On October 19th, we got the chance to sit down with Fast Food Nation author and screenwriter Eric Schlosser. We were able to get so much information about the project that we decided to handle this interview differently. Instead of Q and A, we've rearranged the answers in order of chronology. The result is like a mini writers audio commentary about the project from start to finish.

The following is Part Four of a ten part series.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10]

Check back tomorrow for Part 5. Fast Food Nation hits theaters on November 17th 2006.

Going Fictional

And in the midst of that, sometime in 2002, I was approached by Jeremy Thomas, who is this British producer who had been given the book by Malcolm McLaren, who is behind the Sex Pistols. And Jeremy had this idea of making a fictional film based on the book, which didn't necessarily make sense to me AT ALL. But Jeremy Thomas is not someone to be easily dismissed. If you look at the films he's made, and you look at the filmmakers he's worked with, it's very impressive. He works entirely outside the Hollywood system. He raises the money independently. And the thing I heard from him the very first time we met which struck a cord with me is that he is a great believer in the primacy of the director. And I'd worked for an independent film company in New York. I'd been a playwright and a novelist and had worked as a screenwriter before I had ever became an investigative journalist. And I really came to believe that it's a directors medium, and that a good film happens when a really good director is empowered to make a film that he or she wants to make. So I liked that about Jeremy. I liked the fact that he was an independent. But there was no scheme of how this would work. And I said, it's great to meet you and I enjoyed his company and I'd think about it.

Enter Richard Linklater

I was on a book tour in Austin [Texas] and Jeremy Thomas had approached me and when I think of the directors, the contemporaries of this country, the work I really respect and admire, there is just a handful who really are the great ones. And one of them is Rick Linklater, another one is Alexander Payne, another one is Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh takes very bold risks. And if you're going to have a fictional version that has any integrity, it has to be done by a director who is empowered and has a vision which is all their own. And that was Rick. We talked about it, and it didn't seem like necessarily a good idea. We talked about how would this work. There is this book that we both had read and loved and it kind of gave us a suggestion of how it might work. The book was Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It's a portrait of a town at a very particular moment. And it's just about the lives of these ordinary people in this town and how they intersect. And so it was very clear that it could work as a film, and it would involve taking the title of my book, taking several scenes and maybe the spirit of the book... and not even wanting or caring about a literal adaptation. So Rick and I said Hey, lets think about this. And we would get together every few months and we would talk about it, think about it. I didn't sign over the rights to my book until it was clear that Rick wanted to do this, that Rick would have total creative control and be empowered to make the film he wanted to make, and that the money was going to be raised outside of the Hollywood system without any studio having any say in what was going to happen on screen. And once that was clear, I signed on the dotted line. And in order for it to be made, it had to be made on a low budget, in order to be made independent of a studio. And I was really clear with Rick, because I've grown up around film and worked in film - I wanted it to be his vision of this subject. And I would have been fine giving him my book and showing up a year and a half later to see Rick Linklater's interpretation. He wanted me to stay more involved. And I didn't anticipate writing the screenplay . And I didn't anticipate being as involved as I was. But I was there to be useful and to be helpful... This is a Rick Linklater film. If you've seen Slacker, Dazed and Confused, a really great filmmaker has a voice in the same way that a novelist has a voice. And this is his film but it was a pleasure to be involved and collaborate with him. And it doesn't make sense. it's not a logical thing, but if you step back from it... I've done work writing fiction, short stories, a novel. I've done work as a playwright. I've done investigative journalism. I've written a screenplay. And what it's led me to appreciate is that each one of these writing are totally valid. When I worked for this independent film company in New York, I read hundreds of screenplays. I was a script reader. It made me realize that a really good screenplay is as valid of a piece of writing as a novel. It's hard to write a good screenplay. And screenwriters are treated like shit. And they're disrespected. But it has nothing to do with the craft, and has everything to do with the industry. This film is Rick Linklater's vision of this subject. And it's not my book. My book is investigative journalism. If someone wanted to write a play about a meat packing plant, that would be different. But that's just as valid a way to look at it. It's an unlikely pairing. It's kind of ironic that this book and this film which are about America, had to be financed largely to a big extent, outside of this country. The BBC is one of the funders of it and I think there is some British lottery money. That's what it took to get this film made.