Clive Owen Quotes

Well, the medium of film is so different than a book that just by bringing it into visual storytelling is to change it up. I think in a book, in any book, you can have a reactive character. Some of the great novels of all time have had that, but in a film you can't do that.

A lot of books, if you take them at face value, they're just not gonna work as films.

Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story.

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

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.

Some things that work in a comic don't work in a film, and vice versa.

With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.

An author entices the readers with their words, and it is painful for them to even lose a sentence. But films and books are two different mediums and should be dealt differently. What works in a book might not work for a film. When I saw 'Anna Karenina' on screen, I didn't like it at all, whereas 'The Godfather' was legendary.

It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film.

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.

The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea.

I always thought that as much as I love 'White Jazz,' it became almost unfilmable at some point, because there are so many strands, so much, and it became so psychotic... that's what made it such a great book, but those things would not carry over into the filmic realm, I thought, with ease.

I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.

There were many films made for both cinema and television, and in general I don't connect them very much with our books. I have one favorite: 'The Man on the Roof' by director Bo Widerberg, which was based on 'The Abominable Man.'

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

Films are always different from books.