Dave, whats the difference between writing a movie and a novel?
Eggers: Writing this script couldn’t be more different than sitting alone and writing a novel. With Spike and I, we were really in the room together for eight hours a day, and writing for at least 20 minutes of that. We really examined and fought over every word as we went along. Before we put any dialogue down, we had talked for weeks about who each character was and what they were motivated by, and what did Douglas want, what was his relationship with Carol, what would they do in this situation together. Spike had to make sure these characters were as deep and real as possible. We had whole backstories for each one of them. How did you name them? Jonze: Dave and I named them. We took the book and went to Kinko’s and blew up big poster-size images of each spread. Our dining-room walls were covered with every spread of the book. As we’d write, we’d look at the images, just sort of soaking it in. It was a process of going back to the book and sitting and listening to the character. You
