John Connolly

They weren't simply saying, well, we're going to take a book, we're going to do this book and then that book, and we'll do it in a linear way.

Somebody was going to disassemble all this material and create something very different.

And I think that's what appeals to me.

To look at those, say, those early Harry Potter films, where they were so beholden to J.K.

Rowling, I think, that they were afraid to take anything out.

Yes.

And they're poorly paced.

And again...

Writers who want to see their work transferred directly to the screen aren't going to be disappointed.

These are two very different mediums.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, OK.

Yes.

You can recite large tracts of it.

teenagers they regard as trouble.

Now, what your definition of a troubled teenager and mine may be very, very different.

We're often talking about kids who might be smoking a bit of pot or who don't want to go to school or listening to Marilyn Manson, in which case really nothing wrong with them.

A spell in the army won't cure.

But the idea of sending blokes to your house in the middle of the night, throwing them into the back of a van with restrained while they're screaming for their parents and saying they're sorry and then driving them into the wilderness, essentially giving them the summer camp from hell.

for anything from two or three weeks up to months and months and months, essentially redirecting their education, seems to me just a huge abrogation of parental responsibility.