Adaptation Difficulty Quotes

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

There are so many other examples in the Premier League of players who are the best in their country and make a move because they are really ready for a level higher. If they come to the English top flight, it turns out they need a period to adjust in terms of pace, aggressiveness and physicality, especially as a midfielder.

It's impossible to make a movie out of 'Naked Lunch.' A literal translation just wouldn't work. It would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country of the world.

They say change gets more difficult as we get older - each year we're more stuck in our ways, more reluctant to learn something new.

If you think about movies that are adapted from books, they never feel like enough. There's always too much cut out in the end. You either make a five hour movie or you leave out stuff that should be in there.

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

I think that a movie of a TV show is really tricky, and I don't know if it's ever really been done well. Because it's really hard if you have a 22-minute show, especially something like 'Party Down,' where it's all contained at the party.

I'm glad nobody has asked me to adapt 'Wuthering Heights' because I think I would make a mess of it. Everybody makes a mess of it. I think the Bronte Sisters are mad.

It's always difficult with the superhero stuff because you're working with characters who have been written by 100 to 200 people over the past 20 years, at least, so they never sound the same or act the same. The best approach is to try to draw the best fitting line through all of the interpretations.

When the economy changes, it's not like you want to start eating bad-tasting chocolate.

When you arrive in L.A. as an Englishman, you might as well be on the moon. People just don't understand you if you speak too fast, and most people there think you're Australian. Ordering was incredibly complicated. I was speechless.

People said that 'Fight Club' would be impossible to turn into a movie, but I think David Fincher loved that challenge.

I do not think I will ever write screenplays based on my books. I would not know what to cut out and what portions to keep. I like all the characters I have created. I cannot imagine chopping them off.

I only used a cell phone for the first time after I was released. I had difficulty coping with it because it seemed so small and insubstantial.

Adjusting to space is easier than adjusting to Earth for me.

I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.

The different arenas that I've been able to do Iron Man in are fun, but some more than others. The anime that we did early on was tough. That was the hardest one. It was a reinterpretation of a reinterpretation. I don't think I'd do that again.

From my personal taste, it needed more of a visual style. It's so hard when you're adapting something that's so visually scrumptious like Mike Oeming's drawings. They're so unique to comics, but they're a voice.

What I find trying in a country which you do not understand and where you cannot speak, is that you can never be yourself.

The first couple of years in the minors were tough for me. My numbers were there, but being away from home so young was tough.

I was going to France to do my masters and my Ph.D., but I didn't know how to say, 'bonjour.' You really feel like a baby, starting everything from scratch.

I think the 'Boxers' book was easier for me to envision as a comic, because they were on this epic journey. These teenagers basically gathered into this army and marched to the capital city where they had a showdown with the Europeans and Japanese. On the 'Saints' side, it was a lot trickier.

It is incredibly daunting to take on a live-action story. I think that it adds a level of complexity to the responsibility that goes beyond what I've experienced on these two films (The Lorax and Horton Hears a Who).