- malole
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
I recently watched 84 Charing Cross Road again, and Bancroft/Hanff starts out with what I think is a Royal portable and ends up later with an Olympia SM - a 9? It's a lovely film with plenty of typewriters in and the contrast between 1950s England and America is great. (And I did read the book first, a very long time ago!)
- Uwe
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
I spotted an Olympia SG3 in the film remake of Starsky and Hutch the other night. It was actually funny because Ben Stiller was hunt and peck typing on it, and when he stood up and walked away, there was a IBM Selectric on the desk behind him.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- malole
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
SPOILER ALERT for those in the UK!
This isn't exactly a movie, but it's on the small screen right now in the UK. "Partners in Crime" is a BBC dramatisation of an Agatha Christie novel, and I started watching it on the iPlayer last night. I was excited to see some typewriters pop up in episode 2. A Lettera 22 features largely as part of the plot until...
it is used as a tool to break a window and then thrown out of the window and smashed to bits. It sort of bounced and the carriage came off and bits pinged out. GORY. It made me feel slightly ill. Such a shame that they went to all that bother to find a nice Lettera 22... 
- Valiant
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
Prop houses can supply junk pieces of technology for use as props in movies, so I hope it was a parts machine.....
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the typewriter."
- malole
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
I hoped that too, but that would mean they used one to type on and one - or more - to chuck out of the window. Still, I watched it again and it was pretty impressive as busted typewriters go. The typebasket flew out after it bounced.
- KatLondon
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
OMG!!
Hey, our very own Typewriter Man was working on some machines for an Agatha Christie thing a while ago. Not this one I think. But how awful to restore it and then have them do THAT. Dear God.
There's a sort of teen movie called Ruby Sparks, about a guy who's supposedly a bestselling author and types on an SM9 - he's a young guy and lives in a lifestyle-magazine-type house, and has terrible writer's block. He has a cute little dog and is very lonely, he can't seem to meet girls, no one understands him. The wheeze of the film is that when he starts writing about his ideal woman, on the advice of his therapist (I know - it's dire! The therapist may even be played by Elliott Gould), it starts to turn into a novel, and then he becomes obsessed. He calls her Ruby sparks and the novel about her becomes the only thing he can think about. One day in the park a young woman comes up and starts talking to his little dog, and they get chatting and he asks her name - and she says - wait for it...
The gender politics of this film are simply staggeringly problematical, and the whole thing is very thin. Though there are some good set-ups and so on. The screenwriter was the twenty-something granddaughter of Elia Kazan, so that'll be how it got made. It's a strange sort of romantic fantasy for a young woman to be writing about.
But there are a lot of nice moments with the SM9, which was of course why I watched it! And as the whole thing is shot a bit like a commercial, the SM9 looks great.
Last edited by KatLondon (26-8-2015 04:56:22)
- beak
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
Those interested in 19th cent. Russian machines might like 'The Final Station'. Christopher Plummer playing Leo Tolstoy - his house has scores of TWs scattered about it.
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beak.
- colrehogan
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
I saw an Olympia on the Dr. Who episode titled, Vincent and the Doctor. It was on one part of the TARDIS console. However, it was used to generate pictures of two of the doctors and the monster that they were looking for, not actual typing.
Smith Premier typewriters are cool!
- malole
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- Registered: 02-6-2014
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
Fleeting glimpses of typewriters in Mr Weasley's shed full of Muggle tech in the 6th Harry Potter film, the Half-Blood Prince. There was a wedge and a large office machine, possibly an Underwood 2 or similar. The more you watch those films, the more you see!
- JanetLand
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Re: Typewriters in the Movies
Watched the old Fred Astaire/Cyd Charisse musical Silk Stockings this weekend. Cyd Charisse plays a Soviet official sent to Paris to bring back a wayward composer. When she arrives at her hotel, she immediately starts typing on the Olympia SM3 she's brought with her (that curvy case shows to great advantage). Funny, I didn't know they made those in the Soviet Union . . . .
