Actor Stellan Skarsgard has called out Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons) for being hackneyed:
“I think Dan Brown is a terribly bad writer, but he has cliffhangers after every chapter which makes you continue reading,” Skarsgard told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
“It’s like eating peanuts at a bar. You don’t like them, but you keep on eating them anyway,” he said.
Of course, Stellan Skarsgard knows from good writing.
That’s why he accepted a starring role in the movie adaptation of Angels & Demons, as well as in films with such Oscar-worthy dialogue as Mamma Mia, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, King Arthur, and Exorcist: The Beginning.
Dan Brown’s terrible writing is about to make you a ton of money, Stellan Skarsgard. You might have a care to remove your teeth from his hand.
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He already got paid, so he’ll say whatever he can now to attract more attention to himself.
He is right though – Dan Brown’s writing sucks like a hoover.
I can not wait…TO COMPLETELY IGNORE THIS MOVIE!
I was gonna go but then I remembered my plans to bite down as hard as I could on a wood file and drag it out of my teeth as fast as I could. Oh and shaving my head with a cheese grader.
If we’re going to be technical, Dan Brown did NOT write the movie “Angels & Demons”. He wrote the novel upon which it is based. According to IMDb, David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman wrote the movie, or rather the screenplay (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808151/).
And we all know that’s the kind of loopholes Hollywood types love to use to weasel out of statements like this.
GRATER, GRATER!!! Yeah I know whatever. Eat me.
The thing is, Dan Brown really COULD be easily outwritten by the proverbial roomful of monkeys with typewriters. (That’s how we got those “Charlie’s Angels” movies, BTW.) Holly’s right, though; Skarsgard has no more ammo in his belt than does Brown.
What if Dan Brown could write?
What’s that old saying….don’t bite the hand that feeds you……oh wait, he already got paid….
Nobody held a gun at his head and made him take a role in the movie. If the writing in Brown’s book is so beneath him then don’t appear in a movie that is going to actually be WIDELY promoted as a Dan Brown story.
Read your link Simon, Brown’s version is better. Dan Brown is a vein bleeding information instead of an artery spitting it out. But writing is art and art is subjective.
I’m trying to mock Skarsgard, but I am blinded by my all-consuming hated of Dan Brown and his “writing.” Yet, I am sure Mr. Brown is laughing at my impotent rage as he swims in a giant vault filled with gold.
Huh, too bad… because his point is spot on. Modern bestseller = #@%^ writing.
How strange that I had the same exactly plans, Pasta. Although I had also considered spending that time watching Obama’s speeches.
Buxom beauty Minnow pushed herself away from her keyboard. It had been mere seconds since she first read the journal entry regarding the little known character actor and the widely reknowned best selling author, yet her agile mind was already reeling through multiple complex thought pathways.
How? How? How could she express her fellow anonymous commenters just how very much she hated the style of the reknowned best selling author whose books seemed to drape themselves languidly over every five dollar bargain book table within a thirty-seven mile square radius of her remote country domicile?
She leaned back into her office chair as she blew a stray flaxen lock of satiny hair from her ivory face, looking every bit the nordic descendant that her bloodline revealed within her intrinsic double-helixed DNA. The chair squeeked as she reclined. The fine Corinthian leather chair had cost her a pretty denarius in the Madagascarian market where she first espied it; too bad reknowned Greek engineers had no idea how to properly lubricate the cogs, gears, counterweights and ballbearings which went into the chair’s rotational machinery. Squeek said the chair again, reknownedly. She wished mightily at that point and time that she’d had the foresight to pick up that sapphiric bottle of chair lubricant on her last trip to the monastery. The aged monks she had stayed with made a very fine vintage furniture oil based on a century’s old recipe handed down to them along with their vows of silence, abstinence, and chastity.
Too Bad. But how? How? How? She. Wondered.
She slipped her tiny Smart Car into the middle lane of Detroit rush hour traffic and continued to ruminate. Sensing internally an open spot, she charged the tiny car into a gap in the fast lane and smiled with reknowned pride as the 8 cylinder hemi engine growled with animalistic ferocity. How to express how much she hated Dan Brown? It was all she could think about lately.
