The documentary film The Typewriter 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.

The documentary film The Typewriter 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 was inspired by a May 2010 article in Wired magazine called "Meet The Last Generation of Typewriter Repairman," which Los Angeles based filmmakers Christopher Lockett and Gary Nicholson read. Casual conversation over coffee about the importance of the typewriter in world history eventually turned toward the inevitable conclusion that this would make a great documentary. Lockett and Nicholson agreed that the passing of the typewriter, a portable printing press that moved the world's communication technology from pen and ink to the QWERTY keyboards on today's computers, along with the highly skilled technicians who service them, should be documented. In the filmmaker's research, they uncovered many interesting stories, realizing that the typewriter is alive and well and still very relevant in the 21st century
Film investigates the importance of the typewriter in 20th century literature, as every great novel of the 20th century was written on one, and if typewriters are in their final days, they deserve to be celebrated one last time. The film features not only typewriter people — the technicians, collectors, bloggers, users and fans — but famous typewriters as well.
The film 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.

Directed and Produced by Christopher Lockett and Gary Nicholson ; Cre8tive Lanes/The Typewriter Film, LLC Production