Avary talks Silent Hill movie
Plus: Tarantino hates games!
Roger Avary - co-writer of Pulp Fiction, director of Killing Zoe and author of the screenplay for the Silent Hill movie - has revealed a few more details of what we can expect from the film, including news that it'll be "oestrogen-filled."
In an interview with Edge Online, Avary said: "The difficulty with Silent Hill is that it's an abstract experience - you're making something that's dreamlike in many ways, and where someone's in an alternate dimension.
"In the script phase, we had long, long moments where seemingly nothing happens. It's all atmosphere - you're falling slowly into a world and experiencing it much like you would in the game.
"I wanted the movie to have that feeling of a witch movie, because that's essentially what it is at the end of the day. Also, Christophe [Gans, the director] wanted the movie to be oestrogen-filled," Avary explained - which is why almost all the characters are female.
Such as main character Rose, who Avary described as "A composition of multiple characters throughout the Silent Hill games." She does have a husband, Christopher (named after Gans), whose character was developed after the studio complained that there was a lack of men in the script.
Avary was critical of both developers who fill their games with cutscenes, and movie directors who reckon they know what games are all about.
"Often, you have movies that are made by people who have no idea what a control scheme is or what a gaming experience is like," he said, comparing long time gamer Christophe Gans with Quentin Tarantino, who apparently has "An actual disrespect for gaming."
"He's said, "What am I gonna do, stick my dick into a Nintendo hard drive?" He doesn't realise, of course, that a Nintendo machine doesn't have a hard drive." Heh.
Avary went on to say that he was confident in Gans' ability to deliver a great film, but not so confident that his work will change the way big screen game adaptations are perceived: "Maybe the question is, will Silent Hill make game designers more comfortable?
"Guys like Uwe Boll have done a lot of damage, and I don't know that one good game adaptation will undo all of it," he said. Boll, as you probably know, is the man behind the Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and BloodRayne movies, all of them completely rubbish.
But who knows, if scriptwriters of Avary's caliber continue to get behind game adaptations, maybe things will change - and it seems that Silent Hill won't be his last contribution to the genre.
"I don't mind saying that there is another Konami title - which I can't mention because they haven't closed the deal on it - that Christophe and Sam are in talks about right now.
"We've already gone into discussions about adapting that material and that would, I must say, be a dream come true."
Don't know if you're thinking what we're thinking, but one particular Konami game springs to mind immediately... But not if Uwe Boll gets there first, of course...Ulp.
You can read the full interview with Roger Avary over at Edge online.