I am late to the Da Vinci Code mania.
I only read paperbacks! And since the Dan Brown blockbuster wasn’t available in soft cover until a few weeks ago, my only experience of it was watching Brown’s book rise and stay at the top of the bestseller’s charts — and trying to understand the excitement that went with it.
But having read it finally, and with the wave of publicity about Tom Hanks’ hair in the upcoming movie release, I must wonder how the translation will be.
Note to screenwriters thinking of writing novels: Research The Da Vinci Code. It’s is a prose screenplay. It’s visual. Has great movie moments. And is structured according to the BS2! While many of the whammies in the novel are fresh and thrilling, a bunch are standard movie turns — in the actual screenplay I hope they fixed these. But like many of John Grisham’s books, also structured and launched as the “pre-movie” material, Brown’s is a brilliantly conceived story for the movie world we live in.
The one advantage of the movie will be the ability to see the paintings, landmarks, and visual clues needed to fully apppreciate the story. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it come to life onscreen — and understanding the “evidence” a little more.
This is good for us to understand. Plot in novel-writing is not plot in screenwriting. And for those who would like to see how the latest book-into-movie story unfolds: read the book and see the movie. Then let’s talk about how novel turns and movie turns compare and contrast.
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Blake Snyder
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There were some significant changes between the book and the film THE SENTINEL that are worth checking out, too.
It’s a good comparison for adaptations, imho, because the changes are sizeable enough to spot and, because of their impact, point somewhat to the motivations behind these choices.
Hi Mr. Snyder. I’m a freshmen at Michigan State University and I recently got into screenwriting. I just wanted to tell you I’ve read a whole bunch of books and your is definitely the best. Thanks for the help!
Katy O.
Blake,
Not on the topic of going from book to movie. More simply on, your bloddy book keeps helping me through every difficulty that I encounter in my films. I’ll bet you 3 bucks that your next book won’t be able to top the original. If I am wrong, I’ll pay up. Having STC on the table here is very comforting, can’t wait to read the next one and see what you’ve added. I also want to compliment you, don’t know if you realize this, but I’m doing mostly feature documentaries, which are pure horror to structure, but the book as saved me on all aspects, including financial and selling aspects.
Thanks man!
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Due to many of these sites not wanting to have anything to do with the controversy surrounding this book, Ron Howard was actually barred from shooting at many of the key locations in the book (Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame de Paris) and so would have had to find other ways of bringing those parts to the screen.
Did he build his own locations? Trick photography?
Or did he adapt the screenplay to his restrictions?
I’m really interested to see how he got around a lot of these problems. Only time will tell . . .