Wonder Boys (2000)
September 1, 2024 9:00 PM - Subscribe
An English Professor tries to deal with his wife leaving him, the arrival of his editor who has been waiting for his book for seven years, and the various problems that his friends and associates involve him in.
A professor, suffering from writer's block, tries to deal with the pressures of his complex love life and his troubled students' assorted problems. Despite the encouragement of one of his admiring female pupils, the professor is obsessed with his current work. He finds release in his friendship with a lonely but gifted student, but the news of his lover's pregnancy further complicates his already difficult life
Charlotte O'Sullivan: The feeling remains that, just as James and Crabtree and Grady enjoy telling "stories", we too have been sold a line. Everything points to the fact that it's Grady and James who should get together. Grady invites his charge to a party and almost immediately takes him to the master bedroom, where he unlocks a closet from which James proceeds to take a treasured item. Which is never, in fact, put back. Whether you see this as an emotional or even a sexual metaphor, it's unmistakably intense, and yet their relationship is never to be. As a gritty slice of academic life, Wonder Boys is unsatisfactory. Read as Grady's fantasy of 'going straight', however, it works just fine.
Margaret McGurk: The movie brims with tangy moments mined from the absurd, inbred halls of academe — among them Rip Torn’s wicked portrait of the preening, best-selling author Quentin Morewood — a k a ‘‘Q’.’
Almost as successful is the character of Hannah Green (Katie Holmes), a brilliant student who takes the departure of Grady’s wife as a signal to offer herself to him — even though she seems too self-aware and tuned into reality to feel anything but pity for Grady.
Blessedly, the film allows Hannah the dignity of delivering not sexual favors but fair criticism of Grady’s lumbering manuscript.
Anya Jaremko-Greenwold: Before they set off, Grady grabs his hefty stack of book pages out of Hannah’s bedroom. First he asks her what she thought of them.
She tells Grady that as a writer, he didn’t really make any choices at all. His book is full of “genealogies of everyone’s horses, and the dental records, and so on,” but despite beautiful prose it is apparently not a novel even his most ardent admirer can get through. She suggests it might be better if he were not always writing “under the influence.” Grady bristles, objects, and walks out. You can tell he knows she’s right. He’s been avoiding making more decisions than just amorous ones.
Hannah’s critique makes us understand that Grady was writing something interminable—perhaps fearing an ending too big of a commitment. With the book’s conclusion would have come the inevitable editing process, eventual publication and reviews and opinions about whether his second book lived up to the glory of the first. By avoiding an endpoint, Grady remains in comforting stasis. The same goes for the marriage he no longer cares about but doesn’t end and the substance abuse slowly wearing down his body.
Trailer
A professor, suffering from writer's block, tries to deal with the pressures of his complex love life and his troubled students' assorted problems. Despite the encouragement of one of his admiring female pupils, the professor is obsessed with his current work. He finds release in his friendship with a lonely but gifted student, but the news of his lover's pregnancy further complicates his already difficult life
Charlotte O'Sullivan: The feeling remains that, just as James and Crabtree and Grady enjoy telling "stories", we too have been sold a line. Everything points to the fact that it's Grady and James who should get together. Grady invites his charge to a party and almost immediately takes him to the master bedroom, where he unlocks a closet from which James proceeds to take a treasured item. Which is never, in fact, put back. Whether you see this as an emotional or even a sexual metaphor, it's unmistakably intense, and yet their relationship is never to be. As a gritty slice of academic life, Wonder Boys is unsatisfactory. Read as Grady's fantasy of 'going straight', however, it works just fine.
Margaret McGurk: The movie brims with tangy moments mined from the absurd, inbred halls of academe — among them Rip Torn’s wicked portrait of the preening, best-selling author Quentin Morewood — a k a ‘‘Q’.’
Almost as successful is the character of Hannah Green (Katie Holmes), a brilliant student who takes the departure of Grady’s wife as a signal to offer herself to him — even though she seems too self-aware and tuned into reality to feel anything but pity for Grady.
Blessedly, the film allows Hannah the dignity of delivering not sexual favors but fair criticism of Grady’s lumbering manuscript.
