The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna 285 | Train Dreams Writer/Directors Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley On Daring To Slow Down
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Feb 12, 2026 
Greg Kwedar, writer-director and producer who collaborated on Sing Sing and Train Dreams, and Clint Bentley, writer-director and fiction writer known for Train Dreams and Jockey, discuss their creative partnership. They explore choosing time and rhythm as a film's engine. They talk about adapting a novella, translating literary images to cinema, editing into a new ending, and the logistics of shooting remote woods.
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Time As The Narrative Engine
- Time acts as the film's engine, letting life’s chapters and rhythms drive narrative momentum instead of conventional plot mechanics.
- Embracing passivity and waiting in a protagonist can become a deliberate storytelling strategy rather than a flaw.
Map The Book Into Signposts
- Break the source into chapter-by-chapter story beats and list the main things that happen to find filmable signposts.
- Use a one-page shape or skeleton to return to while expanding the adaptation into a screenplay.
Different Mediums, Different Iconic Moments
- Some literary images resist cinematic translation because they rely on individual imagination's power.
- Cinema can create its own iconic images that convey the book's emotional potency differently.