Last night in Los Angeles, author Stephen Chbosky celebrated the release of his latest project The Perks of Being a Wallflower on DVD/Blu-ray with his fans.
At least two hundred people turned out for the cozy reading, Q&A, and signing with Chbosky. It was a special experience for him, in part because he told the audience that this was his local Barnes & Noble. “This is so trippy, I buy coffee right over there!” he said to laughter.
Just prior to him kicking off his event, we sat down with the author to ask him about his book-turned-film.
The first thing we wanted to know concerned adapting the Perks world. By turning it into a feature film, what did he discover about his characters that he hadn’t before? “By focusing the story, I discovered new layers to the relationships between Sam and Charlie, Charlie and Patrick,” he told us. “I have to say that the main kids… the characters developed a lot for me. Patrick in the movie is far funnier than Patrick in the book, I think. Sam’s subplot about getting into Penn State was more pronounced in the movie. And there’s something about watching Emma stand in the back of the truck going through the tunnel that is just so much more alive and visceral than it could’ve ever been on the page.”
Speaking of special features, there was the question of The Poem scene which was shot but not put into the story. Although Chbosky explains in the DVD commentary he always knew that the scene would never make the film, he hadn’t explained why.
“I knew it from beginning because – this is now my third movie. In my first two movies I had performance art right in the middle of the movie where it just stops and it’s time for a performance and we pick up with the movie.” When it came to the poem, he was concerned about stopping the motion of the film in that section. “I was worried that by stopping to read the poem, even though the poem is beautiful, that it would somehow diminish the scene between Sam and Charlie upstairs for their first kiss. I just instinctively felt that a song can’t be all chorus. You can’t always have that high-pitched emotion in moments, and I did not – that first kiss scene was so beautiful to me, and so important to me, I did not want to diminish it.”
With Perks now formally behind him with this home entertainment release, Chbosky says that he’s wrapping up work on his next book. He told us it’s “kind of an old school Stephen King novel” and he’s 80% finished. He happened to be working on it a hour prior to meeting with us and he’s “loving it. I’m loving writing.” Interestingly, he said he already knows he’ll be adapting it into a movie.
He also assured us that it’d have to be with the same cast, and again, “only if the book and then the screenplay would be worthy of it.”
Be sure to check out our review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s DVD and Blu-ray, which is available for purchase now. Head to Amazon to order the DVD or Blu-ray. Earlier today we brought you an additional moment from our talk with Chbosky where he told us he has indeed met to direct The Fault In Our Stars movie.