Crash. A bullet through the window.
Bleeding from the fatal flesh wound, Minnow’s mind continued to reel. What would Brown do? Suddenly she knew. Tracing the intricate pattern in her own blood across the windshield, she then orientated her broken body north by northwest and removed her fine Irish woolen scarf, wrapping 6 times it around the middle finger of her non-dominant hand.
Perhaps Holly would understand. If not, Beige would.
She could only hope.
Squeek went the office chair again, but lonelier this time.
*sniffing the air* I think I smell a NY Times bestseller in this thread!
Minnow, that was pure literature. I laughed, I cried, I leaned back in my own squeaky Corinthian leather office chair.
Lordy you guys crack me up. X-D
Well, I say good on him, laugh all the way to the bank on that stinky movie, Stellan. Me? Dan’s not getting any of my money. :-p
Now, don’t get me wrong; I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE me some Stellan Skarsgard, but he is not a bright little Swede for where he eats! Careful, Stelly! Big Brother’s watching you!
No, not in this case. You’re clearly wrong. You’re welcome.
Oh please, please, PLEASE tell me nobody’s going to try defending the Thomas Kinkade of pop “literature”. Because, no. Don’t.
Minnow, I heart you so much I wanna Minnow action figure with purple-prose action and kung-fu grip. And an Irish scarf. You pretty much made me snort right out loud.
I don’t care about his ‘writing’, I care about his passing off false history as fact! Oh, and that he can’t write. Who am I kidding, that annoys me too.
Also? *queue that alien news anchor from Futurama*
ANTIMATTER DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
… thank you.
I have to agree with Stellan. Dan Brown can write cliff hangers, but really isn’t a quality writer.
Of course he’s trying to draw attention to himself. All movie actors are attention whores to a degree (some are just more obvious). They wouldn’t be in this line of work if they didn’t want attention.
Oh, god, that Minnow entry is awesome.
I have to admit I liked the Da Vinci Code, but after reading a couple of Dan Brown’s other books, I have to say those people who sued him for plagerism were more than likely telling the truth. His other books are warmed-over Tom Clancy written by hacks.
I love Stellan, but what’s he running on about? They did PAY him to do this, didn’t they? Though in his (weak) defense the whole article seemed to say he thought the movie script was better than the book. If that’s the case, it’ll be a historical first!
Skarsgard is 100% right. Brown is a crap writer with crap research. I used to not want to accuse books of dumbness because I thought it was arrogant, but really you only need a moderate level of sentience to be disgusted with the stupidity of Dan Brown. The popularity of his books is the best argument against democracy I know. I came out of that movie wanting to punch someone in the face, and wish Brown had been there. I’d have accepted Howard or Hanks as a substitute. It wasn’t helped by the fact that screenwriter Goldsman is Hollywood’s highest paid hack, although Koepp is capable of good stuff. On the other hand, Skarsgard should acknowledge that some people are getting conned into watching this shite because actors of his caliber are in it. I got paid to watch it. Otherwise I would not have gone near it.
Dan Brown is taking his hurt feelings all the way to the bank.
That said, Dan really IS a horrible writer. His brilliance lies in his choice of subject matter.
YAYY for Dan Brown. I cheer anyone who makes it big through their own efforts (hackneyed or not).
Minnow, I can’t believe I had the poor foresight to go out of town right before you posted that comment.
Brilliant, the blogger with the nom de plume intuited.
ShyAsrai is right – I’m sure Dan Brown is crying tears of the unloved as he counts his doubloons in his own private bank vault. I wouldn’t mind having his success, you know, minus the whole plagiarism lawsuit thing.
And really, it’s not like Dan Brown is any worse than other bestselling hacks, right? Danielle Steele, Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson and all those other luridly detailed but otherwise completely forgettable serial killer writers…Dan Brown fits right in.
Hey now. My man Pierce was in MM! so…uh…yeah. Anyway.
From what I hear, A&D is no “Da Vinci Code”…and that’s not a compliment.
But hey…this guy has already got his money in his pocket. I think it would have carried more weight had it come BEFORE they made the movie. But then, he wouldn’t be in the movie, right?
