In Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus, there’s a take off of Atlas Shrugged called Telemechus Sneezed.
Practically every novel or story about a writer contains a reference to a fictional novel or story; there are probably more fictional works than actual works.
That said, the first thing that came to mind was O Brother, Where Art Thou. What? Really? When?
Re: Blood on the Badge in Barney Miller: Harris did finish it, had it published, and then was sued and lost the money.
There’s The Seven Minutes in Irving Wallace’s book The Seven Minutes. The fictional version is supposed to be a pornographic work about what’s going through a woman’s head during sex, and the actual book is about the issues involved with publishing the book.
In the first season of Twin Peaks (the TV series), the soap opera “Invitation to Love” was often shown; it seemed to run 24/7, since it seemed to be on whenever a TV was shown.
The list of novels and movies about people writing novels is pretty big; for instance, in Wonder Boys, the Michael Douglas character has already had a book published, is writing another. The Tobey McGuire character also writes a novel during the film.
Jack McDevitt beat Neal Gaiman to the punch with the idea of a library containing unwritten works: his story, “The Fort Moxie Branch” (for some reason, incorrectly titled “The Fourth Moxie Branch”) came out in 1988, well before Sandman hit the stands.
L. Ron Hubbard’s “Typewriter in the Sky” involves a person who discovers he’s inside a another writer’s novel, cast as the villain. It’s supposedly one of Hubbard’s best works.
The un-abridged Princess Bride.
“The Princess Bride” by S. Morgenstern
[Simul]Damn, you beat me to it :-)[/Simul]
Humorous background on this. Vonnegut invented the hack writer Kilgore Trout and his books, as a fictional element in his satire.
Philip Jose Farmer then, writing as “Kilgore Trout,” produced a real Venus on the Half Shell.
The point is that it’s supposed to be hackwork.
Watchmen has a number of these, including the first Nite Owl’s autobiography, interviews with Ozymandius and the original Silk Spectre and the pirate comic book (Tales of the Black Watch, I think?)
One of the short stories from the movie version of Garp (don’t remember if it’s in the book) is about a man with magic gloves who can do anything with them except feel. There are also Lily’s novels (Trying to Grow and the other one) in The Hotel New Hampshire.
From the first movie version of The Shining, there’s the book that Jack is working on (don’t know if it’s in the book; haven’t read it).
From The Simpsons, there’s Monty Burns’ autobiography, “Will There Ever Be a Rainbow?” and Marge’s romance novel.
“Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning”
- Grunthos the Flatulent
Can’t forget the fictional movie titles from Seinfeld.
[ul]
[li]Agent Zero[/li][li]Blame it on the Rain[/li][li]Blimp: The Hindenberg Story[/li][li]Brown-Eyed Girl[/li][li]Checkmate[/li][li]Chow Fun[/li][li]Chunnel[/li][li]Cold Fusion[/li][li]Cry, Cry Again[/li][li]Cupid’s Rifle[/li][li]Death Blow[/li][li]Extreme Measures[/li][li]Firestorm[/li][li]Means to an End[/li][li]Mountain High[/li][li]The Muted Heart[/li][li]Ponce de Leon[/li][li]Prognosis Negative[/li][li]Rochelle, Rochelle[/li][li]Sack Lunch[/li][li]The Other Side of Darkness[/li][/ul]
I figured Tobin’s Spirit Guide and Necronomicon were more like fictional reference books, not fictional works of fiction.
The play Noises Off is about a production of the fictional British smash sex farce “Nothing On.” We see only the first act of “Nothing On”, which ends with the entrance of a rich Arab sheik, intent on buying the house of Philip Brent, and who happens to look exactly like him. Philip is ostensibly abroad as a tax exile, but is hiding at home. As “Nothing On” is a farce, we might expect Philip and the sheik to have some mistaken identity problems, the sheik may end up paying Philip’s taxes, and so on. It’s hard to say what might happen since most of the silliness in the first act is impervious to logic.
