Author Brian Selznick has had a pretty big year. Wonderstruck, Selznick’s second novel, released to a very excited audience and landed in the #1 spot on the New York Times list. But perhaps the more exciting news is that his first novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret will be released as a feature film.

Brian Selznick’s novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret will be released in theaters on Wednesday under the title Hugo. The book was adapted by veteran screen writer John Logan.  If his name sounds familiar it could be because he is currently scripting the latest Bond film. Then there is the fact that Martin Scorsese, yes the one and only, not only directed the film but made it his first 3D venture.  Judging from the trailers Hugo looks AMAZING, very much like the book came to life on the screen.

Selznick, a native New Jersey boy, recently spoke with NJ.com about his book turned film and the experience of going through the adaptation process.

From NJ.COM:

Q. You seem to still be a little bit in shock that this is all happening. A few years ago, before “Hugo Cabret,” you were a well-regarded illustrator, but this is …
A. This is something else. This is amazing. I never expected anything like this. I feel like I’m in the rarest position to be able to say I have a movie that’s as good as the book. It’s good in different ways, or better. The movie might be better than my book. The fact that I inspired Martin Scorcese to make this incredibly personal and beautiful movie is one of the great thrills of my life. It’s very satisfying to create something yourself, but it’s as satisfying or more satisfying to inspire someone else to make something new.

Q. Your book is very cinematic. Some of the shots in the film, particularly the opening swoop from the Paris skyline into the station and up into the clock, where Hugo’s face is framed, mirror the pages in your book. Did you think about the process of filmmaking when you were conceptualizing the book?
A. The book was designed to imitate what a movie camera can do. It was very consciously thinking about movies and editing and zooming in and zooming out and panning and all of these camera movements. But I was doing it in service of a book. To see it how closely Marty stuck with all of my drawing sequences — the drawings that I did that imitated storyboards became storyboards for a Martin Scorcese movie. When I was on set, everybody had a copy of the book. (Production designer) Dante Ferretti based all the sets on my book. It was like I was collaborating with everyone.

Q. The 3D in this film has a very different feel than the gimmicky stuff that many moviegoers are used to. How do you think it enhances the film?
A. A lot of people think of it as a gimmick in the same way that people thought of sound as a gimmick in 1931, but then people eventually realized it’s an important storytelling tool. That’s one of the things that’s so exciting about the movie, that Scorcese is using it to really help tell the story. It enhances the isolation of this child. In 3D, you can really feel the boy lost in the machinery, lost in the clockwork. It enhances the psychology and all of these ways the 3D is used narratively that people haven’t thought about in that way before. I was actually really excited because when I was making the book, the use of the illustrations was a kind of experiment for me. I didn’t know if I could a story with words and pictures quite in that way. The fact that Scorcese had never worked in 3D before was exciting to me, because it meant he was doing a kind of experiment in how to tell a story visually, on a larger scale than my book.[MORE]

Will you be seeing Hugo this week?