CS Weekly Archive > DVD of the Day > 07/28/06

Writing What You Know About Writing

by jason davis

A 30-year passion project for Chinatown scribe Robert Towne, John Fante's novel of a struggling young writer's journey from innocence into experience arrives on the screen as an engaging study of how people perceive their lives while living them.

Robert Towne (also directed)
Based on the novel by John Fante

Nearly destitute in an L.A. rooming house, novice writer Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell) spends his last nickel on a cup of coffee and quickly finds himself locked in a hostile encounter with Mexican-American waitress Camilla Lopez (Salma Hayek). Plagued by his self-perceived lack of experience, Bandini constantly worries that, without any "character" under his belt, he has no business being a writer. As his emotionally sadomasochistic relationship with Lopez continues, accompanied by prejudicial glances from the rest of the world, the writer slowly comes to realize that life is what happens when you're not expecting it and that "experience" is not something easily defined.

Principally concerned with the age-old Catch-22 of "write what you know," the script, faithfully adapted from Fante's semi-autobiographical novel, is about the series of self-realizations that form the path to adulthood. Arturo Bandini is a man who expects life to arrive like a roaring locomotive on a predictable timetable. Instead, he finds himself wandering into a tortured romance that he hardly recognizes as the experience he's so desperately sought. A supporting cast of L.A. eccentrics is on hand to guide Bandini along his journey, with booze-soaked neighbor Hellfrick (Donald Sutherland) providing a warning of what awaits the unsuccessful and adoring fan Vera Rivkin (Idina Menzel) providing an ideal for the scribe to aspire toward. Along the way, letters from famed literary editor H.L. Mencken (voiced by film historian Richard Schickel) periodically report the purchase of a Bandini story or otherwise offer the young writer encouragement as he stumbles along the path to experience.

Towne's confident script whisks the story along at a breezy pace that allows for reflection but never submits to stagnant contemplation. Characters are drawn with economy and wit -- Bandini's propensity for autographing copies of his story and dispensing them to strangers quickly assigns great importance to his self-image as a writer while reinforcing his potential in the viewer's mind. Towne's account of novelist John Fante on the commentary assures the listener that Bandini is the scribe's alter ego, and the screenwriter's description of Fante's abrasive demeanor is rendered perfectly, without dispelling the audience's sympathy for the character.

One of the boldest characters drawn in the script is not a person at all, but rather the setting. An L.A. native, Towne evokes the world 1930s L.A. with a skill that informs every scene in the story. From the fear that the city will devour you and spit out your remains to its magical mixture of co-existing cultures, the City of Angels is ever-present, and Bandini's love affair with the town is as important to his character as his affair with Camilla.

- Commentary by writer-director Robert Towne and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel
- The Making of Ask the Dust
- Theatrical trailer

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel provides a fine audio companion to writer-director Robert Towne as the two men consider the film. Towne's lengthy association with author John Fante is discussed in detail, and the novelist's personality is brought to life as Towne recounts their early meetings when the then-untested screenwriter first sought to adapt Ask the Dust. The novel's long and winding road to the cinema is detailed with Towne noting Johnny Depp's attachment to the project when the script was initially written in 1993. Throughout the film, both men point out moments added to the screenplay or alterations to the original text, interspersing recollections of the production where appropriate. The making-of featurette offers little in the way of new information and should have been sacrificed in favor of a segment on John Fante, an under-appreciated author with no shortage of character.

Throughout Ask the Dust, Towne's assured writing guides the viewer through not only a living echo of '30s L.A., but the painful coming of age of an artist learning his craft creating a satisfying tale that captures a long lost time and place.

Ask the Dust
Paramount Home Video
Rated R; 116 min.

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Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and writes "TV Wasteland" for Cinescape.com. He lives and writes in Burbank.

Ask the Dust courtesy Paramount Home Video

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