Besides, Dan Brown wouldn’t know a historical fact if it came up and…was a fact.
What’s all this about historical fact? I thought Dan Brown wrote fiction.
I’ve only read The Da Vinci Code. I liked it, except for the ending, and I recommend the book. Easy, quick read and a fairly enjoyable story. I don’t remember the literary quality of the book but I do remember understanding and getting a picture of what I read fairly easily. I didn’t have a problem reading the book. I still didn’t have a problem reading the excerpts that were critiqued either. I’m not bothered by the writing. I don’t think it’s horrible. I’ve picked up books I thought were worse as far as style.
Well, I’ve read “Da Vinci” and seen the movie, and from what I understand when you’re dealing with factual organizations (the Catholic Church, for instance) and their histories, you kinda need to have some historical facts thrown in there instead of making up your own history.
It’s kinda like writing a book about WWII and saying that Japan won because they bombed Pearl Harbor…just enough fact in there to be not totally wrong, but just enough wrong in there to not be totally factual.
As some have pointed out, a movie is not the same as the book on which it’s based. A well-written book may be impossible to make into a decent movie, and I suppose it’s possible for a decent movie to be based on published crap. Not that I expect that to be the case here, but it does seem possible. (Never read anything by Dan Brown, though. However, I would love to read books by Minnow. Do they exist somewhere? Under a pseudonym?)
Rocko, I agree that ‘Da Vinci’ was an enjoyable page turner with an interesting story if (as Minnow so aptly demonstrated) a fairly hackneyed writing style.
My issue with ‘Da Vinci’ and Dan Brown is that at some point he asserted that the central premise of the story was true, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. That’s not likely to win friends and influence people in either the Catholic or scholarly communities.
Damn, I meant to say for ” where he eats” in my previous comment on this post. The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, folks.
Agreed. Brown isn’t the worst writer out there, but he is one of the sloppiest writers on the bestseller list. It’s been a few years since I read A&D or DVCode, but here’s what I remember about his technique:
Brown has about 5 adjectives in his intelligent and attractive vocabulary.
Brown clumsily overuses adverbs. Adverbs artlessly add bulk to a sentence.
Brown’s descriptions are often both repetitive and redundant.
The passive tense is frequently used by Brown.
Lots of short sentences. Often, they’re fragments. Instead of complete thoughts. Fragments can heighten tension. Or they can make. Your left eye twitch.
Brown uses abrupt action transitions. Maybe it’s because Brown wrote DVCode from inside a busy Parisian cafe, when he downshifted to third, and then frantically grabbed the pope’s Gatling gun before it slid over a cliff.
“Brown often fails to respect the laws of physics” whispered Minnow as she butterfly-stroked her way across the swimming pool.
And finally, there is a difference between an incomplete thought and a cliffhanger which…
Adeptly done Minnow. If you ever right, wow, did I just do that, I meant write something (or have written, I don’t want to assume) it would be my pleasure to read.
Thanks Rocko, et al.
I am published, but as an illustrator.
Don’t get all impressed. I used to diagram things like neruomuscular ion channels and hepatic tumors for educational purposes.
Yes, that’s a real job.
No, I’m not kidding.
So the next time your doctor hands you a pamphlet on The Joys of Bowel Impaction, think of me.
Minnow, I bet your CV reads like a fetishist’s dream.
Minnow, next time I pick up the joys of Plantis Factitis, I will smile your way
Minnow, you are my hero, goddamnit. That was AMAZING.
Call me uninformed, Minnow, but is there anything joyful about bowel impaction?
Yep.
And I have a portfolio full of stuff highly unsuitable for framing.
Ross Douthat has an interesting op-ed piece from Monday’s NYT about Dan Brown. Douthat doesn’t mention what a crap writer Brown is, but takes on his anti-Catholicism and the rise of ‘feel-good’ religion in the U.S. today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/opinion/19douthat.html?em
Go Ross!
*(much belated) standing ovation for Minnow*
Um, what exactly is the problem here? Dan Brown, of course, is a terrible writer! Yes, the material is interesting but come on!