Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.
There are very few films that work like a novel.
I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.
I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.
You're able to do things in novels: introduce subplots, other characters, thematic layers and so on, in a way that you simply can't in a movie. A movie really has to choose its battles.
As an author, it's a strange process to watch your novel turned into a movie. It's tremendously exciting but somewhat voyeuristic; after all, novelists are rarely involved in the process.
Well, the medium of film is so different than a book that just by bringing it into visual storytelling is to change it up. I think in a book, in any book, you can have a reactive character. Some of the great novels of all time have had that, but in a film you can't do that.
Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
I actually think that short stories transfer to film much better than novels do.
The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel.
No opposing quotes found.