“When I walked in, I said, ‘Oh gosh, I'm going to be such a burden to this guy here,' Albom said. Gardener was ill and on oxygen when he met Albom, making Albom feel like a burden to even ask for help. His friend set up a meeting for Albom with Herb Gardener, a famous playwright. It's a challenge, but I like it a lot.”Īlbom explained that his favorite part of the creative process was actually when he got frustrated enough to reach out for help and inspiration while adapting the novel. it all takes place inside and sometimes you have to create the outside even when you're inside. 'There's no point in writing a play where you talk about how the room smells, or anything like that. “ focuses on language and dialogue a lot more,' Albom said. That was easy to do because I had all the tapes and conversations.”Įver since this play, Albom has written four comedic plays and a musical, finding love in the writing aspect of theater. I just had to sort of recall the conversation that we had, and the great moments of it. I didn't have to create asteroids blowing up or something that you do in a movie. I didn't have to create an airplane crash.

'That's exactly what took place between me and Morrie: dialogue. “The easy part of it is that a play is dialogue,' Albom said. Now, the play is 20 years old, allowing Albom to reflect on his success in the medium of the theater as well as print. While Albom believed that the 20,000 copies of the book he had sold would forever stay in the back of his car unread, the release of 'Tuesdays with Morrie' became the biggest turning point of Albom's personal and professional life. 'Then Oprah Winfrey made a movie out of it and then a year after that, someone approached me about maybe doing a play of it because the play really was kind of the most real depiction of what took place.” “After that, it became this huge success that nobody could have imagined,' Albom said. He sold it just as Morrie passed due to his disease, being able to cover his expenses. Albom explained that he would have given up if he was only writing it for himself, but he had Morrie in mind throughout the process. Most publishers weren't sold on the novel, claiming it was boring and no one would read something contemporary by a sportswriter.

I was motivated to try to do one nice thing for this man who had done so many nice things for me.” I never wrote a book like that before I was a sports writer and books I had written were more about sports, but he needed money to pay his medical bills. 'That was it and there was no other motivation. “The reason I wrote the book was to pay his medical expenses,' Albom said.

Mitch albom morrie