Good morning, Hank.

It's Tuesday. So when it comes to the film adaptation  of my novel Turtles All the Way Down, there's a thing I hope you'll keep in  mind for the next few weeks, which is that I already got paid.  Like, financially speaking, I don't care if you see the film.

I guess if a ton  of people see it might sell a few more books, but not that many.  And honestly, the book already has a great life. So how did this  come to be? Well, broadly speaking, there are two kinds of movie deals  for authors.

There's the kind where you get paid everything upfront and  the kind where you get some kind of financial compensation based on  the movie's success. And I like the kind where you get paid up front,  but not for the reason you might expect. Let me give you an example.  If I'd had a piece of the profit from The Fault in Our Stars movie,  I would have made a bunch of money because it was a very successful movie.  In fact, it was one of the most profitable movies of all time.

And that  kind of deal is pretty tempting. But there's a problem with it from  my perspective, which is that if the movie is bad, I am still kind of  incentivized to like it or pretend that I like it. Even if the movie furthers  harmful stereotypes or narratives that I was actively trying to write  against, there still might be some part of me that's like, well, but I could  use a million dollars.

And honestly, I just don't trust myself in the face  of such prospective riches. So I like the kind of deal where  you get paid everything upfront, and then I can heavily promote  the movie if I really like it. And if I don't really like it, I can say  nothing or say that I don't like it.

I guess one of my big life goals is  not to feel overly obligated to large corporations - he said, while utterly  dependent upon algorithmically generated content, feeds, and  medicine produced by large pharmaceutical companies - which is  obviously an unachievable goal. But where I can have some control  over what I say and believe, I’d like to. And this is a place where I can.  So there's very little financial incentive for me in saying that I think the  Turtles All the Way Down movie is brilliant, with extraordinary performances,  and that it's the best portrayal of OCD as I experience it, that I've ever  seen in a movie.

It's also funny and human and just really quite extraordinary.  I don't know how they did it, but especially if you struggle with  mental health or love someone who does I think this is an important  movie, and that's why I'm gonna be promoting it heavily. So, Hank,  despite the high number of adaptations of my work and the overall high  quality of those adaptations, I've become more and more reluctant  to engage with Hollywood. It's just a little cutthroat as a business.  Like, movies get cancelled for tax breaks or all other kinds of  ridiculous reasons.

I once had a movie adaptation of my work get cancelled  just before it was supposed to start filming because a movie executive felt,  as he literally told me, that an actor's eyes were too far apart. Honestly, it's  just a pretty frustrating place to work sometimes. And, like, I have  cool things to do.

I get to write books and professionally hate tuberculosis.  These are wonderful jobs. But the thing is, Hank, once in a while,  something works and hundreds of people come together to make  something really, really wonderful. And that's what happened with  the Turtles All the Way Down movie.

And I just think it's one of those  movies that people will really love. Like, one of the points of art is to  help us feel less alone, especially in the way down, abstract parts of us  that are hard to understand, let alone share.  And I just think the Turtles All the Way Down movie does that.  I wish I could show it to my younger self and be like, hey,  you know this thing that you feel super alone in? You're not.  The trailer for the movie is live now.

There is a link in the doobly doo.  It comes out May 2 on Max. It's also definitely the Nerdfightery-est film ever  made from my books. Like, there are so many little shoutouts to Nerdfighteria,  including that all of the microscope footage comes from Journey to the  Microcosmos’s master of microscopes, James Weiss.

Also, I'm in it. I have  progressed significantly as an actor since I was cut out of the  Fault in Our Stars film. I'm in the movie.

I even have a line. Sarah described it  as the worst performance in the film, but only because the others are so good.  I just can't wait for you to see this movie. It's so special, and  nobody's paying me to say that.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.