Many years ago I remember preening myself on having answered this question correctly in a quiz. I didn't know the answer, but worked out that George Bernard Shaw was a likely choice. He had definitely won the Nobel Prize and it seemed at least plausible that one of his plays had become a film script or even that he had written a screenplay. (And indeed it was for adopting Pygmalion for the silver screen so a bit of both.)
Pride comes before a fall though, and on a visit to Shaw's Corner a few years ago I came a cropper trying to impress one of the National Trust volunteers by offering up this piece of arcane knowledge. 'No longer true' he said and I racked my brains trying to work out who else had managed this feat. The embarrassment was complete when I was told the answer 'Bob Dylan' as I am a diehard fan of His Bobness. I knew he had won an Oscar for Things have changed and could hardly have missed the controversy over his 2026 Nobel Literature Prize Award, indeed even going so far as to respond to a blog post on the subject. But I hadn't quite put the two things together.
Ever curious about the minutiae of Dylan's career, I recently found myself wondering why, despite regarding Things have changed as one of Dylan's best ever songs (and his Oscar as well deserved as his Nobel Prize), I knew nothing about the film he had won it for, maybe not even the title. So I looked it up and discovered why. Wonder Boys, which starred Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr and Tobey Maguire, was praised by critics but was a box office failure. It is referred to by various bloggers and the like as a hidden gem.
Douglas is cast in an untypical (unlikely even) role of a professor of creative writing who is struggling to follow up his successful first novel, while attempting to mentor a troubled student and (inevitably) having a complicated private life. It was described as an amusing and realistic portrayal of campus life. In our household's not always straightforward search for films we might both enjoy watching, this comedy drama of campus life seemed to fit the bill. There's also always something enjoyable about discovering and championing a film (or indeed any artistic creation) that didn't quite get its due.
It proved a good choice, although one can see exactly why it pleased the critics but did not attract the punters. It is maybe a little too low key. The plot, with its redemptive theme, trots along nicely, the characters well-drawn and convincing, the jokes and humorous scenes consistently funny. Yet it is touching rather than seriously emotionally affecting and gently amusing rather than outright hilarious.
As I've mentioned before, one of my current hobbies is tracking down cultural experiences of one kind or another that I've missed and Wonder Boys was certainly worth seeking out.
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