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Get Breaking News on your cellDennis Lehane at Book Expo: I don't write with movies in mind
4:31 PM Sun, Jun 01, 2008 | Permalink
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June 2008
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Book Expo: More buzz for Kathleen Kent Dennis Lehane at Book Expo: I don't write with movies in mind Book Expo: These books are going to be HUGE Book Expo: Not everyone is leaving early (or fully dressed) Book Expo: Is that candor I hear? Book Expo: On the Fox lot with HarperCollins Meanwhile, back in Dallas: Today's book coverage Book Expo: Shatner and Nimoy, together again! Categories
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Between Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and the upcoming Shutter Island (directed by Martin Scorsese), Dennis Lehane has become the most popular novelist to adapt for the movies. I sat down with him for a half hour Sunday afternoon to talk about his new epic novel The Given Day, and I had to ask him: do you ever write novels with movie adaptation in mind? "Never," he said quickly. "I don't say that to be cool or to say I'm so aesthetically wonderful. It's just that to me they're two completely different aesthetic beasts. Nothing could [mess] me up more when I was writing than to be thinking of Russell Crowe in the part. That doesn't allow my characters to breathe the way I need them to breathe. "Anybody who writes a book with a movie in mind, why not not just skip the process and write a screenplay?" he continues. "Books are hard, man. Save yourself the trouble. I write my books to be read." Lehane comes across as a no-nonsense type with very few pretensions or airs, every bit the product of the working class Boston milieu in which so many of his stories are set. We'll have a full story on him and The Given Day closer to it's publication in September. And if it does get turned into a movie, it'll be a long one: the book weighs in at 700 eminently readable pages. |
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