Andy Weir Quotes

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual.

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.

I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.

I've seen movies that are slavishly devoted to books but don't work because they haven't turned it into a movie: they've turned it into a dramatisation of the different scenes.

Adapting a book doesn't mean the book stops just because you've made a film out of it.

I don't make movies. I don't feel that I have to have artistic control. Part of this comes from the fact that the book lives on no matter what Hollywood does to your novel in terms of a film. Now, you try to be careful who you allow to do your film because nobody wants their novel to become a turkey movie. But, on the other hand, it is a crapshot anyway, because even the best people can make a bad film.

I never thought about whether film is inherently more sincere, because certainly I think if Guy Maddin had directed A Series Of Unfortunate Events, there probably could have been more of the stage-y irony that is in the books. But I was just interested to see what people would do with it, and worrying that Brad Silberling wouldn't do what I had in mind.

I wasn't actually going to see the original film [Lord of the Ring], because I didn't think it was possible that a film could represent the books appropriately. So I was protesting, and I wasn't going to see them. And then my family all took a jaunt together, the entire family, to see the movies, and were like, "What, you're just going to stay home?" So I saw the movies and was thoroughly impressed that Peter Jackson managed to make my vision of the book come to life, as well as my sister's and my father's, and my aunt's and my uncle's, everyone's.

I was lucky enough to know Maurice Sendak, and talked to him about doing the movie. For a while, I was really apprehensive of it, because Where The Wild Things Are is a book I love so much, and I didn't want to add something to it just to be able to make a movie, or put my stamp on it, or something like that.

Yeah, when you're making a film, the book is a good tool, but once you have the script and you're making a movie, you have to let go of the book.

We're just like a movie based on a book-- almost, but not quite as good.

I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

Particularly when you're making a movie of a book, people are always waiting with their knives - you know?

I think successful movies that are based on books are their own thing. I think if you're too faithful, word by word, character trait to character trait, it can hurt the movie.

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

I would like to see 'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole adapted.

Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.

At times when you're adapting a book into a movie, you have to take certain creative liberties to bridge the gap between the two forms of media.

As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That's not my mental image of them.' It takes that moment for it to click and become their mental image.

I think you are doing a disservice to a novel just by transposing it wholesale onto the screen, because it doesn't work. They are completely different beasts.

Some writers get snooty about what happens when their books are adapted to film, but I don't feel that way.

A film adaptation is, I hope, the director's version. A new creation.

My dad read 'The Danish Girl' and fell in love with it. He told me, 'You need to do this film.'

I really liked 'Premam,' and when we decided to remake it, our intention was never to make a better film.