"You have an unknown number of venomous snakes loose on a plane. Several passengers, one of your agents, and the pilot have already died and others have been envenomated but are still alive. They are still two hours out of Los Angeles, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Am I getting this right? Because frankly, it sounds more than a little crazy."
That's a pulpy quote from Christa Faust's novel based on the upcoming movie, Snakes on a Plane.
I'll bet you twenty bucks that I've read 400 more pages of that novelization than any lit-blogger alive, because I (just like Quentin Tarantino) love Faust's playful metaphors, her side-career writing movie tie-ins, and most importantly, her hardboiled bibliography.
Welcome to the first installment of my interview with Christa Faust, part of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
How did you get involved in the Snakes on a Plane project? How did the actual writing process work? During and after the project, how did this unique fan community feel about the book?
Christa Faust:
Just like any other tie-in or novelization, Snakes on a Plane (SoaP) was given to me as an assignment...
The process was the usual routine. I was sent a copy of the script. I read it and sent in a chapter breakdown, a character breakdown, and a one paragraph plot summary. Once the proposal was approved, I got started on the writing.
Most novelizations need to be finished long before the film is even shot, so the writers have to work off early versions of the script.
There are often substantial changes made between the version given to us for novelization and the final cut of the film. For instance, the end of Final Destination 3 was completely scrapped and reshot so my book has a different ending than the film.
We had to scramble at the last minute to get a copy of the SoaP script that contained the already famous “motherf***ing snakes” line in order to be sure it was included in the book.
The whole online SoaP phenomenon hadn’t really kicked in yet until after I had already completed my book. I had added some tongue in cheek humor but I still treated the snakes as a legit threat. It seems like the devotees of the SoaP buzz have been enjoying the book anyway.
I can’t help but love reviews that call something I wrote: "the most important literary work since the Bible."
