A Guide To All The Movies That Inspire Me To Want To Write And Get Creative
For all would-be writers, a few pivotal moments in literature and media have helped us believe we can create something significant ourselves.
Besides the great literary works or soul-moving poems we read in our formative years, film and television can also portray how our successful creative lives might look.
These days, every other rom-com features a young heroine pursuing a career in journalism, usually going out of her comfort zone to get cheeky material for her articles.
These films include How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Letters to Juliet, Never Been Kissed, and even Netflix’s new Christmas movie, Love Hard.
But some films cater to other pleasures of the writing world, like novels, poetry, or instant classics.
So whether you’re facing a creative block or just aren’t feeling inspired, here’s a list of movies that might bring out your inner writer.
The End of the Tour (2015): This film features Jason Segel as legendary late writer David Foster Wallace. And Jesse Eisenberg plays David Lipsky, an eager reporter for Rolling Stone looking for his breakout story.
Most of the film plays out in slow scenes between the two characters as they discover both their shared passions and distinctive charms.
Lipsky, a great admirer of Foster Wallace’s work, is in awe of the humble, extremely private man behind his powerful words.
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Even so, they argue over form, style, and meaning, developing an acquaintanceship throughout the film that somehow leaves the viewer feeling simultaneously hopeless and deeply inspired.
After The End of the Tour, you might find your creative mind abuzz with new vocabulary, loads of references, and maybe even a renewed sense of purpose in your writing.
Little Women (2019): Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel of the same name shares the joyful spirit of its filmic predecessors.Since it’s the version I’ve seen most recently, it’s the one I’ll refer to here.
Our protagonist Jo is the ultimate adventure-seeker and make-believer; she’s constantly searching for new stories and ways to play with her reality using costumes, acting, and writing.
Enveloped by the film’s warmth, young writers might feel inspired by these bursts of creativity or Jo’s obsessive attention to her first novel.
You might even commiserate with the heartbreak of losing important work or finding your sense of purpose after a personal low point.
Little Women is a writer’s must-watch, if only for the montage of Jo placing and rearranging hundreds of handwritten pages on her attic floor, writing day and night by candlelight.
Stranger than Fiction (2006): Emma Thompson, the legendary actress of screen and stage, plays a down-and-out writer afraid to finish her newest novel.
Why? Because the character she’s written turns out to be a real person—and since she’s planning to kill him off in the book, this means he’d die in real life, too.
Thompson’s character narrates the life of Harold Crick as he goes about his mind-numbingly mundane daily routine—that is, until he begins hearing her voice-over in his mind.
What comes next is a battle between free will and the God-like power of an author over her characters.
This movie will make you realize how deeply you can love the characters you create, and might inspire you to give life to your own.
Paterson (2016): Adam Driver—post-Girls, pre-mainstream fame, and roles in Oscar-winning films—need I say more? Here’s a tongue twister: Driver plays Paterson, a bus driver who dreams of writing poetry in Paterson, New Jersey.
Taking place in the town where legendary poet William Carlos Williams lived, the film traces the sense of legacy that remains there and its significance for a young aspiring poet.
We see the environment become a character in Paterson’s daily bus route, as he listens to conversations between passengers and drafts poems in his mind.
His words float across the viewer’s screen, enveloping them in Paterson’s world and its poetry simultaneously. How’s that for inspiring?
Feel free to name any major writerly movies I might have missed in the comments. Now, write!
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