You Can't Erase the Past: The Words Has a Story to Tell

Hollywood seems to enjoy making films about a writers and why shouldn't they? Every film begins with a screenplay and we, as writers, are perpetually told to write about what we know. 

Some of my fave writer flicks would include Midnight in Paris, Adaptation, The Player  The End of the Tour and Stranger Than Fiction. The Word is now on that list. It's about words, what they mean and what it means to claim them as your own when they are not. In other words, it's a story about plagiarism, though like all great stories it is much more than that. 

Bradley Cooper is a frustrated young writer who, like a half million of us, can't find a publisher for his novel. By some miracle, the love of his life finds a satchel when they are in Paris on their Honeymoon. It looks like "just the thing" for a writer. (I have received such things from my wife who is better at gifting than I.) Inside the satchel is an unpublished manuscript, that she was unaware of. When he reads it, he's blown away by the power of the prose. Because it has no "owner" he retypes and submits it, claiming these words as his. own.

There are shades of Jack London's Martin Eden here, because once he is famous the publishing houses will publish anything that flows off his fingertips. But it's another story as well. How does one come clean after becoming famous via a lie? He approaches his agent to set the record straight, but then what?  

Dennis Quaid, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons are the lead characters who bring this story to life, but the writer who wrote the screenplay has to be acknowledged here. There are so many great lines. Here's some dialogue from the film that I found thought-provoking as the story built to its layered crescendo.

* * *

"His child was dying and there was nothing he could do."

* * * 

"I thought you should know the story behind the story."

* * * 

"We all make our choices in life, the hard thing to do is live with them."

* * * 

"You can't just make things right. Things are just things."

* * * 

"For all those years, I thought about her every day. Broken, because of what I did to her. Then all of a sudden there she was. She seemed happy. Well, if I was to tell you that realization didn't cause me pain I'd be lying, but in some ways it helped me to turn the corner, to pick up again without looking back all the time."

* * * 

"I've done all I can the best that I can. That's all you can ask of a person."

* * *

"My tragedy is that I loved words more than I loved the woman who inspired me to write." 

* * *

"We all make choices in life. The hard thing is to live with them."  

* * *

"What do you really want?"

* * *

This is what it comes down to for any of us. What do you really want?