My wife and I saw this film in the theater when it first came out. We'd learned enough about our craft by that time to recognize that while we were watching great acting and great directing, we were not watching good writing. Why else would such a great movie end two-thirds of the way through the story? We've seen much better from Nora Ephron, both before and after this. On this one, she was just too close to the subject.
shareFunny criticism to make. I don't particularly subscribe to this "rule," but aren't you supposed to write what you know? To be fair, I've not seen this movie yet. I'm just getting ot it now, so maybe I will feel the same way.
shareYour commenting on a film you haven't even seen??
While I agree with the originator that the script was perhaps too close to home, there's enough blame here for all parties involved.
The realization that ginormous star power was not enough to make a good film should have been acknowledged before it was released to the public.
I'm watching this movie on Netflix right now, and have to agree. I only added it to my queue b/c I saw it had both Nicholson and Streep. During the movie, I started Googling and that's how I found out that it was based on a true story.
I've heard that the book takes a much more bitter/emotional viewpoint, but even still, the movie is leaving me cold. It's not very engaging (even with the star power), and I'm contemplating skipping to the end part with the pie.
I am enjoying all the familiar faces.
Brad:You stabbed me,dude!
Max:I stabbed you,dude!
In all fairness, the main reason (I think), that HEARTBURN was not as good a movie as it could have been was because it was a difficult production. From what I have read, Carl Bernstein, who the Jack Nicholson character was based on, went up in arms about the fact that Nora Ephron wrote a book based on their marriage as well as the fact that she now was making a movie version as well. Carl Bernstein did not like the fact that he was being portrayed as the villian and did everything possible to have the writers tone-down his bad behavior. Hence, scenes were constantly being re-written. In addition, Mandy Patinkin was supposed to play the part Jack Nicholson played was fired on the first day of shooting.
share^All that. It starts with the script and Ephron was re-writing it as shooting went on at Bernstein's bequest, which must have really annoyed her, given what a success the book was and how acrimonious the break-up was. Even Nicholson couldn't make much of the blanded-out part. Interesting that Ephron never publicly commented on all this.
shareWhy would anyone fire Mandy Patinkin?
shareProbably because he isn't remotely believable as anyone's love interest, even for a short period of time.
He's a character actor, and this was way outside his range of characters. I suspect he was only hired because the writer and director were trying to hire only far-left flakes with whom they felt comfortable.
I thought it was absolutely very good. I'm too young to appreciate films from the 80s or early 90s as much, I was born a year after this film, so I didn't know whether I would have liked the Nora Ephron first films. I'm doing a sort of a marathon right now, I saw this film, and I loved it.
There is a lot of subtlety and it is very real. You can tell that it is written from a person who knows what she's talking about. When I see a film like this I want to know what the writer is talking about, I want to know that the feelings and emotions are real, and they are portrayed realistically. And so they were. I felt what she went through while watching, and I'm sure many women appreciate that she wrote this.
This comment is totally off the mark. I cannot name the amount of people who have written novels, screenplays, teleplays, etc. based on their life experiences and yet you think a person can be 'too close' to a subject? Odd.
A lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts!
the op means that sometimes when someone is too involved into a subject that they're writing about, then their perceptions can become biased & blurred; whereas, someone who has LESS of an invested emotional interest in their writing, then they'll be less likely be biased and have more of an open-mind and be able to write with more clarity.
I'm NOT an author nor a novelist, so I have no idea from a personal experience if that's necessarily true or not.
I've always heard the old adage to write what you know because people are experts on their OWN lives no one else can write about someone's life better than the person living it themselves.
Although, I'm sure there's exceptions to the rule in some instances.
Happy Valentine's Day!
You CAN be too close to a subject, and that was probably the case for Ephron, who took a nasty, vindictive approach and tried to blame everything that went wrong on her ex-husband and paint herself as the victim.
That feeling came through in both the book (which I gave up on about halfway through) and the film. Not really much fun watching a grown woman acting like a self-righteous, spoiled child.
It's fine -- probably necessary -- to be familiar with your material. But you shouldn't mistake monomania for inspiration.