Wonder Boys
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Wonder Boys is a 2000 motion picture starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes, and Robert Downey Jr. It was directed by Curtis Hanson, and was filmed primarily on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The film was released on February 25, 2000 and reunited Holmes and Maguire, who costarred in The Ice Storm.
Wonder Boys is based on the 1995 second novel by California author Michael Chabon and grew from his concerns with finishing off an unrealized novel about a baseball team in Nevada (which was to have been called Fountain City). He decided to write a story about, in part, an author who couldn't finish his own work.
Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is an author who teaches creative writing classes while having an affair with Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) who is the wife of the English department chairman at an unnamed college in Pennsylvania. His own wife (not his first) has left him and, outside of a famous novel many years ago, he has not had a successful work since. A second novel he has been working on keeps getting longer the more he tries to finish it.
His students include James Leer (Tobey Maguire) and Hannah Green (Katie Holmes). Hannah and James are friends and both very good writers. Hannah lusts after the professor and is lucky as she happens to rent a room in his large house. James is enigmatic and quiet and enjoys writing fiction more than he first lets on.
Tripp's editor, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), flies into town under the pretense of attending the university's annual "Word Fest", a literary event featuring authors and submissions for publication, but in reality to check in on Grady to see if he has had anything at all since his last book. He is a bit wild and meets a drag queen on the flight over, only to leave her when he sets eyes on James.
Tripp, as well as Sara (who tells him she is pregnant) just want to do the best thing for everyone and the film follows him as he attempts to piece everything together.
As a movie it received rave reviews, and some markets re-released it.
The soundtrack features several songs by Bob Dylan, including one new composition, "Things Have Changed"; the song won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar as best song. Neil Young's song "Old Man" was also featured in the film.
Trivia
In the movie version of Wonder Boys, Tobey Maguire's character James Leer is working on a long story. From the text shown on the first page, it is in fact a copy of Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. In the movie it is entitled The Love Parade, perhaps an alternate working title.