Garth Stein Quotes

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

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.

Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.

Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.

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

These properties that get made into movies, some are easier than others. When they first said, 'Yeah, they're making a movie out of Lego,' I said, 'Lego what? What does that even mean?' And it's such a good concept.

After Strangelove I also started work on an adaptation of The Collector.

Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.

I'm always interested to see what films are made of books. I kind of don't participate as a filmgoer in any kind of debate about what's better, the book or the movie. So I think it's interesting when people want to do it.

I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.

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

But our writer, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - it was very much in her mind. After we had done 'A Room With a View' and 'Maurice,' she urged us to think about 'Howards End' as another candidate for adaptation.

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 bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

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 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.

My life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I've got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up.

When a bunch of stuff is happening on set, you have to remember the grander purpose: you're telling a story, so you have to get to that moment, and that takes supreme focus.

When you're in sync with the director, on the type of movie you want to make, the arc of the characters, how the characters intertwine and interact, plotlines and story, and things like that, it really makes a difference.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

It's all about this abstract entity called the story. It's all about the best way to tell the story, and to make a movie about the issues that this story is about. Filmmaking is storytelling, for me.

You have to have the essential pleasure of making a movie. It's such a huge factor and adventure for a director because you really are the leader and the captain.