James Franco to direct film adaptation of Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying’

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-jc-you-can-be-in-james-francos-film-of-faulkners-as-i-lay-dying-20120807,0,7166487.story

“I want to be loyal to the book — my approach is to always be loyal in a lot a ways — but in order to be loyal I will have to change some things for the movie,” Franco told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. That could be said of any book, but the challenges of translating “As I Lay Dying” for the screen are manifold: 15 characters narrate its 59 chapters, including the dead matriarch.

“You want to capture the tone, but you can’t work in exactly the same way,” Franco explained. “I don’t believe it’ll feel the same if you divide it as rigidly as the book, like titles that say ‘Cash’ and then you’re with Cash. You can slip into the characters’ heads and give them their inner voice for a while, but it has to be more fluid because movies just work differently than books.”

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Hard to imagine this working but I think Franco is awesome and brave for attempting it. Excited to see the film.

(Also reminds me that I don’t think I ever finished that book… I have to do that. You know: in all my infinite leisure…)