Inspiration at long last

Boy-Creature and I saw The Brothers Bloom last night, and I am nuts about it. I almost wanted to go again tonight.

We saw Brick awhile back, from the same director/writer, Rian Johnson. It's a fantastic movie as well, but I liked this one better. They're very similar in their styles and in the way the plot moves (Oh, so many delicious twists!), but where Brick is dark and brooding, Bloom is light and lovely and marvelously, smartly funny. My favorite kind of funny. It's a very well-written movie, which is a rare thing these days, and I didn't even realize how well it's done until I started reading some of the background and inspiration on it. I can't think the last time I saw a movie with main characters inspired by anything as formidable as Ulysses. I'm a sucker for a good literary reference, and it was full of them.

There's this great line at the beginning of the movie where Bloom says of his brother Stephen, "He writes cons like dead Russians wrote novels." And then it becomes not just a line that sounds good, but catches up the theme of the entire movie.

Plus, it's got a good, twisty plot, as every con movie should. My favorite kind of plot. It even got me wanting to write again, as well. After four years in college scribbling in notebooks, mostly about books, the writing this last year has gone much more slowly. With everything that's gone on, I've lost a lot of momentum and discipline. But my fingers are always itching for a pen (or even, occasionally, a keyboard), and thoughts and hopes of a good story are always steeping at the back of my mind. Still, I've found myself doing a lot of thinking lately about if I want to keep writing, and if so what I want to write.

It's strange to have these doubts and hesitations after so many years of knowing it's what I wanted to do. I remember the day I realized I wanted to be a writer, in Mrs. Hedman's fourth grade language arts class. As hard as it may be for me at the moment, there have been moments along the way that have reminded me why I keep scribbling. These days, The Brothers Bloom has become one of the biggest ones.

There's nothing like a good story, to make me long to write a good story. And this is the kind I love most. Where the storytelling and style have just as much to do with it as the actual plot or characters. I'll read all the great, formidable, highly-respected novels of acclaim that my old professors and classmates recommended, but it's the page-turners that suck me in for hours while the day passes me by that will keep my pen moving across the pages. The page-turners, and the occasional well-written, quirky, literary romp of a romantic-comedy con movie.