The Trials And Tribulations Of The Lovely Arts-Hugh Grant And Marisa Tomei’s “Rewrite” (2014)- Film Review  

DVD Review

By Josie Davis

Rewrite, starring Marisa Tomei, Hugh Grant, 2014

Here is a hard fact that I can impart to the reader  young as I am and only a stringer at this publication where I actually have done more rewriting of other people’s work than pieces for publication under my own name. Hollywood, or wherever other locations films are produced these days chews up writers, screenwriters, and you will very seldom see a screenwriter over forty who is actually doing a script rather than a rewrite no matter how famous or successful he or she was in the past. I should know because of all the writers here young and old, having worked at American Film Gazette or not as many have, I am the only one who succumbed to the lure of Hollywood to make my mark writing scripts for films. (The older writers tell me there was something like used to be the case in the old days among actors, those who would only do legitimate theater, meaning Broadway, and those heathens who went to “debase” their art in Hollywood here in regard to screenwriters.)

After I finished graduate school in Cinematic Studies I went out to Hollywood with the idea of getting a job as a screenwriter. It was kind of unknown territory since none of my friends or the professors had any experience with that end of the business. When I got out there and this is important in the #MeToo era I found out that even in screenwriting the young, mainly young women but I heard of the same with some young men, were expected to have sex with whoever would hire them if they wanted to move up the food chain. We all knew that this was the great unwashed secret among female actors but for those off-camera came it as shock (even something as secondary as getting a freaking job as a “script girl” required some kind of sexual transaction). I didn’t feel that I wanted to go that route and after many rejections, even for rewrite, and feeling that working in a CVS drug store was not going to advance my career I headed back East. The other thing I learned was that even in screenwriting fame is fleeting. If Hollywood uses an older screenwriter’s name the real work, the writing is done by the young and fresh. Mostly and this is sad older writers often wound working rewrite if they wanted to stay in the business. It was no surprise to me that Greg Green would assign me this film Rewrite when he approached me to do my second published review.           

We might as well dig right into the plot because in many ways, except the inevitable romantic interest material, what I mentioned above gets played out here. Keith Michaels, Hugh Grant’s role in which he basically carries the film across the finish, is an older, well, washed up screenwriter who maybe does not realize that fact, or that Hollywood spits out older writers no matter what they did-back in the day. (The only surprising part was that he was not even offered rewrite work although he almost begged the shakers and movers in the film despite his faded fame which in real life any studio would be willing to pay day labor wages for.) Somehow his agent dug deep in her well of contacts and got him a job teaching at a dink college Binghamton U. (dink to him anyway) in cold dark upstate New York where the townies roll up the streets come sundown (the students roll up their joints or whatever universal college kids do wherever they find themselves). Not even a gig in New York City at say NYU despite that big tinny Oscar for screenwriting he had won a million years ago but outer DInktown.

Went to the job holding his nose because if there were certain traditions among Broadway actors long ago and among journalists here about screenwriters that lofty profession held teaching in the same regard-those who cannot write, write the great American novel, play, screenplay-teach. Keith had this added chip on his shoulder, added baggage that there was no sense in teaching writing, screenwriting because you either had the goods or not-end of story. Well, of course not end of story since he must in the process of becoming actually a pretty good teacher, learns that his so-called wisdom was fit for the toilet. Naturally, and I say this naturally after that grinding Master’s program in Cinematic Studies in which I concentrated on screenwriting, his comeuppance, his new found awakening had to come via an off-hand romance which blossomed between him and this older workaholic mother of two student, a type to be found more these days than say the older generations where most students were barely out of their teens. 

Mercifully this student Holly, played by winsome Marisa Tomei, just wanted to see if she could learn something about screenwriting skills from the great man starting out and was not in some shadow competition to beat him at his own game. And yes in true feel-good form they go off in the sunset at the end as a couple after some sullen foreplay.   

Naturally as well Keith must be dragged down in the mud before he realizes his affections for Holly and his joy in teaching. This is where the film shows its time. Time before #MeToo anyway which might have changed the axis of the film if made today when political correctness has taken another of its lazy turns. Keith, good-looking award-winning Keith is the target of a young woman trying to move up the screenwriting food chain or at least the English Lit branch who winds up sleeping with him in the time-honored or maybe dishonored is better tradition among some college students of sleeping their way to the top. And down at the heels divorced Keith buys into that scenario thinking that this was similar to the Hollywood ethos for moving up the food chain. No harm, no foul.

Except, except under the table so to speak, this is a no-no in academia no matter who initiated the affair. Keith winds up on a very hot seat when the English department honchos find out and are ready to ride him out of town on a rail. Especially one straight- assed tenured female professor who is the font of political correctness and frankly took a total dislike to Keith from Day One when he trivialized her work as a Jane Austen scholar (I love Jane as well so I too thought he was boorish particularly when his frames of reference were from the many film adaptations of Ms. Austen’s works). Since I have already telegraphed the sunset scene you know Keith barely made it through, but he made it through. Mercifully we were not treated to the big Derrida and friends “deconstructionist” theories that ran through the colleges when I my older sister was in college. Yes, Hugh carried this one off well but I suddenly realized that I am very happy I am not out in the market grind of Hollywood even if does not look like I am going to get a by-line here anytime soon.