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.
It's a very difficult thing to adapt a piece of existing material into film.
As far as books getting turned into movies, I fared very, very well.
I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever.
I think a lot of writers are unrealistic about having their books translated into film.
It's always a challenge to adapt a novel for screen, a visual medium.
In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.
To adapt a play into a movie, you have to change it.
Sometimes what works in a book is too "in your face" when converted to the big screen and sound.
A lot of books, if you take them at face value, they're just not gonna work as films.
Realistically, the chance of any book becoming a film is slim.
If you're going to be adapting something across media, you should at least have the moves that people want you to hit and that you want to hit.
Most of us came out of Popeye, so turning Popeye into something believable was tricky enough.
That freedom of writing you don't get in other formats, I'd rather leave it to someone else to deal with the headache of drafting my book into a screenplay.
I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.
All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.
