In an early scene of Starting out in the
Evening—which could best be described as a movie about books
for people who don’t actually read them—a publisher demurs from
accepting a novelist’s unsolicited manuscript. “We don’t deal with much
that’s not cookbooks or celebrity bios these days,” he apologizes.
Swell, I thought: Some bitter novelist-turned-screenwriter is
going to grind his literary axe all over the screen for the next hour
and a half.
If only I had been so lucky: Starting Out is the closest
thing the “writers rediscovering themselves” film genre has to a
Scary Movie-style spoof. But Starting Out has no
intention of sending up corny author-themed movies like Wonder
Boys or Winter Passing. Instead, it’s content to mine and
rehash every cliché about literary inspiration, carpe-ing
the diem, and vintage typewriters that clove cigarette-smoking
wannabes have imagined as their destiny since the invention of the
printing press. (Especially the part of the fantasy in which they get
to boink grad students 40 years their junior.)
Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) is a grad school wunderkind working
on a critical biography that she hopes will resurrect the writing
career of aging novelist Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella). For being
such a supposedly brilliant student, Heather asks a lot of dopey
questions, like her interview lead: “When you sit down to write your
books, do you have them all planned out?”
By interview three, Heather’s all, “Do me, Leonard,” and Leonard’s
like, “But you’re just a child,” before padding off to stare at his
wrinkled reflection in the mirror. Soon enough, Heather is sobbing on
Leonard’s doorstep, delivering platitudes like, “Your books allow me to
be me!” But instead of a more plausible reaction like “This serves me
right for waxing that young ass,” Leonard realizes that he needs to
drop the emotional walls around his heart and learn to live again. Once
that happens, there’s only one way this imbecilic movie can end: with
the reassuring clickety-clack of the antique typewriter. Roll
credits.