Stephen King’s 'Salem’s Lot features a writer named Ben Mears (?). I can’t recall if any specific book titles are mentioned. King’s story The Body also features a writer, the young Gordon Lachance, who wrote a short story (excerpted in the text) called something like “The Great Pie-Eat” where Lardass Hogan causes everybody at the pie-eating contest to barf spectactularly.
The movie As Good As It Gets also features a writer, this one played by Jack Nicholson. Anybody remember if any specific books are mentioned?
Marty McFly’s father receives a box of first-edition copies of his science fiction novel at the end of Back to the Future but I can’t remember the title.
Welllllllll . . . Vonnegut pretty clearly did not think of Trout as a hack; he seemed to think of him as the only sane man in an insane world. He didn’t really kick up too much of a fuss about where his stories were published (often in XXX skin mags), but Vonnegut put some of his most serious ideas into Trout’s head.
About ten years ago, I worked in a bookstore at the same time that a pretentious, overly-precious little indie movie called the Myth of Fingerprints came out. Part of the film deals with Julianne Moore’s character reading a book called “the Scream of the Rabbits.” For a few weeks, people were coming into the bookstore every day asking for the book, including one crazy lady who adamantly refused to accept that it was not a real book and nearly attacked me!
There’s also the Purple Rose of Cairo, a Woody Allen movie about a lonely waitress (Mia Farrow) who goes to a movie called - what else? - the Purple Rose of Cairo, and…well, just rent it. (But skip “the Dreck of Fingerprints”).
It was The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan. The same story features another short story by Gordie called Stud City.
And he did a good job 
.
Hmmm. Then I guess the Junior Woodchuck’s Guide is out, too, then. It’s supposed to be factual. And James Bond’s book Stay Alive!
–which I always took to be a jab at Silence of the Lambs.
Thought of another: Amazon is constantly recommending a book called The Counterfeit Heinlein by Lawrence M. Janifer. It’s set in the distant future, and the MacGuffin is a fragment of a lost short story by Heinlein called “The Stone Pillow.”
My desire to actually find a copy and read it is mild, but lingering.
It’s called “No TV and No Beer makes Homer Something-Something”
Something pretty generic as I recall, “Visitor from Space” or someting equally vapid. I loved the cheesy Science Fiction Book Club-style cover art.
You reminded me of another example, Deathtrap: Sidney Bruel is a playwright, most famous for The Murder Game which we don’t see anything of. We do see a bit of his latest play, the name of which escapes me. And of course the murder mystery revolves around the fictional and initially non-existent play called Deathtrap. Also mentioned is a fictional and non-existent play about a welfare office.
In Death on the Nile (the film version) Angela Lansbury’s motive is tied to her authorship of an allegedly libelous book, but I can’t remember if the book is named. Haven’t read the Christie novel so I don’t know if the character and motive exist there.
All About Eve includes the fictional plays Aged in Wood and Footsteps on the Ceiling.
Sunset Boulevard includes the fictional script for Norma Desmond’s version of Salome, the screenplay the Joe and whats-er-face that he falls for are writing together, mention of a “baseball movie” script that Joe wrote, scenes from a Cecil B. DeMille epic (which IIRC he was actually filming but in the context of SB was fictitious) and footage from Gloria Swanson’s film Queen Kelly re-purposed as a Norma Desmond film.
Also from The Simpsons we have the Mel Gibson re-make of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Left Below, all the various and sundry Troy McClure projects (including the Planet of the Apes stage musical, the Muppet version of Camelot, the afternoon movie set in San Francisco in the 60s and all of the movies that we may remember him from but get nothing but the titles of), Ranier Wolfcastle’s movies (including the McBain series, the apparently unreleased Radioactive Man movie and Undercover Nerd), the Space Mutants film series, the Krusty episode of Batman and probably a ton more that I’m forgetting.
From Family Guy there’s Gumbel to Gumbel, Peter’s mutated version of The King and I (A Peter Griffin joint), Passion of the Christ II, KISS Saves Christmas or whatever it’s called and the porn films Brian directed (Shaving Private Ryan is the only one I remember).