Review of The Damned United (2009) by Glenn D — 24 Mar 2010

It was a late afternoon. I was at the front desk when he walked up. I recited our obligatory greeting "welcome to raffles L'ermitage, blah, blah, blah." He smiled. We were expecting him. There was handwritten notes on a guest registration card or sometimes just the initials "SPRG", don't remember what it stood for but they were classified as VIP. As he was signing the registration card, he asked if the room was dark. Was it properly lit. My brain lagged for a moment. He meant the sunlight. He did not want a dark room. I said, let me check. While I fiddled with the mouse and tapped the keyboard to show that I was giving it some effort to provide him a proper answer, he blurted out "I'm a writer. I'll be spending sometime in there, so..." leaving the unfinished sentence for the awkward silence to devour. I had just finished my second screenplay and wanted to share stories, experiences of being a writer because I "knew" how it's like. It was hotel policy not to harass a high profile guest with personal ambitions. And I think I just passed my first year there and was about to transition to the graveyard shift, a shift that I always wanted. After I finished checking him in, I slid over the metal key in its sheath and said "good luck." He looked back at me and said with a confused and indolent expression "It's my job.".

That's when I took the thumb out of my ass and researched his name. Peter Morgan. He was writing Frost/Nixon at the time. I told him good luck. Maybe that's why his movies are so good... because of luck.