What, creatively, is the difference between writing a novel and adapting a screenplay?Īdaption is like sitting down and deciding which of your fingers to cut off. I don’t think the dog trainers were too happy with me, though. I bonded with the Corgi to the point I think he and I both thought he would be flying home with me, and rolling around with the dogs on set was the most fun I’ve had in some time. I was supposed to be talking to the actors, the producer, the director, and instead I spent all my time playing with the dogs. What was it like to interact with the canine stars on set? That has given me the illusion that I am more popular. Now, though, when I say I’ve written A Dog’s Purpose, they’ve all heard of it.
So for a long time I’ve had to tell people what I’ve written and what it’s about. What seems hugely important to me doesn’t really register with most folks. When one of my novels is published I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned on the floor of Congress or put into the minutes at the UN. I have always been so interested in reading that I forget that most people don’t dispose all of their income at the bookstore. How has the movie, A Dog’s Purpose, changed your life? Bruce Cameron gives us humans a chance at a dog’s eye view of the world, and next month it’s coming to the big screen! We sat down with the author to talk about adaptations and, of course, dogs – on and off set.
I can’t speak to how well the movie represents the book, or how good it was, but the trailer provides a good synopsis.As any lover of dogs will tell you, there’s nothing quite like the friendships between human beings and their canine companions.
Instead of doing a full text description of the plot, I’ll let the movie trailer below cover it. It really makes you ponder what might be really going on inside a dog’s head. Anyone who has had or spent a lot of time around a dog can relate to this point of view. However, it is an anthropomorphized point of view, meaning Cameron assigns human-like characteristics and emotions to the dog. The part of the book that makes it interesting, funny, and disjointed all at once, is that it is told from the dog’s point of view. And similar to real life, the dog doesn’t settle and relate to its true purpose until it has neared the end of its life. Within each story, the dog searches for both its identity and its purpose.
Each story spans the lifetime of one dog, with each story connected by the same dog’s spirit as it passes between lives. The book can best be described as a collection of short stories, with some longer than others. I’m a little behind on my book reviews but doing my best to catch up). (For the record, I finished the book last February. We’ll save those details for a post some other time. Instead of going into details as to why, let’s just say it’s part of who I am. I realize that I could have just watched the movie, but I prefer reading the book. I figured it would be good to read as one of the final steps in the healing process. When our family dog passed away at the end of 2017, I decided to move the book up a few slots. Bruce Cameron had been on my reading list for quite some time. A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans by W.