I’ve come to a conclusion which this article seems to support. It’s an impossible and even pointless task to try make a film of a book. They are quite different storytelling media.

It seems to me like trying to make a salad out of a roast dinner. You end up wiping the gravy from the roast beef, adding some lettuce and then throwing out most of the veg.

But to make a film of a story about which somebody wrote a book, sang a song, painted a picture or told around a campfire? Now that seems very much more reasonable to me.

You say “look to capture the essence and spirit of the story” and I can’t agree enough. The underlying story is what attracts us to make the film, regardless of the medium chosen by the original teller.

There is a retired civil engineer who I know. He’s now in his 80s but still plays jazz piano every Sunday at a very posh hotel near where he lives. He’s really very good and writes most of his own songs.

Talking to him about his music is fascinating. He develops a melody for a song and then draws it in music notation onto a canvas. Then he paints an evocative picture that includes the score. He shows it to the other band members. They know instantly what he means. I think that he has much to teach me about storytelling.