Female writers in movies

In Michael McGrath's article this week in The Millions, he reviews the latest movie featuring a writer as the main character. He says

In the 2011 film Limitless, Bradley Cooper is Eddie Morra, a struggling novelist. His ponytail is greasy, his apartment is a mess, his girlfriend is fed up. Then he accepts a neural accelerator from a shady source, finishes his manuscript in four days, shoves it in his editor’s face and promptly moves on to day trading and sport fucking. In The Words, released this past Friday, Cooper again plays a writer (Rory Jansen) confronted with a Faustian dilemma. The Words is a mess of cinematic and literary clichés weighed down further by a vaguely meta-fictional plot, twin voiceovers, and an obsession with a sparkling brand of literary celebrity that no longer exists, but it does effectively illustrate the difficulties inherent in conveying the illusion of great art and it serves as the most recent example of Hollywood’s strange vision of writers and their creative process.

He goes on the create a list of necessary characteristics of any writer protrayed in film (in order to maintain the stereotype:

A Quick Guide to Writing a Movie About a Writer: You are writing a movie about a writer. He is a great writer. He must be a great writer, the plot demands it. Here are a few necessary visual shortcuts. 1. Tweed, tattered sweaters, corduroy, maybe an old Army jacket. 2. Bouts of inopportune drunkenness. 3. A library with one of those sliding ladders or perilous stacks surrounding a stained mattress (throw in a dusty globe to suggest world-weariness). 4. Rub jaw or stroke beard. 5. Have writer tell a beautiful and supportive female character that she just doesn’t get it.

I find number 5 the most telling and frustrating on the list.Have you ever noticed that anytime "a writer" is featured as a character in a movie, it's almost always a man? Why is that? Because the screenwriter is a man? Short of Carrie Bradshaw, can you think of any representation of a female writer in film. Hmm.

MFA: Not worth the money?

I read an article yesterday on Yahoo, titled the 5 Degrees Not Worth The Money. The first degree listed was the MFA. Great. Here's what it said: Master of Fine Arts degrees Students can obtain Master of Fine Arts, or MFA, degrees in disciplines including studio arts, creative writing, the performing arts and art criticism. Tuition costs vary, but at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, for instance, students can expect to pay more than $22,000 per term, plus the cost of housing, course books and other expenses. That investment isn't likely to pay off: The Georgetown study saw just a 3 percent boost in income potential for studio arts MFA graduates. Kristen Harris, owner of Portfolio Creative, a staffing agency in Columbus, Ohio, says her recruiting clients always favor candidates with relevant experience and work samples over those with graduate arts degrees. "It's hard to get that first work opportunity if you don't have that education and training, but after that, it's your portfolio and experience that speaks louder than your degree." While I agree that getting that degree is not going to automatically guarantee a raise or getting a better job, but no degree will. What about getting a degree to improve your craft? What about getting an MFA to become a better writer? Our society is so materialistically-driven that we have forgotten the school used to be about LEARNING, not job training. Oh well. I have the degree already (after I get this thesis novel squared away). Maybe I'll be able to prove this stupid article wrong sooner than later.