The New Classics: Wonder Boys

By Michael Cusumano 

Scene: The Suicide List
Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys understand that writers are often their own most carefully crafted creations. You can often catch the writers in the film pausing to appreciate when they hit upon just the right turn of phrase. Life doesn’t allow for second drafts. So very satisfying to nail it on the first. 

By understanding the way writers reveal themselves through narrative shapes into which they attempt to force their lives, Wonder Boys solves the age-old problem of making writing cinematic. We never hear a word of Grady Tripp’s prose that gets blown away at the film’s end, but after we spend two hours stumbling through the shambolic mess of his life, it feels superfluous. His life is already one long, run-on sentence crying out for an editor’s red pen...

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Curtis Hanson (1945-2016)

Director Curtis Hanson passed away yesterday at the age of 71. Word is that Alzheimer had forced a retirement five years ago.

Eminem won a Song Oscar for his collaboration with Curtis Hanson in "8 Mile"

Hanson's brush with A list "prestige" was brief (3 Oscar nominations for producing, co-writing, and directing the much-admired LA Confidential) but his career was a fine example of versatile craftsmanship. He served as an important reminder that there's more to directing than auteurial stamps...

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