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I've Never Been To Comic-con, But I'm Certainly Aware From This Side Of The Atlantic That It's A Very Important Part Of Film Marketing Now, Even When The Films Are Not Directly Linked To A Comic.

-Alex Garland

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I've Never Been To

Alex Garland

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I've Never Been To Comic-con, But I'm Certainly Aware From This Side Of The Atlantic That It's A Very Important Part Of Film Marketing Now, Even When The Films Are Not Directly Linked To A Comic.

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Vietnam, Me Love You Long Time. All Day, All Night, Me Love You Long Time. (...) Dropping Acid On The Mekong Delta, Smoking Grass Through A Rifle Barrel, Flying On A Helicopter With Opera Blasting Out Of Loudspeakers, Tracer-fire And Paddy-field Scenery, The Smell Of Napalm In The Morning. Long Time.

Vietnam, Me Love You Long Time. All Day, All Night, Me Love You Long Time.

Personally I Don't Think There's Any Real Intrinsic Difference Between Comic Books, Movies, Theatre, Novels. I Know There's Sure To Be Some Differences Of Some Sorts. I've Worked On Novels, Films, And Video Games, And In An Adaptation, I Guess One Of The Issues Is That I Have To Be In Love With The Thing I'm Adapting Before I Do It. So That Can Cause A Problem. You Can Be Too Scared Of It. You Could Be Too Reverential. But At The Same Time You Want To Try To Capture This Thing That You're Obsessed By. You're Fixated For A Reason. What's The Reason? You Try To Get Ahold Of It.

Dream Life, I Realized, Was Only Confusing When You Were Awake. It Was From The Perspective Of Waking Life That Dream Life Seemed Fractured And Lacking Consequence, Lacking Any Certainty That One Thing Led To Another. But From Within Dream Life, The World Was Generally Coherent. Not Exactly An Unconfusing World-just No More Confusing Than Any Other.

The Key Relationship For Writers In Film Is Producers, Because Those Are The First Two People Involved And The Ones Who Work On It Intensely In A Private Way Without The Big Machinery Of Film.

I Wrote A Whole Novel Before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, For Some Reason I Stuck At Novels And Wrote A Second. Still Not Sure Why I Didn't Give Up. Stubborn, Maybe.

Uh... What Can I Say? Made Money. Given A Launch Pad For A Working Life. Set A Precedent I Had No Interest In Following. Created Expectations That I Was Not Cut-out To Match. Disappointed Virtually All Of My Readers Subsequently. But I Like What I've Done, And I Stand By It All.

By The Time The Plane Was Airborne I'd Forgotten England Even Existed.

If You Look At The Whole Life Of The Planet, We - You Know, Man - Has Only Been Around For A Few Blinks Of An Eye. So If The Infection Wipes Us All Out, That Is A Return To Normality.

I Did Keep A Travel Diary Once And It Was A Big Mistake. All I Remember Of That Trip Is What I Bothered To Write Down.

As For Me... I'm Fine. I Have Bad Dreams, But I Never Saw Mister Duck Again. I Play Video Games. I Smoke A Little Dope. I Got My Thousand-yard Stare. I Carry A Lot Of Scares. I Like The Way That Sounds. I Carry A Lot Of Scares.

Tourists Went On Holidays While Travellers Did Something Else. They Travelled.

I Never Feel A Huge Need For Backstory In My Novels Or Films. Quick Sketches Are Often Enough. When You Encounter People In Life - Like A Chance Encounter At A Bar Or Wherever You Happen To Be - You Make These Incredibly Quick, Quite Intricate Decisions About People Based On Very Small Amounts Of Coded Information. We're Good At That. Long Descriptions Prior To Meeting Someone Or As You're Getting To Know Them Almost Don't Work.

When I See 'sunshine,' I See A Film That Part Of Me Is Kind Of Very Proud Of And Another Part Of Me Is Very Sad About, So It's A Really Complicated Film For Me. And I've Never Been Really Able To Resolve All That In Myself.

There's One Massive Problem With Coming From Writing Novels Into Screenplays That I've Discovered Over The Years, Which Is That You've Got Too Much Facility On The Page. In Novels, You Can Persuade People Of Things That Work That Don't Really Work.

If I'd Learnt One Thing From Travelling, It Was That The Way To Get Things Done Was To Go Ahead And Do Them. Don't Talk About Going To Borneo. Book A Ticket, Get A Visa, Pack A Bag, And It Just Happens.

Show People Your Stuff, Listen Carefully To Their Responses, But Ultimately Don't Value Anyone's Opinion Above Your Own. Be Influenced By Writers You Dislike As Well As Writers You Like. Read Their Stuff To Figure Out What's Wrong. Find A Balance Between The Confidence That Allows You Continue, And The Self-critical Facility That Enables You To Improve. Get The Balance Wrong On Either Side, And You're Screwed.

I Do All This Alone, Everything I Achieve, I Achieve Alone, Because It's My Head I'm Locked Into, And I Share This Space With Nobody But Myself.

Waking Was The Most Reliable Part Of A Dream, As Built Into Dreams As Death Is To Life. You Dream, You Wake: You Live, You Die.

The Thing Video Games Had To Learn Was To Write, Which Is Not To Let People Choose Their Own Stuff, But Actually Prescribe It. To Say, "this Character Is Not A Blank Canvas That You Can Project Onto. I'm Going To Tell You What This Character Is Like. And I'm Going To Tell You What Happens To Them. You're Going To Feel Involved In Other Ways." Video Games Made The Mistake Of Thinking Everything Had To Be Projectable, And This Doesn't Do That At All.

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I Don’t Keep A Travel Diary. I Did Keep A Travel Diary Once And It Was A Big Mistake. All I Remember Of That Trip Is What I Bothered To Write Down. Everything Else Slipped Away, As Though My Mind Felt Jilted By My Reliance On Pen And Paper. For Exactly The Same Reason I Don’t Travel With A Camera. My Holiday Becomes The Snapshots And Anything I Forget To Record Is Lost.

The Success That Comes From My Books Is Not Something I Feel Very Comfortable With. Past A Certain Point You Have To Accept The Idea That The Success Is A Lot To Do With The Timing And Luck And That Divorces You From It Massively. There Are Aspects Of It That I Haven't Got Used To At All. But I've Enjoyed Some Parts Of It Massively. It Relates To The Same Reason I Did A Lot Of Backpacking Partly For The Experience It's Something To Tell My Grandkids. It's A Weird Chain Of Events To Have In Your Life.

I've Never Been To Comic-con, But I'm Certainly Aware From This Side Of The Atlantic That It's A Very Important Part Of Film Marketing Now, Even When The Films Are Not Directly Linked To A Comic.

I Used To Think About Video Games, "this Is Clearly An Amazing, New Narrative Medium, And It's Going To Be Mind-blowing When People Get To Grips With What's Possible Within This Medium." It Took Us A Century To Get Really Good At Film. Video Games Are At A Much Earlier Stage.

Trust Me, It's Paradise. This Is Where The Hungry Come To Feed. For Mine Is A Generation That Circles The Globe And Searches For Something We Haven't Tried Before. So Never Refuse An Invitation, Never Resist The Unfamiliar, Never Fail To Be Polite And Never Outstay The Welcome. Just Keep Your Mind Open And Suck In The Experience. And If It Hurts, You Know What? It's Probably Worth It.

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