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Adventure, Drama, Epic, Fantasy, Romance

Page to Picture Film Festival Presents

Big Fish

  • Sat, Sep 19
    • 1:50pm - Cinema Two
  • Sun, Sep 20
    • 2:20pm - Cinema Two
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THE SOURCE: Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace.  

THE ADAPTATION: Wallace’s novel is structured as a series of disconnected tall tales—a format notoriously difficult to translate into a traditional film structure. Screenwriter John August solved this by creating a “present-day” framing device of the estranged son, Will. This structural genius allowed Tim Burton to indulge in his signature visual wonder while grounding the story in a universal literary theme: the myth-making nature of fatherhood. It is praised by scholars for capturing the “magical realism” of the prose through a uniquely cinematic lens that makes the “compelling words” of a father’s tall tales feel like a life’s truth. 

SPECIAL POST-FILM DISCUSSION
“Big Fish” author — and North Carolina resident — Daniel Wallace will be in attendance for a moderated post-show discussion after the “Big Fish” screening at the Page to Picture Book to Film Adaptation Festival on Saturday, September 19.
 
Daniel Wallace Bio

Daniel Wallace is author of six novels, including “Big Fish” (1998), “Ray in Reverse” (2000), “The Watermelon King” (2003), “Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician” (2007), “The Kings and Queens of Roam” (2013), and most recently “Extraordinary Adventures” (May 2017).  His children’s book, published in 2014, and for which he did both the words and the pictures, is called “The Cat’s Pajamas,” and it is adorable. In 2003 “Big Fish” was adapted and released as a movie and then in 2013 the book and the movie were mish-mashed together and became a Broadway musical. His novels have been translated into over three-dozen languages. He is also the author of a coloring book, “Roadside Attractions,” co-authored by his esteemed friend Emily Wallace. A memoir, “This Isn’t Going to End Well,” was published in April 2023.

His essays and interviews have been published in Slate, Poets & Writers, The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun and Our State magazine, where he was, for a short time, the barbecue critic. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and periodicals, including Tin House, One Story, Glimmer Train, and The Georgia Review. His stories have been recognized in Best American Short Stories, Best Stories from the South, and read by Levar Burton on his podcast, “Levar Burton Reads.” His fourth novel, “Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician,” won the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize for best fiction published in North Carolina in 2009. Extraordinary Adventures was chosen as the best fiction published by a native Alabamian in 2018. In 2019, he won the Harper Lee Award. The award is given to a living, nationally recognized Alabama writer who has made a significant lifelong contribution to Alabama letters.

Daniel Wallace is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater.