Product Review

The documentary film The Typewriter (In the 21st Century) is an ode to a marvelous machine that changed the world, and the surprisingly enduring culture that valiantly attempts to preserve its legacy and save it from cultural extinction. Filmmakers Christopher Lockett and Gary Nicholson crisscrossed America to conduct over thirty interviews with authors, collectors, journalists, professors, bloggers, students, artists, inventors and repairmen. Many of these people meet up for Type-Ins gatherings to celebrate their decidedly lo-tech typewriters in a plugged-in, digital world.

Meet authors Robert Caro and David McCullough four Pulitzer Prizes, three National Book Awards and a Presidential Medal of Freedom between them both typewriter users with much to say about the creative process and the value of slowing down, and writing or typing multiple drafts in an internet culture that rewards unedited and instantly published documents. The film also showcases typewriters once owned by Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw, Jack London, John Steinbeck, John Updike, Sylvia Plath, Ernie Pyle, Helen Keller, John Lennon, and Ray Bradbury.