Burdened with a craft that's essentially uncinematic, writers in the movies are perennially blocked, broke, and insane, simultaneously romanticized and ridiculed for their excesses--from the wise-cracking drunks of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle to Miles' navel-gazing in Sideways, the sticky sweetness of Shakespeare in Love, the self-regarding self-reflexivity of Adaptation, and the homicidal madness of The Shining. Here are ten films that have something real to say about what it means to write.