Movies about writing?

I'm interested in movies that offer inspiration for writers. Any suggestions?

There's lots that feature a writer as a character (e.g. "Misery", lol) , but not that many which focus on writing as the subject matter. The only one that springs to mind is "Finding Forrester", starring Sean Connery, which I like very much. I believe his character is modelled on J.D. Salinger. I've also thought of "Freedom Writer's Diary" with Hillary Swank, but that's not actually about writing per se. I've not seen "Adaptation" with Nicholas Cage, which might be interesting except that it focusses on screenwriting.

A comedic screenwriting film is Paris When It Sizzles, only worthwhile for Audrey Hepburn.

Not sure how close this is to what you're looking for but

Stranger than Fiction starring Will Ferrell -- Though this is told more from the viewpoint of the character being written about than the writer.

Wonder Boys d. Curtis Hanson who very recently left us, from Michael Chabon's book. I love it.

H'mmm...I'm a classics buff. I wonder if I can add some titles here.

'The Front Page' (Classic comedy with several remakes. All about the wild and woolly days of yellow journalism).
'All the Presidents' Men'. (Redford and Hoffman. There's a great scene where Redford tosses an apple at Hoffman while he's typing; Hoffman catches it with one hand using peripheral vision only).
'Sunset Boulevard'. Holden's character is an aspiring screenwriter.
'Goodbye Charlie'. Tony Randall movie.
'In a Lonely Place'. Bogart plays a screenwriter.
'The Harder they Fall'. Bogart plays a sportswriter.

While writing is not the focus of the film, Julia, about Lillian Hellman, has a section showing her working on the script of what will become The Children's Hour.

Whisper of the Heart: teenage girl discovers her vocation for writing.
Words and Pictures: one of the main characters is an English teacher and poet with writer's block; the other is a painter.
The main character in Parting Glances is a freelance book editor; the film isn't primarily about writing, but it's definitely worth seeing regardless!

Watched "Trumbo" on Netflix this week, about the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who basically broke the list through perseverance and sheer writing talent. That got me inspired for at least one evening.

'Doctor Zhivago'...
'Where the Buffalo Roam' (Bill Murray playing Hunter S. Thompson)

Julie and Julia is about a blogger.

Oh--here's another. And its a doozy.

'Hammett' by Wim Wenders.

Stars Frederick Forrest and Peter Boyle. Story follows Dashiell Hammett on a real life case during his Pinkerton days. Production values are just astounding; really capturing San Francisco's Chinatown from the teens.

The Re-Write starring Hugh Grant is about teaching screenwriting.

With the mention of "darker" movies, I'm surprised no one has mentioned "The Shinning".

I highly recommend Finding Forrester starring Rob Brown, Sean Connery (in the title role), and F. Murray Abraham.

Also, kind of a stretch, Midnight in Paris, if going back in time and finding all your now-dead inspirational authors qualifies. There are some absolutely terrific character portrayals in this movie.

I've not seen it yet, but Trumbo about Dalton Trumbo seemed interesting. I also want to see Genius about Thomas Wolfe, even though it got bad reviews.

#15 Oh I love "Finding Forrester"

Shakespeare in Love?

Barton Fink probably fits here.

Earlier this evening, which is to say, yesterday, my wife found a 2017 movie called The Man Who Invented Christmas.

It's a wonderful flight of fancy with Charles Dickens struggles to write A Christmas Carol.

I can completely relate to his struggle to come up with his characters' names and working out the plot. Mostly, I enjoyed them arguing with him about how they're being depicted, and completely empathize with him losing his place and ideas with each interruption.

I'm adding Miss Potter to the list for showing how creativity flows with life and what publishing might've looked like from Beatrix Potter's perspective.

Henry Fool
This came out about 20 years ago. I can’t testify as to whether it is “inspiring” but the two male leads are writers of differing character and destinies and that is an important part of the movie. I saw only part of it (on video) and so won’t offer an opinion about whether it’s any good. My memory is dim but I believe the film spent a fair amount of time on “writing” as a subject.

The Korean Drama 'W' (Yes the title is one letter long), is specifically about comic books, but it goes deeply into the meta of storytelling. It's also 16 hours long. In it, the daughter of a comic book author finds herself temporarily pulled into the world of her father's comic books, so that she can save the life of the main character.

Of my '4 favorite dramas of the year' that I especially wanted to show my writer/artist daughter when she got home from college last summer, this one was her favorite.

I'm not sure how "inspiring" it is, however. In my not at all humble opinion the writer character was a lousy writer (although an excellent artist), whose books were only a success because the his main character 'got away' from him. I considered most of the plot problems of the show a direct result of his superficial approach to plot and characterization. But, maybe other people would see it differently. And even if not, it's a fascinating look at creativity.

(Although, frankly, I found the first half of the first episode, where we set up the main character's tragic backstory, rather unpleasant. I didn't fall in love with the show until episode 2. The bit where our heroine realizes that the only way to get out of the comic book world and return home, is to end the episode -- that's where I was hooked.) :)

Another excellent Korean Drama that probably qualifies as "about writing" is 'Chicago Typewriter'. The title refers both to an actual typewriter (which happens to be haunted) and to the 1930's era weapon. The plot tells how a 'blocked' novelist ends up telling the story of what happened in his previous life as a freedom fighter in Japanese occupied Korea. Plus a romance, and, of course, the ghost. Again, the show is 16 hours long.

...I might be able to come up with more Asian dramas on the subject if I keep thinking.

Coffee House is about a writer, but I didn't finish it. "Because It's Our First Life" has a screen-play writer as the heroine, but we don't spend that much on the writing part of it: (It's a show about navigating the cultural-romantic shoals in contemporary Korea.) "Lovely, Horribly" also stars a screen-play writer. The male lead is a movie star, and the stuff she writes into the script keeps actually happening to him. And then they discover the two of them are bound together by a cursed fate...

I don't watch that many ordinary movies anymore. Two to three hours just seems so short after you've finished watching a 40 hour-long Chinese historical epic or two. :)

I second Stranger than Fiction, and Julie and Julia.

One of my all time favorite movies is Almost Famous, about a young music reviewer in the 70s. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a thinly veiled, semi autobiographical movie about Hunter S Thompson. There was also Nietzsche Wept and Becoming Jane.

I also love The Pagemaster, Neverending Story, and Inkheart, each of which is a fantasy movie about reading.

>22 WholeHouseLibrary: I wholeheartedly second The Man Who Invented Christmas! This is the first time I've trolled this particular thread, and that was the one I was going to recommend.

If you have MUBI, check out Werner Schroeter's adaptation of Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann. A chaotic, surreal depiction of a writer's disintegrating psyche, very appropriately starring Isabelle Huppert.