Anya Jaremko-Greenwold: Before they set off, Grady grabs his hefty stack of book pages out of Hannah’s bedroom. First he asks her what she thought of them.
She tells Grady that as a writer, he didn’t really make any choices at all. His book is full of “genealogies of everyone’s horses, and the dental records, and so on,” but despite beautiful prose it is apparently not a novel even his most ardent admirer can get through. She suggests it might be better if he were not always writing “under the influence.” Grady bristles, objects, and walks out. You can tell he knows she’s right. He’s been avoiding making more decisions than just amorous ones.
Hannah’s critique makes us understand that Grady was writing something interminable—perhaps fearing an ending too big of a commitment. With the book’s conclusion would have come the inevitable editing process, eventual publication and reviews and opinions about whether his second book lived up to the glory of the first. By avoiding an endpoint, Grady remains in comforting stasis. The same goes for the marriage he no longer cares about but doesn’t end and the substance abuse slowly wearing down his body.
Trailer
Love the Michael Chabon book this is based on and also love the movie. It's that rare adaptation that successfully captures the essence of a book while not hewing too slavishly to its plot. They did shamelessly turn a somewhat grim ending into a happy one, but I like happy endings, so I'm not going to complain too much about that.
posted by merriment at 5:56 AM on September 2 [2 favorites]
posted by merriment at 5:56 AM on September 2 [2 favorites]
I've seen the movie a dozen times over the years and love it. There's just something about the relatively low stakes plot combined with the snow and winter rain that makes it a comfort watch. I'm interested how the book ending differs?
posted by Silentgoldfish at 12:53 PM on September 2 [2 favorites]
posted by Silentgoldfish at 12:53 PM on September 2 [2 favorites]
It's a wonderful book and very worth reading!
The most egregious way that the ending differs is that in wrapping up James's arc, the movie gives him a moment of pleasurable vindication when he stands and is applauded at the weekend's closing ceremony. In the book, it's explicitly not that moment: "He stood there like that, looking like a scarecrow hung from a nail, until the applause first slowed, then sputtered, and then died out altogether. The entire hall was silent, and James just stood, shifting from foot to foot, swallowing, looking as though he might be about to throw up. I saw that it was not the delicious moment described by cinema and fiction when the butt of jokes and resentment, when the mad boy, was applauded. The admiration of his tormentors was itself a kind of torment."
The other (and maybe this is just my interpretation) is that Grady's acquiescence to marriage and fatherhood is presented as far less of a happy ending than is implied by the warm visual montage that closes the movie. In the book he does start writing again, though, so maybe it's enough.
posted by merriment at 2:06 PM on September 2
(Since this thread doesn't have a "book included" tag, I'm going to hide the book spoilers behind a drop-down.)
The most egregious way that the ending differs is that in wrapping up James's arc, the movie gives him a moment of pleasurable vindication when he stands and is applauded at the weekend's closing ceremony. In the book, it's explicitly not that moment: "He stood there like that, looking like a scarecrow hung from a nail, until the applause first slowed, then sputtered, and then died out altogether. The entire hall was silent, and James just stood, shifting from foot to foot, swallowing, looking as though he might be about to throw up. I saw that it was not the delicious moment described by cinema and fiction when the butt of jokes and resentment, when the mad boy, was applauded. The admiration of his tormentors was itself a kind of torment."
The other (and maybe this is just my interpretation) is that Grady's acquiescence to marriage and fatherhood is presented as far less of a happy ending than is implied by the warm visual montage that closes the movie. In the book he does start writing again, though, so maybe it's enough.
posted by merriment at 2:06 PM on September 2
An all time favorite in our home. Very quotable.
James Leer: These are incredible. Incredible!
Grady Tripp: Finish the rest of that joint, James, you can start chewing on the box.
James Leer: Now, that is a big trunk. It holds a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly.
Grady Tripp: That's just what they used to say in the ads.
Grady Tripp: She's a transvestite.
Terry Crabtree: You're stoned.
Grady Tripp: She's still a transvestite.
And as Silentgoldfish said, really communicates Capital C Cold, especially in the later scenes on the front porch.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:34 PM on September 2
James Leer: These are incredible. Incredible!
Grady Tripp: Finish the rest of that joint, James, you can start chewing on the box.
