I've seen movies that are slavishly devoted to books but don't work because they haven't turned it into a movie: they've turned it into a dramatisation of the different scenes.
One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.
I am opposed to the idea of dubbing films into Kannada.
I haven't been in the film world long enough to really understand the gravity of 'Big Hero's' success. I'm just happy that it is translating well internationally and that the story and the characters are loved by audiences around the world, and everything that's come after that has been secondary to the initial response.
'Being Cyrus' is very young in language or grammar. I am not saying that these things can't be achieved in Hindi. All I am saying is that it would not be the same.
In my creative films, if there was something, some humorous moment that is lost to a non-Korean speaking audience, I'll be very sad.
'Defying Gravity' is a big, theatrical, grand gesture. In film, how do you match that?
I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
People are usually so disappointed with book-to-movie translations.
One of the reasons I'm so proud of my mother is she took her skills of over a 40 years photographic career and translated that to a film.
When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you're not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted.
I will say that comic books are not the easiest things to translate to film, number one. Even the most well meaning of filmmakers find what's acceptable on the printed page is very difficult to bring to film.
Our idea to remake the Malayalam 'Premam' was not to make a better film than the original film or correct the mistakes they made or perform better than that hero. The soul of the Malayalam movie was taken and changed a bit to match with the Telugu sensibilities so that our audience can enjoy the movie.
I have no idea why one of our most original filmmakers would want to spend two years of his life translating someone else's movie from Spanish into English. And it wasn't such a good film in Spanish, either.
I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you're reading comic books to the big screen.
