Colin Firth Quotes

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

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.

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

Hope E. L .James doesn't think I'm being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream.

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.

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel.

I'm interested in adapting books and all sorts of things.

It's tricky to take a book of short stories and turn it into a feature film.

Sometimes I get to see a movie that's adapted from a book that I haven't heard about or that I love the movie so much that I will, of course, read the book.

If I'm in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, 'Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?'

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.

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.

The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

I actually think that short stories transfer to film much better than novels do.

I'm all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.

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.

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

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.

It's always a challenge to adapt a novel for screen, a visual medium.

It's a very difficult thing to adapt a piece of existing material into film.

It is a challenging task to adapt a book to screen presentation and you will not be able to satisfy those who read the classic novel.

I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.

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 do know that the best way to make a mediocre movie is to just transcribe the book.