Ryan North Quotes

The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.

The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.

Making comic adaptations means making a lot of choices - you need to adjust the pacing, the dialogue, and in this case, a lot of the cultural references.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

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.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

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

A movie is a movie and a book is a book, and they have different rules.

As soon as you've written it, you're thinking about how it can move into different mediums.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

We've seen from shows like 'Game of Thrones' that the book can become a seed, which you plant in the ground of great TV creators, and it can sprout out into a big tree.

Filmmaking is a language where you empathise with human situations. Unless you have empathy for characters, you shouldn't be a filmmaker.

That's what I wanted to do... I wanted to make a great film that just happened to be based on a video game.

I'm not very particular about the commercial angle in my films, but entertainment is very important.

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

It is impossible to do a movie exactly the way a comic book is written and drawn, just as it's impossible to do a movie exactly like a novel or exactly like anything else. When you go to different forms of media, you have to adapt.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

I don't believe moviegoers don't have patience. Screenwriters are told a scene can't be longer than three minutes, that you have to cut to the chase. Not true!

I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it's almost too obvious, or it's too expected. And it's not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place, but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture, and really the only basis still remains the rule, more so today, I think, because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

Good directors don't answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion.

A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.