narrative translation Quotes

I see my role as a translator, telling the story that's in the book using the more visual language of film.

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.

I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.

I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.

I've been a fan of movies longer than anything else. One thing I learned a long time ago is that you can't translate a book literally to the screen. It won't work because it's a different medium. And it would be the same in reverse.

I think screenwriter Steve Kloves does such a difficult job. And he does a bloody brilliant job, too. Transferring these Harry Potter books into films and making them coherent is one thing. But making them entertaining, as well, is quite another... He does a tremendous job, and he gets a lot of stick. And it's really unfair sometimes, and I challenge anyone else to do the job he does.

Sometimes what works in a book is too "in your face" when converted to the big screen and sound.

I don't think most books can be justifiably translated on screen. The film versions can't convey the right emotion, fuel your imagination or allow you to visualise every line the way books do.

The eternal challenge for screenwriter adapters is figuring out how to make something work on screen, when so much of what made it work in the book were the thoughts of the character, and obviously wanting to avoid voiceover.

The big problem with literature is people tend to take the dialogue from the book, forgetting that everything that surrounds it is literate, therefore not knowing quite how to put that on screen.