Michael C. here to share another question for your collective answer. Every film that portrays creative people at work faces the same conundrum. In order to tell the story of an artist at work the movie has to depict the product of their labor and making that convincing can require just as much effort to as making the film itself. If you can make a painting that is believable as the work of a master than maybe you should just do that and skip the film altogether? You know what I mean?
"uh oh... we just lost the family audience"
There are various methods with which films skirt this issue. The simplest solution is to show nothing and simply have the characters talk about the brilliance (or lack thereof) of the work in question. We never do hear a passage from Grady Tripp’s acclaimed "Arsonist's Daughter" in Wonder Boys (2000), just as we never witness any of the actual stage performances from All About Eve (1951). Then there are those films which give just enough of a taste of the work without doing the heavy lifting. In the great All That Jazz (1979), for example, we see enough of Joe Gideon’s erotic work-in-progress to know why it’s an investor’s nightmare without ever learning much more about it.
In rare cases, films do such a good job suggesting a work of art that you leave the theater disappointed that the work doesn’t exist in reality. Here are three examples of fictional works of art from movies that I would happily shell out the cash for should they magically appear at multiplexes, book stores or on the Great White Way… [more]