AR has read the books, well, at least DH!

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> <SNIP>
> > Good directors do listen to the actors, especially highly gifted veteran actors who understand their character and his or her motivation. <snip>
> > The thing is, WB is trying, in general, to produce an adaptation that's faithful to the spirit of the books, which requires the characters, especially the important characters, to share the personality and motivation (and preferably, mannerisms, accents, vocal inflections, and facial expressions) of their book equivalents. <snip>
> > 
> > Consider for a moment the performances of Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the LOTR films, and John Noble, who played Denethor. Lee read the books multiple times (and had no qualms about talking to Peter Jackson about how he thought a scene should be played). John Noble never so much as read the scenes involving Denethor. Lee was, IMO, spot on in his characterization. Noble was sickeningly off, completely missing the proud and tough old warrior who wrongly thought himself a match for Sauron. Part of it was the way his scenes were written (those grapes; his death) but part was his (IMO) complete misunderstanding of the character--because he'd never read the books. I think he might have requested--and received--some alterations had he done so. (Jackson and his team were willing to experiment. They filmed several variations of the scene with Frodo and Gollum on the Cracks of Doom, including one that matched the book, and chose the one they thought worked best dramatically--unfortunate choice, IMO, but at least the actors knew that it wasn't the canonical version and were part of the creative process of changing the book to the film.)
> <SNIP>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Yeah, I know Jackson and LOTR is one of the two exceptions which I was thinking about. Jackson specifically wanted to produce the work as close as possible to the books and their spirit and yes many actors read the books and yes indeed he would even listen to them.
> 
> Are you aware of any other examples?

Carol responds:

Not specific examples offhand (I'm sure I've read them but don't remember where), but I did find this quote from Peter Jackson in an article from "Features" magazine:

". . . A lot of revision to the scripts continued through the shoot. <snip> We would rewrite scenes, lose scenes, change scenes throughout the 15 months. It was very complicated. Yet, it's creatively exciting, a strength and perhaps weakness to roll with the punches and get input from all of the actors. Once they took over their characters, they would make suggestions and that would lead to other opportunities to improve the script. The script process was truly organic."

http://www.dga.org/news/v26_5/feat_peterjackson.php3

I've also read somewhere that Christopher Lee, who reads the books once a year and is thoroughly familiar with them, made a number of suggestions, some of which were acted upon, for scenes involving other actors. And I know that a similar creative process was used in the filming of the 1998 TV movie "Moby Dick," for which all the major actors read the book. (The writer and director still made changes to the original book, of course, but they did so as a team with the actors, not as dictators or puppetmasters, and like Jackson's team, they continued to revise the script as they filmed.)

Carol, who will add more links if she finds any good ones