The Wikipedia entry for David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada makes for interesting reading, if you're into both writing and filmmaking. On the writing side, it tells the tale of a hot writer selling a screenplay to a novel that isn't finished, and the pitfalls of getting paid before the work is done. On the movie business end, there's a lot of interesting inside baseball and unusual twists and turns that were taken before the end product hit the screens and took home almost ten times its production budget.
If you like looking at beautiful people in beautiful clothes, this is a must-see. I didn't feel that it dug hard enough into the impenetrable cultural topsoil that makes up the fashion industry, but that could be the result of the original idea for the novel getting shoved through Hollywood's meatgrinder. Also the fact that the protagonist was a hard-done-by writer trying to make it in the big bad world rankled—I know it's a “write what you know” world, but this trope is just a huge pet peeve of mine. I mean, it's not that relatable to the majority of audiences, and yet it emerges time and time again in media.
I don't know what I'd do if I was ever offered an early payday on an unfinished piece of writing. Seeing how it turned out for Aline Brosh McKenna, it would be wise to refuse. But then again... money.
2024.02.11 – 2024.02.19
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