I read that book, 'Lonesome Dove,' and I told my agent that they were gonna make a miniseries out of it and I wanted to be in it. I didn't care what part.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I worked on 'Lonesome Dove' three weeks all together. When I heard they were doing it, I wanted to be involved since I'd read the book.
It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.
Last summer when we were preparing for the movie, I actually kind of wanted to stay fairly uninformed about it. As we went through the process that we do in the movie, I wanted to be a little wide-eyed.
I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.
I sat down to take a break from writing a book and wrote a spec feature that would end up being the movie 'Lies & Alibis' with Steve Coogan.
I've never watched any of the adaptations of my books. I've never wanted to, and there's absolutely no chance of me doing so in the future.
My agent will say, 'Well, it's another graphic novel.' I don't care. It's better writing than anything else that's out there. The characters are much better.
Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.
I was heartbroken at the end of that, because I thought that was going to be it for me. Somehow I had worked my way into this movie and it had exposed me to people and I had a chance to be an actor, which I loved, but I didn't think it was ever going to happen again.
People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.