James Leer: Now, that is a big trunk. It holds a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly.
Grady Tripp: That's just what they used to say in the ads.
Grady Tripp: She's a transvestite.
Terry Crabtree: You're stoned.
Grady Tripp: She's still a transvestite.
And as Silentgoldfish said, really communicates Capital C Cold, especially in the later scenes on the front porch.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:34 PM on September 2
We watched this recently, me for the first time. I felt like some parts (the genderqueer person) were surprisingly ahead of their time, while others just did not work. The role of Hannah felt underdeveloped and like an aging English professor’s fantasy. James didn’t seem like a misfit; he seemed like a not very good person. And I felt bad about the dog, although I know that shooting the dog is supposed to be a hilarious moment. It had moments that I liked but really didn’t work as a whole for me. Maybe it would have if I’d watched it when it came out.
posted by rednikki at 6:42 PM on September 2 [1 favorite]
posted by rednikki at 6:42 PM on September 2 [1 favorite]
Just watched thanks to this post. I pretty much agree with the Charlotte O'Sullivan review linked above. But on the plus side I thought it was less sexist than the book. I really enjoy Michael Chabon and though not my favorite, I liked this book, but the gender stuff was annoying. Somehow Hannah ends up a bit better in the movie for me. And Grady seems more annoying (as he certainly would be if a real person) in the movie. A perfectly pleasant watch though.
posted by latkes at 8:57 PM on September 2
posted by latkes at 8:57 PM on September 2
I love this film, precisely because of the small stakes involved. My relationship with it has changed as I've grown older and seen the characters not as comic or infuriating versions of people a generation older than me, but as near-contemporaries. In my 40s I have a lot more sympathy for Grady's inability to make choices than I did in my late 20s, when there was always time to make other choices later, and closing doors on different possibilities didn't seem as permanent.
This movie doesn't feel 24 years old to me at all. And I would absolutely love to live in James' basement bedroom, candelabra included or not.
posted by odd ghost at 11:47 AM on September 3 [2 favorites]
This movie doesn't feel 24 years old to me at all. And I would absolutely love to live in James' basement bedroom, candelabra included or not.
posted by odd ghost at 11:47 AM on September 3 [2 favorites]
How does the treatment of the "transvestite" character hold up?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:02 PM on September 4
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:02 PM on September 4
Chabon is one of my favorite writers and this movie is rather special to me. OK, the ending is a little too Hollywood. The cast just NAILS it, every single one of them. Even the characters that aren't that important, like Miss Sloviak, Vernon, and Oola, are just gems. Douglas, of course, just knocks it out of the park. One of those films I can watch every year.
posted by Ber at 6:59 PM on September 4
posted by Ber at 6:59 PM on September 4
How does the treatment of the "transvestite" character hold up?
IMHO mostly fine? I feel like her character has her own arc, her own interests, and her own conversations with multiple characters. There is a flavor of 'wacky' about her subplot that is not great, and a slight whiff of the tragic in her rejection, but overall she is treated as a person as much as any other femme character in the movie.
posted by latkes at 8:55 PM on September 4 [1 favorite]
IMHO mostly fine? I feel like her character has her own arc, her own interests, and her own conversations with multiple characters. There is a flavor of 'wacky' about her subplot that is not great, and a slight whiff of the tragic in her rejection, but overall she is treated as a person as much as any other femme character in the movie.
posted by latkes at 8:55 PM on September 4 [1 favorite]
Saw this in the theater... it really didn't do that well and really wasn't very appreciated by many when it came out, iirc. I've always liked it and always taken the time to watch it once every couple of years. I'm glad to see people enjoying it now!
posted by verbminx at 1:41 AM on September 7
posted by verbminx at 1:41 AM on September 7
(Also, no, James isn't a good person and I don't think he's intended to be, just a young writer who's a bit of a fabulist. Chabon's early work is filled with characters who are interesting and a little bit sympathetic but ethically kind of problematic, in both Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which got a much worse adaptation years after this one.)
posted by verbminx at 1:45 AM on September 7
posted by verbminx at 1:45 AM on September 7
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posted by Carillon at 9:02 PM on September 1 [2 favorites]