Hollywood sign. From visitingdc.com
It is very difficult to find an editor really interested in our writings, but it must be completely difficult to get our publications -books- be accepted for a movie. Let's see the standard situation, in the words of Paulo Coelho in his book "The Winner Stands Alone", p. 50 of the first edition, New York, 2009:
"All fims start out in the mind of a so-called producer. He's read a book, say, or had a brilliant idea while driving along the freeways of Los Angeles (which is really a large suburb in search of a city). Unfortunately, he's alone, both in the car and in his desire to transform the brilliant idea into something that can be seen on the screen.
He finds our if the film rights to the book are still available. If the response is negative, he goes in search of another product -after all, more than sixty thousand books are published every year in the United States alone. If the response is positive, he phones the author and makes the lowest possible offer, which is usually accepted because it's not only actors and actresses who like to be associated with the dream machine. Every author feels more important when his or her words are transformed into images.
They arrange to have a lunch. The producer says that the book is ¨a work of art and highly cinematographic¨ and that the writer is ¨a genius deserving of recognition.¨ The writer explains that he spent five years working on the book and asks to be allowed to help in the writing of the script. ¨No, really, you shouldn´t do that, it´s an entirely different medium,¨ comes the reply, ¨but I know you´ll love the result.¨ Then he adds: ¨The film will be totally true to the book,¨which, as both of them know, is a complete and utter lie.¨
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