From an Interview with David Benioff, screenwriter for Troy. This is a very heartwarming story about mothers and sons and the different things that shape our lives.
I put this on here because it's so much like how I felt about The Iliad. Like Benioff, it's one of the first things I ever remember reading.
A few years ago, my daughter, a classics major, told me the story lying in bed at night until I got the characters straight. Since I read it first in Latin, one excruciating word at a time, I never really got the entire flow it it. Anyway, I thought Benioff did a super job on the script. Everyone who went to see it, if they read it earlier in their lives, would be breathing life into those characters anyway. You wouldn't want them to be too complex or developed.
Q: How do you take such a classic and turn it into a Hollywood movie?
Benioff: Chutzpah. But really I was such a novice I didn’t know enough to be afraid of it. It was the second script that I wrote. The Iliad has always been my favorite book – [Nancy's note: Isn't that amazing? Well, really, why should it be. But if this isn't the perfect pair, I don't know what is.]
Q: You read it in school?
Benioff: Actually I heard it first from my mother. When I was a little kid my mother was bedridden and she would read me whatever she was reading at the time. When I was six she read me The Iliad. Of course the book was composed to be spoken, and in a good translation it has this great rhythm. Even before I understood what was going on I was swept up in the rhythm of it. Hector and Achilles were heroes of mine even before I began reading comic books. Before Spider-Man and the X-Men I was obsessed with these two. When I got older I thought it was weird that they hadn’t made the big movie of it.
I put this on here because it's so much like how I felt about The Iliad. Like Benioff, it's one of the first things I ever remember reading.
A few years ago, my daughter, a classics major, told me the story lying in bed at night until I got the characters straight. Since I read it first in Latin, one excruciating word at a time, I never really got the entire flow it it. Anyway, I thought Benioff did a super job on the script. Everyone who went to see it, if they read it earlier in their lives, would be breathing life into those characters anyway. You wouldn't want them to be too complex or developed.
Q: How do you take such a classic and turn it into a Hollywood movie?
Benioff: Chutzpah. But really I was such a novice I didn’t know enough to be afraid of it. It was the second script that I wrote. The Iliad has always been my favorite book – [Nancy's note: Isn't that amazing? Well, really, why should it be. But if this isn't the perfect pair, I don't know what is.]
Q: You read it in school?
Benioff: Actually I heard it first from my mother. When I was a little kid my mother was bedridden and she would read me whatever she was reading at the time. When I was six she read me The Iliad. Of course the book was composed to be spoken, and in a good translation it has this great rhythm. Even before I understood what was going on I was swept up in the rhythm of it. Hector and Achilles were heroes of mine even before I began reading comic books. Before Spider-Man and the X-Men I was obsessed with these two. When I got older I thought it was weird that they hadn’t made the big movie of it.
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