[The Brothers Coen win for Best Adapted Screenplay]
[Joel Coen thanks Cormac McCarthy, who is then shown in attendance with his son]
Me: [pointing] That's Cormac McCarthy.
Mrs.: That's Cormac McCarthy?
Me: Uh huh.
Mrs.: The one who's really reclusive?
Me: Uh. Yes.
[Flash forward to No Country for Old Men winning best picture; McCarthy is standing up and positively beaming and mugging]
[Cue all hell breaking loose]
Somewhat interesting exercise here: If you film it…: 21 good books that need to be great films, like now.
The Long Walk is a good choice, I think. As is Cloud Atlas, which comes with this (rather ambitious) suggestion for a two-part structure:
Large-scale, ambitious fiction doesn't work in films when hacked to pieces and squished into 90 minutes, so two movies and a Peter Jackson-esque dedication to perfection would be needed for David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. The book has six stories presented in different formats; Cloud Atlas Vol. 1 would launch the stories of a 19th-century seafarer (as related in a diary); a 1930s composer (as related in letters); an investigative journalist in the '70s (as written in a novel); a present-day book publisher (as shown in a film); a clone in a dystopic future (as told in an interview); and a primitive tribesman in a far, post-apocalyptic future (as related in verbal storytelling). Cloud Atlas Vol. 2 would then work backward through the stories' conclusions, ending with the seafarer. Why now for Cloud Atlas? Because it's been a long time since there's been a good film in any one of its genres.
All that said, I'm begging that A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius not be made into a movie.
Ever.
As I book I liked at the time--yes, liked!--I can't see any way of adapting it without a) turning it into a giant puddle of syrup and b) subjecting me to the E***** media blitz all over again. Please, Hollywood, no.
