What were some of the films that influenced the style and tone of Diary of a Wimpy Kid?
First and foremost it was A Christmas Story by Bob Clark, because of its total perspective on things. Especially the way the movie is shot and told solely from the point of view of the main character. That was a big inspiration and it strikes the chord of (a) funny, blatant depiction of comedy and childhood nostalgia. When it came to actually doing the movie, what did you leave out of the book for the film version? Well, the good news about adapting this book is that I felt we had a lot of rich characters to draw from–very three-dimensional well defined kid characters, which you don’t often see in movies about childhood. That part of life is portrayed as chipper and this seemed more true to what kids really feel. The challenge with the book is that it’s incredibly episodic. You can basically open it at any page and read a new story about what happened to Greg on a particular day. So the challenge was, how do you interconnect it? How do you hang it on a structure that takes you on a jo
