“I read Norwegian Wood in 1994 and since then, every time I visited Japan I wanted to talk to someone about adapting it. But there was no one to talk to. It turned out that Murakami didn’t allow any movie adaptations of his books. Then about 5-6 years ago, the distributor (Sony Pictures) of my film Vertical Ray of the Sun, got in touch with me. They remembered my desire to adapt the book and told me that Murakami just allowed one of his short stories (Tony Takitani) to be adapted, that it might be a good time to try again.
They advised me sending a personal letter to Murakami and that’s exactly what I did. He responded, “Okay, come and meet with me in Tokyo.” So I spent two days in Tokyo with his team. There were about 12 people at this round table, asking me all kinds of questions in preparation for me to meet with him. But the actual meeting between us was pretty simple. As soon as I started talking about how much I liked the book and why I wanted to adapt it, Murakami stopped me and told me that he wouldn’t give the permission to anyone else but me.”
— Tran Anh Hung on adapting Haruki Murakami’s novel “Norwegian Wood”
Thanks for the link, ruthemboyett.
(via murakamistuff:)
OH MY GOODNESS, I ALWAYS WONDERED WHY NONE OF MURAKAMI’S BOOKS WERE MADE INTO MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhh this solves everything. I did hear of a Norwegian Wood movie, but I dare not watch it before I read the book. At the moment Sputnik Sweetheart is waiting.
(via jusqualafin)
