Though there were rumors that Irving had distanced himself from the flick, he and Johnson got together last month in Los Angeles to see a play adaptation of the novelist’s “The Cider House Rules.” Finally, John said, ‘You’re right.’ He gave me his blessing and helped me come up with new names for the characters.” I also didn’t have anything new to say about Vietnam. “When I sat down with John Irving, I told him about the changes I planned to make and he said, ‘My novel is about two things - Vietnam and religion - and you’re taking out one of the elements.’ I explained to John that there’s no way to set parts of a movie in Vietnam without it becoming a Vietnam movie. Because the novel is not represented in its entirety, the title and names were changed. Completely excised from the movie were long passages involving Simon Birch’s Vietnam-War era stint in the National Guard. He had to condense a story that spanned the characters’ lifetime into one year and keep the essence of the characters intact. In adapting “Owen Meany,” Johnson’s challenge was two-fold. “It was just too personal,” says the first-time director. Once Johnson finished the final draft, he couldn’t imagine turning the script over to anybody else to direct. Luckily for Johnson, whose previous screenwriting credits include the “Grumpy Old Men” movies and “Big Bully,” Caravan Pictures optioned the novel for him. The next project that Simon is working on is called The 14th Factory, a 250,000 square feet installation in NYC.When Johnson first read John Irving’s best-seller about a pint-sized powerhouse, he couldn’t put it down. He frequently speaks on issues artists face in Hong Kong: lack of venue space, government support, and the excessive amount of red tape artists have to jump through to get project approval. Simon is one of Hong Kong’s most well known and vocal member of the Art community. Birch’s work has been featured and reviewed in many international publications, including Artforum, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times. These large multimedia projects integrated paintings with film, installation, sculpture, and performance housed in specifically configured spaces. Working with oil on canvas, Birch has also ventured into film and installation work culminating in some particularly notable large-scale projects, including the 20,000 square feet multimedia installations HOPE & GLORY: A Conceptual Circus (2010) and Daydreaming With…The Hong Kong Edition (2012) at the ArtisTree, TaiKoo Place, Hong Kong. He has had solo shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Miami, and Singapore, as well as exhibiting in group shows at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2008), the Haunch of Venison, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 2011. Simon Birch is a UK-born artist who is a permanent resident of Hong Kong. Despite failing to sell a single work for 5 years, it was Simon’s passion and persistence that got him where he is today – working on an enormous project in New York, making the biggest art projects in Hong Kong history, and having his works valued at a few hundred thousand dollars from just a few thousand when he started (not that scale and money is an indicate of success but hey, it’s a start). Over 18 years ago, Simon started his career as a construction worker at the Tsing Ma Bridge, while developing his career as an artist outside of work. He is the winner of Louis Vuitton Asian Art Prize in 2007 and the Sovereign Prize Manfred Schoeni Award in 2004. Known for his works with oil to create kinetic paintings in an exploration of the human figure, Simon Birch (has shown at major art galleries around the world.
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