Forum de discussion sur Robert A. Heinlein

iF MAGAZINE: What's next for you?
MINEAR: I'm doing another pass at MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS [an adaptation of the Robert Heinlein sci-fi novel]. It's for producers David Hayman and Mike Medavoy. I did a pass of that last year, turned it in and they had some notes and they came to me this year and we talked about what the next pass would be. They were giving me their notes and what they were saying, "maybe you can do this, or do that," and in my infinite wisdom said, "I have an idea, why don't I do a whole new version. Why don't I throw this out and start over." They were like "you would do that?" And I'm like "yeah," so that's what I'm getting ready to do now.
iF MAGAZINE: Is it hard to adapt Heinlein?
MINEAR: Yes. Maybe HAVE SPACESUIT AND TRAVEL, which is really about that one guy, maybe that would be easier, but this is about a revolution. It's big and it has a lot of really complex political ideas. It's hard in that respect. How do you personalize this? There's a lot of talking in the book - theoretical talking about Libertarian ideals and political structure and that sort of thing - : how do you take that and make it immediate and dramatic and emotional? How do you say that stuff through scenes and action, as opposed to characters sitting around and having a conversation? That's difficult. The other thing that is difficult is that there is also a certain amount of psychological pressure that I am trying to remove from myself when you're adapting something like Heinlein. This book is so important to so many people and you don't want to f*ck it up. So there's that. You want to keep true to spirit of it, and you want to take this enormously long book, that takes place over a long period of time and try to do a version of it that will play for two hours on a movie screen. The other thing is to make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don't force you to turn it into some Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it's about free-market capitalism. You want to try and not make it about an evil corporation. That's the trick.
iF MAGAZINE: It's just in the script-stage? No official greenlight yet?
MINEAR: Exactly. What they want to do is take it out to big name directors and they've named a couple of directors and it would be awesome if that happened. The people who optioned this book - Mike Medavoy and David Hayman - optioned it because they liked the book and the ideas are inspiring particularly the idea of retelling the American Revolution from this sci-fi point of view.