. Circle reminds me too much of the bland publications of cookie-cutter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1123,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1123","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":3},"title":"Thorn and Pagan Magazine Publishing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I like magazines. I have worked for three, owned one (still going), and sold freelance articles to a bunch of others. I taught university classes in magazine-writing and production.So when Vol. 1, No. 1 of Thorn, subtitled Paganism in the Silicon Age, hit my mailbox, I was eager to read\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=36","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":4},"title":"The Middle-Initial Problem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that The Paganism Reader (see July 10th entry) is in production with Routledge (pub. date early 2004?), the odd little queries from the copy editor are starting to come in. The latest involved my middle initial. It is all right to have it on the cover, but must I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5987,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5987","url_meta":{"origin":590,"position":5},"title":"Good Advice: “Run Your Own Race”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I hit bottom the summer I turned 36. Part-way through grad school, I took a break to work as managing editor of an outdoor magazine, Colorado Outdoor Journal. (You've never heard of it. I needed a job.) In May, the publisher pulled the plug on the magazine, but I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}