Movie Mythos

Taien Ng-Chan

I first moved to Montreal in 1993 to start my MA in Creative Writing at Concordia. In my first year, I was promptly assigned to Rob as a Research Assistant; the project that I was to assist him with was Matrix. It was the first issue that Rob was editing after having the magazine passed on to him. I helped him set up reading committees, write publishers to request review copies, and stuff envelopes.

As it happened, I was also in his fiction workshop that year, and what a class it was! My classmates were incredibly talented writers. They inspired me, challenged me, and motivated me to write better. In that class, I was lucky enough to meet the people who would become my writing community. Many of them have gone on to find critical acclaim. Golda Fried, Liane Keightley, Catherine Kidd, Peter Dubé and Lydia Eugene were just a few of my classmates that year, and Rob got us all being friends.

Rob was really encouraging in that he rarely said no to my hare-brained schemes. He had enough faith in me to let me edit crazy theme issues, put on art shows in conjuction with Matrix, and write cheques if I needed sponsoring for other projects. I never thanked him for it. I guess I thought there would always be time for that later, or maybe I just assumed that he knew.

Almost fifteen years later, and I’m still in Montreal, still at Matrix. I hadn’t realized it had been that long! So it’s about time I said it. Thanks Rob. In your honour, here are my ten best “writer” movies. I know you loved many of the films on this list.

Barfly — the quintessential drunken writer (Bukowski)
Naked Lunch — the quintessential junkie writer (Burroughs)
Manhattan — the neurotic writer
Croupier — the writer slumming for “truths”
The Singing Detective (the BBC television series) — the caustic, diseased, mystery writer in a musical (amazing dance sequences!)
Barton Fink — the neurotic writer with writer’s block
Sunset Blvd. — the kept and desperate screenwriter
The Shining — the haunted psycho writer
Adaptation — the postmodern neurotic writer with writer’s block