One of the most notoriously difficult things to depict on film is the act of writing. Screenwriters are obsessed with their own craft, which means we see people writing onscreen a whole lot, but it can be really awkward sometimes, watching someone stare out a window, bang away at a typewriter or laptop keyboard, or throw sheafs of paper around a room to make writing seem more dramatic. i write for a living, and I guarantee you it's boring; I probably move less in a given work day than my cat does.
But in the old days when people really did use typewriters, writing looked a whole lot more interesting, and you can see it for yourself in this exclusive clip from The Words, in which Ben Barnes plays a writer living in post-war France who comes up with an idea for a novel that basically takes him over. The voiceover you hear is from Jeremy Irons, who tells the story as if he's an impartial narrator… but if you see The Words, you can probably guess that's not true. Take a look at the clip below.
And that's not even half of the saga in The Words, which is largely about Bradley Cooper's character, who finds that very manuscript you're seeing written and passes it off as his own. That decision comes back to haunt him, and in a series of nested stories that also feature Dennis Quaid, Olivia Wilde and Zoe Saldana, The Words tackles the notion of storytelling and ownership of words, and how the attempt to tell stories can consume authors in utterly unexpected and destructive ways.
The Words, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, opens in theaters September 7. Click here to see official images and learn more about it.
