Wonderboys: Playing against type
Wonder Boys came out ten years ago, so if you haven’t seen it, I’m guessing it’s for one of the following reasons:
- Even seeing the phrase “coming of age story” in a movie summary makes you want to punch a baby in the junk.
- You prefer movies with less talk and more action.
- You’re one of the poor bastards who saw this poster.
- You hate Michael Douglas.
- You’re one of the poor bastards who saw this poster.
- You prefer movies with less talk and more action.
If it’s the last one, I can’t say that I blame you. Everybody hates Michael Douglas. He made a lot of unfortunate choices in the 80s and 90s and left us all with the indelible impression that he’s a skeevy pig, a misogynistic dong, a reptilian smarm machine who will absolutely punch a grandma and show his ass at some point in the movie, even if that movie is Care Bears: The Motion Picture.
But lookit: you have to see Wonder Boys, okay? I insist upon it.
Michael Douglas is Grady Tripp, a writing professor who penned one brilliant book a million years ago and has been coasting on that success ever since. It’s not deliberate, mind you; he’s been working on another one for years. It’s just that his new book is over two thousand pages long and nowhere close to finished.
Nothing’s really turned out the way he thought it would. His best years are behind him now, undeniably; he can’t seem to stay married to anybody; new writers enroll in his class because they’ve lionized him, but mostly they’re not any good. Everywhere he goes, people keep praising his first novel, but after all this time, it’s starting to sound less like praise and more like pity to him.
Plus he gets high kind of a lot.
Grady is living proof of the adage that your outer life is a reflection of your inner one. His wife’s just left him, but he’s not all that surprised about it or even bummed out, because he’s having an affair with his boss’s wife (Frances McDormand as Sarah); he’s boarding a student (Katie Holmes as Hannah) who’s basically just biding her time waiting to ride his disco stick, but he hates the idea of being the one to knock the shine out of her eyes; his best student (Tobey Maguire as James) is a gloomy weirdo and compulsive liar who seems destined for an ugly end.
Somebody else might be kind of stressed out about all this, but somewhere between marijuana and disappointment, Grady accepts it as the cost of living.
But of course the so-so times can’t last forever. In the course of a weekend, everything goes to hell on a handcart.
It’s time for WordFest, an annual event that attracts writers, agents and publishers from all over the country, such as Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), Grady’s editor and longtime friend. He’s come to town on the pretense of attending the event, but actually he’s kind of hoping Grady will finally cough up his manuscript, because Crabs is on shaky ground back in New York these days, and he could really use the boost.
Crabtree’s date for the WordFest kickoff party is Antonia, the elegant transvestite and accomplished tuba player he met on the plane. But she’s not the only unexpected guest. As soon as it’s convenient, Sarah tells Grady that she’s pregnant with his child. Then, while he’s out in her garden, getting high and freaking out in private, he runs into James, who hasn’t crashed the party, exactly; he’s not invited, but he’s not coming in. He’s just sort of standing there, looking unbearably sad, and holding a gun.
Crabtree ditches Antonia and hooks up with James, a tiny man with a giant pompadour stakes his claim on Grady’s car, that one dude from Firefly asks a lot of questions about Errol Flynn’s penis, and in the midst of all this hullabaloo, Grady’s forced to confront the possibility that the book he’s been labouring over for years is a colossal waste of time.
You might think I’m giving away a lot here, but this is just the tip o’ the iceberg.
Wonder Boys tells the story of what happens to those few lucky weirdos who have a sense of purpose and no criminal intent. Even its most seemingly outlandish events are logical in context, have a peculiar poignancy that rings true.
Some of its best bits take place between Grady and James: the old-timer and the newcomer. Grady thinks he’s past it now, but James disagrees, James idolizes him, and so a lot of the time the pair of them show off for each other, self-consciously, maybe a little helplessly.
A lot of little things go unexplained–why doesn’t James return his library books? why has Grady’s wife left him?–and it’s like the screenwriter’s gift to you: you can draw your own conclusions, and savour a movie that’s made up entirely of The Good Parts.
Wonder Boys is a movie of tremendous wisdom and humanity, with great affection for all its characters and the exasperating situations we find ourselves in no matter how hard we try to live our lives right. It’s sweet, and funny, and honestly, an incredible insight into the lives of writers.
And Michael Douglas isn’t gross in the movie, okay? He doesn’t show his ass or punch a grandma or sexually menace anybody. He’s exactly what he’s meant to be: a defeated, middle-aged man trudging through life in a pink chenille bathrobe, getting high to escape his problems because he can’t escape them in any sort of real or appreciable way.
He is magnificent at it.
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I remember when you lent me the book, and I read it on the plane home. I do love the book, but the movie really did an outstanding job of dodging all the stuff you really didn’t need in the text. The movie is pretty great, I can’t deny it, and I too think you should watch it if you haven’t already (and trust me, I am still pretty firmly in the I Hate M Douglas camp, and I loved him as Grady).
He’s in a newish movie called A Solitary Man that I haven’t seen yet but is getting great reviews.
Let’s DO it!
Good pitch. I detest Michael Douglas but you’ve convinced me to risk it.
Huzzah! You will more than likely not have regrets. It’s very funny, and very sweet, but without being obnoxious.
Plus it has Rip Torn as pretty much the most together guy in the whole movie, which is hilarious to me.
That poster is an extreme turnoff. Wow, do I regret clicking that link.
Anyway, I never saw nor heard of Wonderboys but may watch it sometime because I LOVE Michael Douglas. I had no idea anyone hated him. He’s a charming actor, and I especially adore him as Gordon Gekko. No, I do not agree that greed is good, but Gordon is one of the most thought provoking film characters of all time, in my opinion. (Side note: Why can’t Oliver Stone make awesome movies anymore?)
Michael Douglas does not always play a corporate super villain. He was pretty cool as the cameraman in China Syndrome. And didn’t everybody like him in Romancing the Stone?
I’m actually glad someone showed up here to stick up for the guy. I mean, he’s in pretty bad shape right now — lay off a little, you know?
That having been said, from now if anyone even mentions the name “Michael Douglas,” all I will see is that poster, giving me the overwhelming urge to claw my eyes out. Seriously, do you think the photographer was making little kitten noises at him to coax out that expression? Do you think the marketing department at Warner Brothers released it as part of some sort of deconstructionist, anti-consumer agenda?
In fairness to people who hate Michael Douglas, it’s not their fault that he pissed away all his goodwill with the public by spending like ten years making nothing but gross erotic thrillers. You know?
It was Wall Street and Romancing the Stone, and then ten years of gross erotic thrillers, and then he finally let that shit go and started making watchable movies again.
PS: that poster is hostile.
Not that I have ANY plans of clicking on the link to the poster again, but I do want to add that it could be used as punishment. You know in some kind of Clockwork Orange strap someone’s eyelids open and force them to look at it way. I think I better go watch Wall Street to cleanse myself…
When I first heard that they were going to make a movie out of this book and that Michael Douglas was going to be in it, I nearly despaired. Because Michael Douglas! Gross!
But he does such a good job as Grady that he doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the movie at all. Which is a lucky thing because the whole James/Terry relationship is like candy to me.
Their relationship is pretty great. You can sort of see how if it went anywhere, James would always know exactly how much trouble he was about to get in with Terry, yet he could do nothing to stop it, ever ever.