This episode of Postmortem is sponsored by R.L.J. E. Films.

Holly must find a way to escape her dreams in the visually stunning housewife

from the very talented Turkish director of Baskin Jan Efrenal.

And from the creators of Final Destination, find out what's looming in your darkest nightmares

in Sleep No More. Housewife and Sleep No More are both available on DVD, VOD, and

Digital October 2nd. pre-order them today on Amazon.com. I'm McGarice and this is the post-mortem podcast.

Let's talk about adaptation, not the brilliant screenplay by Charlie Kaufman about the process of turning the written word into moving pictures

brightly directed by Spike Jones.

No, let's talk about the process itself.

As a writer and director, I've adapted many literary works by Stephen King, Clive Barker, and many other authors into film and television adaptations, and it's always a tightrope walk.

The challenge, of course, is to take something that already exists, to take

all of its most fascinating elements, and turn it into something that lives and breathes and takes

on a life of its own. The reader is an active audience. He or she picks up a book,

turns the pages at a personal pace, fills in the images with his or her own imagination,

and is an actual participant in the telling of the story.

The filmmakers have to choose a vision to present to a vast audience, a vision that will

come to represent the story in visual terms, characters represented by actors choosing

the best route to turn a reading experience into a watching experience.

And on top of that, it's not just the writer and director making all the choices.

In the world of film, it really does take a village.

If you're lucky, you're working from material that is cinematic in its literary form as with Stephen King.

But sometimes all you can really do is take a theme and a plot

...