Precious: Adapted from an Unfilmable Novel
“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 literate.
“It is also a perfect novel, so you’re asking for trouble when you’re trying to refashion perfection into another medium. I was both embarrassed and grateful I hadn’t heard about it before — embarrassed because this is a book I should have been aware of, because it’s a great work of art. But grateful because its stature and following might have intimidated me from taking the necessary dramatic and pronounced leaps from the source material to turn it into a real movie.”
screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher
in The Miami Herald