Jay Asher Quotes

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

All I can say is that I am not one of those writers who want 100% of their book in the film. I recognize that film is a different medium and the filmmaker must have the right to bring some new elements to the table, provided the soul of the book is preserved.

If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget.

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

You have plausible deniability, as they say in politics, as an author with movies. Because if the movie is terrible, you simply say they failed to catch the genius of the book.

People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.

I think it's counterproductive for actors to come to the set with well-thumbed copies of the book their film is adapted from.

'A Storm of Swords' is a massive volume, and it seemed like it would be shortchanging it to try to cram it into ten episodes.

In rare instances you have to give up what you thought was a great scene.

I thought 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' was terrible. I'm a big fan of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, so I don't know what went wrong with that.

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

When you're adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it's always someone's favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, 'Well, it doesn't work if you include everyone's favorite scenes.'

There will be the 5% on the fringe of any hardcore fanbase that get angry about any change you make to the source material. The truth is that novels, games, comics, and what-have-you are not usually ready to be slapped up on screen as-is.

I always felt once it goes into movie land, the book belongs to someone else.

'The Road to Wellville'... it had Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, directed by Alan Parker. I hadn't been doing all that well, and I was thrilled to get it, and it just didn't work. It was a terrible movie, but I don't think it's anyone's fault.

I would remake 'Club Paradise.' I thought the story was cool, the setting was great. Everything lined up, except I wrote it for Bill Murray and John Cleese.

There's so many films made out of bad books, and I don't have time for those.

There is always a reverence issue, and I'm no different from any audience member that if someone's adapting a book or comic that I like, I really don't want them to screw it up.

Awful film adaptations follow novelists for the rest of their lives. An atrocious movie of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' could have stigmatised the book, aggrieved the novel's fans, and blighted my reputation forever.

There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.

I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money.

Vera Caspary wrote an essay called 'My 'Laura' and Otto's' where she talks about the arguments she had with Preminger. She felt that not only did he misunderstand the character but that he couldn't help but be misogynist.

The film world is always looking for great source material, and Broadway has traditionally and historically been a place to go.

Polar' is based on the first and a little bit on the second book and all the characters from those novels are in there. The story is based on the graphic novel, but when it came to the execution of the film I felt I couldn't really make a movie without any dialogue.

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