DISGRACE: How many movies start their lives as books? A good bunch.

Don Makatile: ...if books are born of the written word, flicks, by virtue of the lines actors have to commit to memory, owe their very being and the paper their scripts are written on to the word as well, albeit spoken.

I have made it a habit to watch every film adapted from a book.

But, to put the shoe on the other foot, why aren’t those who swear by the big screen inspired to read more books?

SHOOT: Exactly. Especially when you hear so many people say, 'The book was much better than the movie.'

Don Makatile:If the stats are to be believed – and I have no reason not to believe them – only 14percent of adults read books.

Shocking!

SHOOT:Nice article Don. Many of the best movies start off as books, like DISGRACE. Every movie starts life as something written down. Knowing this, and loving reading books, I was determined, since high school, to write the source material for a movie. That dream is apparently still a work in progress. I jealously looked on as 26 year old Alex Garland published The Beach. During High School I wrote what is conceivably the follow on to the Harry Potter series (conceived before Harry Potter saw the light of day it must be pointed out). It has all the Potter mythos, all the magical fantasy [although it's darker and more realistic in some ways]but it's an original piece, set in Scotland [the Cairngorms wilderness specifically], and featured two rival castle kingdoms [in the modern era], swords, instead of Voldemort there was Ogilvie Skye, and the hero? Platinum haired, grey eyed Christopher Ulysses. An old soul in a young body.

The story was a conflagration of inspirations, from Star Wars, to the Centennial series [James A. Michener], to classic superhero figures like Superman and batman, to Highlander.I wanted to specifically visit the tremendous and ancient heritage all of us share in simple who we are, the genes that have constituted themselves over time, through countless generations, to produce, ultimately, you and me. And I introduced the concept of genetic memory, beyond instinct, a strange sort of matrix hiding in our cells, that enabled Christopher to recall, in flashy Highlander-like insights, the progenitors to his own life. The legacy of family.

I also wanted to return to a sense of sacred respect for land. That we share a story and a sense of place with the land. Part of who we are is shaped by lands owned or lost or fought for. And I wanted to re-visit language. Christopher has an innate ability to speak Gaelic, an ancient language of the Scots, and cannot explain why... I finished the two year slog of writing it on the morning of my matric science exam [hence I only scraped through on that one.]. Yip, I was scribbling an ending when I should have been cramming for a matric science exam.

Since then I have written a bunch of finished an unfinished manuscripts. The best of the bunch is probably HOLIDAY, a climate thriller I wrote in three months [in 2007]. I've also written and am busy writing several other pieces [to use the term 'books' seems arrogant]. The titles include:
Well, Superman, where are you now?
A boy called Neil
Simon and the Cyclopede.
The Race.
The Devil Smokes Chesterfield
The Half Full Moon
Heaven is in your Heart
Pop goes the Weasel
and others that I have trouble remembering...

Read a sample of HOLIDAY here.

clipped from www.sowetan.co.za NEVER judge a book by its movie, said JW Eagan. Well, he did not live long enough to see Disgrace, John Maxwell Coetzee’s book that was made into a movie. Disgrace, the book by the Capetonian better known by his initials and now a naturalised Australian, was a winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1999. As if this was not enough, it was voted the best book of English fiction over the past 25 years in, wait for it, the world! Now the movie, shot in South Africa and Down Under, is due out next month. It stars that mad genius John Malkovich as David Lurie, a divorced professor of romantic poetry in post- apartheid South Africa who shags everything in a skirt – with varying degrees of consequence. If you own a copy of the book and thought Lurie was a nutter, a gem, you should see Malkovich! But if books are born of the written word, flicks, by virtue of the lines actors have to commit to memory, owe their very being and the paper their scripts are written on to the word as well, albeit spoken.