posted at need coffee dot com
It was to be expected that a beloved children’s book being made into a film–a live-action film at that–was to be suspect. Mostly because the book itself clocks in at a whopping forty-eight pages. And how do you make a feature film out of that, animated or otherwise? I only [...]
“The book was not filmable, and it was not easy. When Lee (Daniels, the director of Precious) asked me to adapt it, he told me it would be difficult not only in terms of translating it to film but in terms of the content, the language. It’s written in her voice, someone who is barely [...]
It’s tricky material, adapted faithfully by Daniels from the novel “Push” by Sapphire. The book has widely been described (with sarcasm) as an example of pulpy urban lit, but that’s wide off the mark. Sapphire, a Brooklyn, N.Y., poet, wrote it in stylized street argot, meant to convey Precious’ untutored voice, a technique as old [...]