Feuding Indian father-son blocked writers finally make peace, a screenplay, and a movie within a movie about a depressed, blocked writer and his angry, blocked, stroke-victim father in the South African movie, Florida Road. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, except for the Bollywood dance sequence that closes out the film.
Can we believe the way this low-budget movie portrays writing blocks? True or False:
1) A parent with a past that involves heart-breaking writing disappointments may have strong feelings about an offspring’s writing career. True
2) Unresolved interpersonal and familial conflicts can reduce or stop writing productivity, especially when the conflicts are about writing. True
3) After these conflicts are completely resolved during a stroke coma awakening hug, an award-winning screenplay will be burped out in a matter of minutes. False
4) Writers tend to be very poor dancers. True
Florida Road also includes extensive scooter-riding montages, an African slum kid subplot, a tepid romance, extensive Indian family dynamics, and a happy ending that shows you (spoiler alert) you’ve been watching a movie within a movie that has the exact same plot as the outer movie, but like, with different characters; or at least some of them anyway. I’m a little confused.
Florida Road is a first movie for screenwriter Fred Fontana, and his own struggles might have informed the plot. While it’s not of Academy Award caliber, at least it adds some new cultural wrinkles to the writing block cinematic genre.
“but like” ?