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20-11-2008 11:18
That’s why they’re successful, jeez. But to a certain extent everybody has a certain sort of way of being a persona they learn how to be when they’re really little. They figure out that if they’re really funny or if they’re really pretty or if they work really, really hard or if they’re really smart that is what’s going to get them by.
That’s what will make people like them. And then around the age of 33 they start to realise that that’s a really limiting thing, that they don’t want to be that funny person or that pretty person for the rest of their lives.
That’s when they kind of face a crisis. That’s sort of what I depict in my books people facing that crisis of either continuing to be that person, but being it in an angry way like the angry beautiful woman, that hates you for the fact that you like her because she’s beautiful. Or the angry funny person who’s just mean.
Or people kill themselves. A lot of them do, 33 for men, 36 for women are the ages when they typically do that. Or they get it together and re-invent themselves in a more thorough way which is always kind of preferential, always the best option.
At the time that he bought the option he’d just gotten his first screenplay produced and that was What Lies Beneath. That turned out so well, people were so impressed by that, that it was kind of easy to hand it on to see what he would do with it. And also part of you doesn’t expect that it will ever go into production, so it’s kind of easy because you think that it’s never going to happen, so why not?
You know that is less of a possibility now, because thanks to David Fincher being so faithful to Fight Club, the books have such a passionate following that I think people recognise that if they monkey with the story too much it is going to piss off the existing audience for that story, and they don’t want to do that.
It really depends on the medium. I really love writing books, because nobody really gives a shit about books right now. Seriously, in the States, nobody really reads so it’s not a big deal and that gives you this fantastic freedom. It’s a freedom that movies and tv don’t have. Censorship doesn’t really bother me because it’s not really a factor in my work.
Sam Rockwell’s never occurred to me as an actor, everything I’ve seen him in I’ve always just associated him so strongly with that character. He’s always been the crazy man in Green Mile, or the over the top guy in Hitchhiker’s Guide, or the sympathetic character in Galaxy Quest. I never thought of that as Sam Rockwell, so he was not somebody I would think of, but he was perfect. I think it turned out for the very best.
The style that I try to write in, the rules that I adhere to, are the rules of minimalism. And the rules kind of force the writing to be more filmic, to have the immediacy and the accessibility of film so that the reader really has to fill in a lot of the details, and really all that you’re depicting in the story is the action that people are taking.
That’s the strongest thing about film, it’s something that’s constantly in motion. That is the strength of film, its accessibility and its immediacy. But the strength of books is that freedom to really depict anything you want because people are going to be reading it in private, it’s just one person reading that book and agreeing to read that book.
So I’m always trying to write with the immediacy and constant motion of film but I’m also trying to write with the complete freedom of subject matter that books have. So if I’m kind of surprised when they do get translated into films because I always think my subject matter will preclude that.
In 1999 20th Century Fox had optioned Survivor, my second book, and David Fincher was really pushing them in their development and they had got Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother, to write a screenplay, and people were very happy with that and they were starting to cast it, and then 9/11 happened. That harpooned all transgressive comedies. It’s a comic terrorist on a plane situation.
It’s likely that it will be made this year or early next year, Francis Lawrence had the option and he’s written the screenplay and he said several times it was going to be his project after I Am Legend. I’m hoping that one of these days there’ll be a call about that.
Once a year for the last few years Fincher has called and said ‘are we still doing this? Do you still want to do this?’ Every time I think it’s dead somebody tells me that Fincher is still working on it. I thought it was dead this winter until I talked to a reporter for either Rolling Stone or MTV who had just interviewed Fincher and said that Fincher was still talking about it, so maybe. All I know is that Fincher is still talking about it!
No, it hasn’t. I kind of wrote Snuff with the idea that I was hoping it would eventually be a stage play, by keeping the settings really limited and the number of characters really limited it seemed like the situation would be perfect for a play. That’s been my private dream.
You know, it’s funny, I always think that would be the dream until I talk to people who do it for a living. They say ‘you people who write novels have it made, because you get it your way, and it’s never changed and what is ultimately brought to market is your vision, whereas a screenplay is monkeyed with by everyone who touches it.’
Everyone who is involved has to make some change. Screenwriters get paid a hell of a lot more money but their level of frustration seems to be so high that I just don’t want that.
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