Five highly unrealistic festive films featuring writers - you're welcome
& less merry, more words, says Scrooge..
My dear wordsmiths,
Festive greetings from the shire where one (or one’s husband) has yet to get a tree or buy the ingredients for a Christmas lunch. And how many of you writers actually write Christmas cards anymore? Asking for a friend..
As it’s Christmas, this post is free. But I’d much appreciate if you…
Before you think I’m actual Scrooge - I’m not - but I am a journalist which means I see Christmas as yet another deadline with things to achieve last minute. And while I’m on that note, I’m hoping to swap carbohydrates and fizz-fuelled naps for writing sprints this year. Who’s with me? The ghost of Christmas past tells me it’s about time I got on with it.
Fun fact: Talking of the shire.. Lancashire is arguably inspiration for The Lord of the Rings. I say this because J R R Tolkien spent time at Stonyhurst College in the Ribble Valley (10 minutes from here) where his eldest son John was studying during the second world war and it’s where he wrote the long awaited follow up to The Hobbit. His name, alongside his wife, daughter and sons, appears in the college visitor book multiple times.
The stunning landscapes here in Lancashire obviously inspired him . Lots of references back this up as many local names are familiar from The Lord of the Rings including Shire Lane in nearby Hurst Green or the River Shirebourn - it was the Shireburn family who built Stonyhurst. Another of Tolkien's sons, Michael, later taught Classics at Stonyhurst College in the 1960s/70s. You can now walk the beautiful Tolkien trail - details HERE. (Visit Lancashire)
This week I have a special feature for all you writers, journalists and bloggers. It’s five Christmas films I could find which feature writing types like us - authors, journalists, bloggers. Spoiler, they all have happy endings or fall in love or live in castles or have epic romances and frankly - some of them are terrible. But it’s the thought that counts, I suppose.
A Christmas Prince (Netflix, 2017): If you click on something with this title you are halfway through the bottle of Baileys and unable to connect together meaningful thought. In which case, this is an excellent choice, as it features an American trainee journalist going to a made up country for a press conference (budget is apparently not an issue) where she catches the eye of handsome ‘playboy’ prince - they have the obligatory tiff - and then he chases after her. When I say tiff she broke into his house (palace) to spy on him. IPSO and indeed the police would have a field day. You could call this a spoiler but I call it a formula that seems to work on a budget and they all live happily ever after.
Love Hard (Netflix, 2021): This has Nina Dobrev in it (think Vampire Diaries) so the budget is bigger. One thing in this movie’s favour in terms of realism is that the main character’s boss is not happy with her page views. A writer of dating type stories, she gets rapped over the knuckles, then flies off to get cat-fished and treated like poop before living happily ever after. The clue to this film is in the name. The title is combination of Love Actually and Die Hard, the fave films Christmas films of main characters Josh and Natalie. Kill me now.
Spiderman (Various films): Come on, it’s occasionally Christmas in the Spiderman films and they feature multiple newsroom scenes with obnoxious editors at the fictional Daily Bugle, though I’ve seen worse. The levels of passive aggressive bullying are realistic from 90s newsrooms but the obsession with selling papers is retro - it’s all about the clicks and engagement now. (OK, I’ll also mention Superman, as journalism plays a key role in the Superman franchise as Clark Kent is a reporter and so is Lois Lane).
The Holiday (2006): As most of us writers would like to love in an idyllic snow covered cottage in Surrey and travel into a terribly glamorous job at The Telegraph (other news brands are available) to write about weddings while not house swapping with LA zillionaire film-makers, it only seems fair to include one of the most successful Christmas films of all time amongst this cheese-fest. After all. Iris, played by Kate Winslet, also appears to get all of Christmas off which is a fabled dream for most journalists. They all live happily ever after, obvs.
Love Actually (2003): Yes, this is now 21 years old! But amongst the plot lines of this incredibly popular Richard Curtis special, which definitely celebrates Christmas, is recently cheated-on posh novelist Jamie - played by Colin Firth - who has multiple homes and sits typing at a typewriter next to a pond in his French cottage while a Portuguese cleaner runs around after him and then they fall in love. Highly unrealistic at all at every level (they has invented laptops in 2003, in case you are particularly young) but also a fabulous film, in my humble opinion. I can’t be a Grinch all day.
Happy Christmas to all if you celebrate. May your writing fingers flow and if the above list tells you anything, it’s that the world needs more stories. Back next week, Nx