Bad Writing (2010)
Margaret Atwood, Nick Flynn, David Sedaris, Lynn Emanuel and other noted authors explain what makes director Vernon Lott's admittedly bad writing so awful; they also share insights into the opposite: what makes good writing good.
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There are a lot of these cheaply made part-autobiographical, part-documentary movies. Some of them, like 'Dear Zachary', are amazing and the format really works. 'Bad Writing' is tedious. Vernon Lott used to be a bad writer, and for all anyone knows, still is. He films about five meandering interviews with good writers, and a couple of his college professors, which are then intercut with pointless scenes of him driving around, drinking a Diet Coke, or walking around a bookstore. He's extremely nervous, and when he's not rapidly blinking or commenting about how much he's sweating, he's reading his own adolescent poetry again. The self deprecating humor works at first, but it never goes anywhere, and he never makes any real point.