oooooh i can't wait to see Perfume. are you going to do a more in-depth review?

Maybe. I'm more excited about writing something on Pan's Labyrinth and Guillermo Del Toro, though.

Did you ever read Suskind's novel?

David, I have the opportunity to interview Tykwer next week. I would love any input you might have about what I should ask him or what you would be interested in knowing.

You know, one thing I would be interested in is whether there were any previously written scripts for the film - there have been so many directors attached, from Stanley Kubrick to Ridley Scott, and I'm sure some of them must have done screenplay work. If there were, I'm curious as to whether they provided Twyker an idea as to what not to do in his own adaptation. And also if he actually found it daunting to tackle a novel that had been deemed 'unfilmable.'

The third question I would ask him - and the one thing I want to know the most - has to do with the climax of the film. Without going into any spoilers, I would just ask him, "How the hell did you do it?"

You got it. I'll ask.

David, just saw "Perfume" this evening in preparation for my interview with Tykwer tomorrow morning. Fortunately, he was also present for a Q&A after the film. I'll be sure to ask him about the existence of previous drafts in existence and, if so, how they did or did not influence his own script.

During the Q&A he moreorless answered your second question, which was that he never considered the book to be unfilmable. He always saw it as a film. He moreorless implied that it was more the author that made the film unfilmable because he just wouldn't relinquish the rights. As for "daunting", he's spent four years on the film almost continuously, and seems to have not regretted a moment of it.

By the climax are you referring to the execution scene? He responded that, first of all, it was filmed in Spain, the crowd was almost entirely Spanish, and they're more comfortable with nudity and all that. At first they chose couples but found that problematic whenever a partner turned to play with anyone else. So they ended up removing all the couples and staying only with single people who could freely love each other. They rehearsed extensively so that everyone was comfortable. Each and every extra was required to read the novel so that they would understand what the pivot was all about. By the time they came to the shoot, it was straightforward. The other complication was casting the right body types, and a diversity of them. Surprisingly, there is a definite look to the modern body so they had some trouble locating bodies that would approximate how bodies might look back in that time. I thought that was interesting.

Tykwer is amazingly eloquent and I'm absolutely jacked about having the chance to talk with him tomorrow morning.

I very much liked this film, by the way. A little long, but, hypnotic in the way of dark fairy tales. I appreciated how Tykwer expressed that, for a man who had no scent, his hunt for scents was like an actor with masks. Even now, if you put on a cologne and people respond to it favorably, it's not really you they like, it's the scent. Thus, scent is not equivalent to identity.