With all the talk of American Gods maybe possibly finally finding a home on Starz, not enough attention is being paid to Neil Gaiman's other projects. He has a new book coming out this October, a "Toon-Book" called Hansel & Gretel; Sandman is still assumed to be in some stage of development at Warner Bros (though with them, you never really can tell); and his short story How To Talk To Girls At Parties is being adapted into a film by Hedwig And The Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell, who is writing the film along with Philippa Goslett.
The original short story, the entirety of which can be found on Neil's website, concerned two English lads attempting to chat up some girls at a party in 1970's England. For those who haven't dashed to that link or watched the above video, or read it before, I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say that Gaiman's affections for Douglas Adams might have played into the twist a tiny bit. The film will star Elle Fanning (recently seen in Maleficent) as one of the titled girls, whose interests at such a party aren't entirely concerned with boys, though her attentions may yet be diverted in such a way.
When announcements are made of adaptions, I generally get less nervous when the original work is a short story, like this here, than a novel. Usually, adapting a novel means hacking away at the plot, mining the work of the bits that "really work," usually at the sacrifice of character or intent. Adapting a short story mean that it falls to the adaptors to fill in the gaps. Plump up the original, usually very isolated moment of time with original content and character development. To my mind at least, short stories have a better chance of going right in their adaptations, while novels have a better chance of going wrong.
Via Den of Geek.