Christine 

World premiere Jan. 23, 2016, Sundance Film Festival

Written by Craig Shilowich

Directed by Antonio Campos

Starring Rebecca Hall, Tracy Letts, and Michael C. Hall

Available on various streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime

I heard about this movie in 2016, when it premiered at Sundance. It sounded like an exploitation project, so I decided not to watch it. Then, last week, it appeared in my “recommended for you” feed from Amazon Prime. Something about the poster – this young woman sitting, Mona Lisa-like, at a news desk in front of a camera – drew me in.

It was riveting. Disturbing. Moving. Credit goes to Antonio Campos, who directed it, and to an excellent cast. But mostly to Rebecca Hall, who did an amazing job depicting the protagonist.

The True Story the Movie Was Based On 

Christine Chubbuck was a reporter at a Sarasota television station, where she handled community affairs news. In 1974, at the age of 29, she killed herself on air.

During the first eight minutes of her program that morning, Chubbuck covered three national news stories and then a shooting at a local restaurant the previous day. The film reel of the shooting had jammed, so Chubbuck shrugged it off and said on-camera, “In keeping with the WXLT practice of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood and guts news, TV 40 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living color, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.” She then she pulled a gun from her purse and shot herself in the head.

Interesting 

Craig Shilowich, the producer and screenwriter, decided to make the movie after reading Chubbuck’s story online. It fascinated him, he said, because he had struggled with depression for seven years in the wake of 9/11. He was especially interested Chubbuck’s pre-suicide struggle. He interviewed some of her former newsroom colleagues and read news stories to build what he could with hard facts. The rest, he said, was imagined.

Critical Reception 

The movie, not surprisingly, received medium to very favorable reviews. But Rebecca Hall’s performance was praised universally. She was nominated for dozens of (and won several) best-actor awards at various film festivals.

* “Far from the austere death march it might threaten to be on paper, this is a thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom.” (Guy Lodge, Variety)

* “Hall makes it impossible to look away from this portrait of a woman brought to the heartbreaking conclusion that she’s beyond hope.” (David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter)

* “Rebecca Hall gives one of the great performances of the year… in Christine, an intense, stomach-turning, unblinking drama.” (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)

* “A compelling drama that is simultaneously respectful and provocative.” (Tara Brady, Irish Times)

You can watch the trailer here.

And click here for an interview with Rebecca Hall about the life of Christine Chubbuck.

About Christine Chubbuck 

Chubbuck spoke to her family at length about her struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies. She had attempted to overdose on drugs in 1970 and frequently referred to that event.

Her focus on her lack of intimate relationships is generally considered to be the driving force for her depression. Her mother noted that “her suicide was simply because her personal life was not enough.” Her brother Greg agreed that she had trouble connecting socially. He believed her constant self-deprecation for being “dateless” contributed to her ongoing depression.

About Rebecca Hall 

Rebecca Maria Hall is an English actress and film director. She made her first onscreen appearance at age 10 in the 1992 television adaptation of The Camomile Lawn, directed by her father, Sir Peter Hall. She got her breakthrough role in Christopher Nolan’s thriller The Prestige. In 2008, she starred in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Hall then appeared in a wide array of films.

Hall made her directorial debut with Passing (2021), receiving critical acclaim. She has also made several notable appearances on British television. She won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 2009 miniseries Red Riding: 1974. In 2013, she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her performance in BBC Two’s Parade’s End.

An “enraged letter” from Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul to his editor at Knopf, Sonny Mehta

Copy editors are an essential cog in the wheel of publishing. Despite this, their relationship with the author can sometimes be a strained one. Case in point, this angry letter from Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, which he fired off after receiving his edited manuscript from an apparently overzealous copy editor.

10 May 1988

Dear Sonny,

The copy-edited text of A Turn in the South came yesterday; it is such an appalling piece of work that I feel I have to write about it. This kind of copy-editing gets in the way of creative reading. I spend so much time restoring the text I wrote (and as a result know rather well). I thought it might have been known in the office that after 34 years and 20 books I knew certain things about writing and didn’t want a copy-editor’s help with punctuation or the thing called repetition….

It happens that English – the history of the language – was my subject at Oxford. It happens that I know very well that these so-called “rules” have nothing to do with the language and are really rules about French usage. The glory of English is that it is without these court rules: it is a language made by the people who write it. My name goes on my book. I am responsible for the way the words are put together. It is one reason why I became a writer.

Every writer has his own voice. (Every serious or dedicated writer.) This is achieved by the way he punctuates; the rhythm of his phrases; the way the writing reflects the processes of the writer’s thought: all the nervousness, all the links, all the curious associations. An assiduous copy-editor can undo this very quickly, can make A write like B and Ms C.

And what a waste of spirit it is for the writer, who is in effect re-doing bits of his manuscript all the time instead of giving it a truly creative, revising read. Consider how it has made me sit down this morning, not to my work, but to write this enraged letter.

Yours,

Vidia

(From The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French. Source: Letters of Note)