Story Translation Quotes

As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

You either ignore the comic book and make a great movie or you stay very close to the comic book.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."

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.

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.

Great stories don't often make great movies. Its' a crafted art form.

I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

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.

A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.

Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.

I actually think that short stories transfer to film much better than novels do.

The Coen brothers said something that helped me, "When you put the book down, you have a certain feeling, a certain understanding. That's what they need to feel when they walk out of the theater. That's your job, to literally put this book on film, you won't make a good movie, you'll do no service to anyone.

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.

Yeah, when you're making a film, the book is a good tool, but once you have the script and you're making a movie, you have to let go of the book.

I think that as a director, especially when it comes to writing the script, which I also do, and I'm also the first one to visualize this story, I think contributing to the film industry means I'm able to take the best of a story and translate it well into a movie that can be released in theaters.

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.

What I loved about 'War Dogs' was the fact that the tone - turning that story into a spectacular two hour ride is just such a complicated thing to do.

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.

I think it's really hard for filmmakers to adapt books.

As far as 'Birdsong' is concerned, I think the television program made a very honorable attempt at it, but the truth of the matter is that adaptations of long, ambitious books very seldom transfer well to the screen, and why would they?

I think successful movies that are based on books are their own thing. I think if you're too faithful, word by word, character trait to character trait, it can hurt the movie.