The film California typewriter ostensibly concerns a Berkeley, California typewriter shop as it struggles to stay afloat in the digital world of computers and tablets. However, beneath the surface is a larger story, where the analog typewriter is cast into its role as a medium of creativity.
Who Is In the Film?
Here are the personalities that make an appearance in the film. These are not in order of appearance, but are instead alphabetical. We have authors, actors, poets, musicians, sculptors, as well as typewriter sales and repair people. What could they all have in common?
Featuring
SILVI ALCIVAR
KEN ALEXANDER
BOSTON TYPEWRITER ORCHESTRA
TOM HANKS
MARTIN HOWARD
JEREMY MAYER
JOHN MAYER
DAVID McCULLOUGH
RICHARD POLT
HERBERT PERMILLION III
SAM SHEPARD
DARREN WERSHLER
MASON WILLIAMS
How Does The Film Begin?
The opening scenes features a person throwing a typewriter out of a moving car sometime in 1966. The rear seat passenger needed more leg room during a long trip, and the typewriter was on the floor near the passenger’s feet. The occupants then photographed the typewriter carnage and wrote a book about the “murder”. The brief images shown of the book suggests that it is a photographic essay called “Royal Road Test”. By the way, this book is apparently difficult to find and hasn’t been reprinted. Copies go for several hundred dollars!
The film then quickly shifts to an auction of a typewriter used by the author Cormac McCarthy, which sells for around $200 k plus!
Both of these scenes engaged my interest and I settled in for the rest of the film.
Some Favorite Scenes and Quotes
“We’ve become a throwaway society”
Tom Hanks “No good typewriters are ever going to be made again”
Scholes Glidden was the first commercially successful typewriter, manufactured in 1874
“Being alone is the greatest strength of being a writer”
When writing, don’t stop at a dead end. Stop when something interesting is about to happen. During your next session, you’ll find out what it is
Typewriters are more tactile than computers
“When you like what you do, you can almost get paid peanuts. If you can get by on peanuts, that’s fine”
“So simple, and complex.”
John Mayer “The next step in technology is less about what you are using, and more about how you are using it.”
Poet Silvi Alcivar “I trust that the words will come”
“Something goes out of the human experience when something is made simpler, or less complicated.”
“I don’t want to go faster, like on a computer or word processor, I want to go slower”
“The typewriter, for me, since it is more difficult, produces a better result.”
How Does This Link to the Creative Process?
There are really two considerations here:
- Are analog tools better for creativity?
- How do typing and handwriting compare?
Regarding analog (handwriting or typing) versus working on a computer, it’s easy to find research which shows that in many cases analog tools help foster creativity. One study found that students who use laptops instead of long hand notes in an academic setting perform significantly worse in testing conceptual understanding of the material, but equal in recalling raw facts. The reason is something called “the encoding hypothesis”, which suggests that the processing that occurs during the act of long hand note taking improves learning and retention. Note that this is processing, not transcribing.
Additional thoughts.
- Slowing down helps foster creativity. Anything that slows the output of information helps me. I’ve seen this written as “bandwidth”–you have to have the bandwidth for ideas to develop and sink in. It’s undeniable that task lists on Outlook and laptop notes are faster to develop, and this is exactly why analog is better for me as a creative outlet.
- John Mayer points out in the film that when using a computer, it’s difficult to write in a stream of consciousness mode, with no filters and no editors, because the computer constantly spell checks and grammar checks your work. From a pure creative outlet standpoint, this editing disrupts the flow.
- Getting lost, or unexpected detours, also fosters new ideas. If I don’t know exactly where my notes or previous ideas on a specific topic are, I’ll need to look for them–in one of several notebooks, sketchbooks, or index cards. Along the way I might stumble across something that is interesting that I hadn’t been looking for, which then leads to thinking about something new. (This can also lead to an endless amount of internet searching, or YouTube watching, which is a different type of rabbit hole to fall into).
Which brings us to a comparison of typing versus handwriting. From a creative output standpoint, my Spider Sense tells me that handwriting wins, mostly for the reasons listed above. I haven’t looked for any research to support this assertion. For me, it seems that handwriting, which could include sketching ideas with a pen or pencil, has more creative freedom than typing. Try drawing something on your Smith-Corona when brainstorming something!
How To Watch The Film?
Here are a few ideas. Also check your local library.