Director Clint Bentley on Adapting ‘Train Dreams’ for the Big Screen
2/24/202639 min
The latest film from the writer and director Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams,” is nominated for four Oscars, including best adapted screenplay. The movie is based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name and tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logger in the Pacific Northwest, in stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear prose. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks with Bentley, who wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar, his longtime collaborator, about how he went about translating Johnson’s work into a visual medium.
Bentley first read “Train Dreams” just after college, long before he ever thought of making it into a movie. When producers with rights to the book approached Bentley, he was suddenly worried. “Going back and reading the book again,” Bentley said, “I was like, Oh, maybe this thing is unadaptable.” Set on capturing the spirit of the book, Bentley and Kwedar focused on “the vastness of this small little life,” he said.
“We very rarely have an understanding of our lives in the moment we’re actually living them,” Bentley said. “We only start to understand them when it’s too late.”
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Gilbert Cruz· Host0:30
The spirit of the book is, it's hard- for me, it's hard to grab onto. Uh, uh, I think, um- Yeah, me, too. [chuckles] ... Lot, lots of feelings, lots of things it made me feel.
Clint Bentley· Guest0:41
Yeah.
Gilbert Cruz· Host0:42
But what would you say was the, the inherent spirit that you were able to transfer over to the film?
Clint Bentley· Guest0:47
Oh, I, I think I would kill it if I tried to put it into- [laughing] ... into, like, a sentence or two here.
Gilbert Cruz· Host0:52
The life of man, something, something.
Clint Bentley· Guest0:54
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Gilbert Cruz· Host0:55
[upbeat music] I'm Gilbert Cruz. This is The Book Review from The New York Times, and it's Oscar season. I love the Oscars. I've loved them my entire life. This year I've already seen eight of the 10 Best Picture nominees. On our last episode, I had the chance to speak with Guillermo del Toro about his adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and today, we have another Oscar nominee on the show, Clint Bentley. Ah, Clint is the director and the co-writer of Train Dreams, which is a film that he