Lopez: "First and foremost, it was about Alex and Henry for me, and inevitably there were going to be things left out.
If it's not about Alex and Henry, it doesn't belong in the film – that was reinforced when I was editing the movie. There are some things we filmed that are in the novel that I had to take out.
It was very clear to me the first time I saw an assembly of the film that anything not relevant to their love story just didn't belong in it."Lopez: "The dirty little secret of this movie is that it's basically the ultimate fan art that I've made here...
I love the book so much. I want viewers of the movie to get to the end of the story and feel the same way readers felt at the end of the book, even if the journey to get there is slightly different."Lopez: "There was such a queer love going on in the book, and I genuinely fell in love with it.